“She thinks big,” says Sabrina Impacciatore of her delightfully catty character in The Paper, in which the Italian actress plays Esmeralda Grand, managing editor of the Toledo Truth Teller and TTT Online. Conceived as a Halloween dress-up icon, Esmