Four television shows received the lion’s share of 2025 Emmy noms last July: Severance, The Penguin, The Studio, and The White Lotus. The latter, the third installment in Mike White’s pressure-cooker study of wealth on vacation, tallied seven cast nods. Leslie Bibb, who played the cunty little bob-sporting closet conservative Kate, at once the show’s reality check and comic relief, was not among them. The Internet, which had minted Bibb’s face into thousands of memes while The White Lotus ran in the spring, clapped back with an outpouring of support for the actor. (A few months before the nomination announcements, The Daily Beast was already advocating to “Give Leslie Bibb’s ‘White Lotus’ Smile a Special Emmy Award”.)
Bibb—who, after breaking out in Ryan Murphy’s first show, Popular, in 1999, built up a filmography of supporting roles in comedies and action flicks in the aughts—is getting justice this Emmy season. Her nomination, as an Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series, is tied to one of the more enjoyable TV episodes of late: “Montecito.” The seventh chapter in the final season of Hacks sees Ava and Deborah drive up to Santa Barbara County for a weekend with Kelly Kilpatrick, an opp of Deborah’s who owns the outfit she wants to wear at her MSG show, played by Cherry Jones, and her wife, Monica (Bibb).
As a ballerina (Darren Aronofsky dedicated Black Swan to her!) turned beekeeper, Bibb once again meticulously peels back the layers of a character we might have brushed off as superficial, or superfluous. Although the (albeit ephemeral) shipping of Ava and Deborah in the episode was a climactic act of fan service, Bibb effortlessly redirects the audience’s attention towards Monica’s chemistry with the show’s protagonists. In the span of half an hour, the actor delivers an unpretentiously masterful performance, underscored by her gestural comedy and punctuated by a rockslide of perfectly timed one-liners.
Ahead of the Emmys in September and in the midst of filming a new show, Escorted, with Brett Goldstein and Lesley Manville, Bibb called CULTURED to talk about the episode’s impact, the importance of platonic female love, and the similarities between renovating a home and childbirth.
Leslie, congrats on the Emmy nom! How does it feel?
It feels fucking awesome! I feel seen, which sounds so corny, but I do. I feel supported. I’ve been kicking around a long time, and it just feels like, Oh okay, you’re on the right path. You’ve made the right choices in life.
What a show, what an episode, what a couple, and what a character. What was your relationship to Hacks before “Montecito”?
I was away in Thailand shooting [The White Lotus] and then I was shooting Palm Royale. I wasn’t watching television in general—everything I was watching was research for parts. I remember watching the Hacks pilot [in 2021] and being like, “Who wrote this? This is extraordinary!” Back then, somebody writing a show with two great female parts like that, it was kind of like, “What?” But I met Paul [W. Downs, co-creator and star of Hacks] when he did a Q&A.
I read that you met, then you started DMing, and dreaming about each other, and that this role came through a dream…
I know it sounds so crazy. He did this Q&A, and it’s really hard to do a Q&A. I started following him on Instagram, and he was very nice about my work in [The White Lotus]. I have very vivid dreams, and one night he was in my dream. I woke up and DMed him and was like, Oh my God, you were in my dream last night.
A month later, I think he was being funny, he DMed me, “I had a dream you did an episode of Hacks.” Then my agent called me, and was like, “You got offered this part on Hacks.” I was like, “Yeah, I’m in.” I would have shown up just to be in the company of Jean Smart and Cherry Jones and Hannah Einbinder. Hannah is such a force of nature, and Jean Smart obviously is one of the greatest actresses we have. Cherry Jones is equally one of the greatest actresses we have. To get to be in that company is a master class.
[Hacks] is extraordinary because Paul, Lucia [Aniello], and Jen [Statsky] run a show like I’ve never seen before. It’s the most positive, supportive, kind, creative, nurturing set you will ever be on. You never feel self-conscious; you feel held from the minute you get to work. They create an environment of creativity, and you can tell they really like actors.
What did the prep process look like? Did you meet Cherry, Hannah, and Jean before?
The prep is this: I get the call in November. It’s probably three, four weeks before we shoot. I get the script. I have to go to London for two days to do a meeting. I then fly from London to Los Angeles to shoot Hacks. When I was in London, I worked with a movement teacher, Polly Bennett. She did Bohemian Rhapsody. She did Elvis. We did like an hour and a half session on the day I landed. There was something about that foundation that really helped. She’s so in her body, Monica.
Another thing that happened is I made a decision with the costume designer: I don’t want her to wear shoes. I wear shoes once, with the beekeeper costume. Other than that, I’m shoeless. I wanted to be rooted in the ground. She was always like a cat who was needing a spot that she was gonna sit in. Wherever her gaze went, her body went. There’s something tactile about her.
So I worked with Polly, then I did my own work on the script. Then I showed up and I met Cherry and everybody right before we were going to do a scene. It was the beekeeper scene, and I walked in and I just kissed Cherry. Cherry started laughing after, and I was like, “I’m sorry I should have asked you if I could do that,” and she went, “No, I love that you did that.” And I was like, “Yeah, it’s on. This is us.” It’s so easy to love Cherry Jones. It’s so easy to fall in love with all of those women. That part of it didn’t really take any acting. I should be so lucky to have an eighth of the mojo they’ve got.
The chemistry was contagious. Did you study up on any lesbian film curriculum? Were there any lesbian archetypes you were channeling?
No, I didn’t really do that. I think it’s more the essence of who she is. She’s a woman who says yes. She’s very on the balls of her feet. I think really the archetypes I looked to for her were male. She’s so unapologetic about everything. I was like, This is what it feels like to be a dude. God, this is amazing. It’s like, “Yes, and?”
I think I improvised [to Jean Smart] something like, “You’re very sexy.” If a man said that to me, it would make me crazy. Like, “I’m glad I’m visually appealing to you, sir” as I walk down the street. But I was like, Oh, that’s what she’s doing. She thinks she’s giving everyone a compliment. [Laughs] She’s got a little Jack Nicholson in her. I watched Jack Nicholson in Witches of Eastwick. That’s definitely one of the movies I was really inspired by for Monica. He was so in his body. Just your average horny little devil.
And Sharon Stone is always so great for me. She’s got such a gravitas and sexual power to her. I’m watching a lot of Casino for the job I’m doing right now. Sharon Stone is perfection in that movie.
Monica is an undeniable one-liner queen, too. Beyond the physicality and swagger, her delivery is incredible. If you could print one one-liner out as a bumper sticker and put it everywhere, what would it be?
“Do you strap?” People love that line. I improvised “We know Sia,” which I think is funny. But the line that they wrote that I thought was so funny, because it says everything about her, was some line about sobriety. “We celebrate our friends’ sobriety, but we also mourn it,” or something. It made me laugh. One of my favorites is also, “Do you ever wonder if late at night when they’re all alone on the shelf those trophies get to playing with each other?”
Those writers wrote some fucking incredible, incredible lines. Bangers! “Do you want to see my chicken coop?” made me laugh too hard. I stole something from my yoga teacher. Sam [Rockwell] asked him, “Were you a dancer?” And he goes, “Well Sam, once a dancer, always a dancer,” and it made me laugh so hard. So when I read the script, and they were talking about Darren Aronofsky, I said to Paul, “I heard this line, and I think it’s really great,” and he went, “Change ‘dancer’ to ‘ballerina.’” So I said, “Once a ballerina, always a ballerina.” But I feel like, “Do you strap?” says everything. It can go anywhere.
The reception to this episode was so, so huge. How did it feel? You became a meme queen all over again.
You’re going to think I’m nuts when I say this: That episode of Hacks felt equally as big for me as getting The White Lotus.
I think it was pretty seismic.
There was something about that episode that felt seismic, didn’t it? “Montecito” is a great episode of television. I think the finale episode was one of the best pieces of television I’ve ever seen. What I really loved about those two episodes, which is very much in my ethos right now as a human being, is this idea of our love of our girlfriends.
As girls we were told, like, “You’re gonna meet a person, who’s gonna be your life partner. That’s gonna be your true love.” What I’m really realizing is you can have a true love that is the person you go to bed with every night, and then you can have a true love that is your friend, and the person you get seen by. I am really besotted by the platonic love that I have right now in my life, Aimee Lou Wood. And there was something about “Montecito” and Hacks in this season, this not sexualized love affair between Hannah and Jean, that shows how important that is for us as human beings.
Those friendships are incredible anchors.
There’s something about really digging deep with somebody. When I met Lesley Manville, and I was like, “I just want to be clear, for the rest of your life you’re going to be seeing my face.” We leave each other these 10-minute voice texts and talk about everything. I’m just so grateful for that.
Who are you most excited to see at the Emmys this September?
My beautiful Cherry Jones. We spoke on the phone the day the nominations came out, but I haven’t seen her [since we filmed the episode].
Everyone is very much following your upstate home renovation. How is everything going? Where’s the reality TV show?
I’ve never done this before, so I wanted it to be honest. I wanted to show all the shit that I’m learning because it’s been such a learning process. It’s really fun to do it with one of my best friends, Shawn Henderson, who is an incredible interior designer. I’ll tell you this: I know a lot more about rough-ins and toilets and crawl spaces and duct work and grey water. The reason we call it a “crapper” is because the name of a toilet was a crapper in England, and then when we went over in the war, the boys came back with [it]. That’s where the words “crap” and “crapper” came from. So there’s a fun fact about toilets.
Sometimes I get so overwhelmed by [the project]. It’s kind of what I imagine childbirth is, when I talk to my friends. When you have the baby, it’s crazy pain. Then when they put the baby in your hands and you look at it, you forget about the 30 hours of labor you just went through and you are in euphoria. That’s how I feel every time I walk back into the house. When I’m away, I’m like, Am I ever gonna do this? Oh my God, how much more money is this gonna cost? What, I need this? Then I walk into the house and I can feel it speaking to me.
This house hasn’t been looked after since 1765, and suddenly I’m giving her the glow up. That basement was literally the scariest basement I’ve ever seen. Now, it’s one of my favorite rooms in the house. It’s got such good vibes. Sometimes I want to pull my hair out. But it’s really fun. I just did an electrical walkthrough. I went up and I learned all the rules about where outlets go. Stuff that you take for granted that you don’t know. Like, you have to have an outlet three-feet away from any door.
I did not know that, for one.
If it’s a hallway, it has to be every six feet. Have you ever been in an apartment and you’re like, “Why is an outlet right here, this doesn’t make any sense?” That’s why. That’s why it’s important to do a furniture layout of your house before you do that. It’s kind of like the way I feel about acting. I get a little single minded about it. I like the prep of it, and all the learning. I think I’m a pretty curious person.
This is a great PSA. The people need to know about the importance of the electrical walkthrough. One last question, what do lesbians know that no else does?
Here’s the thing, they’re women. And let’s just be honest, we know everything. What do they know? They know everything. They fucking know.
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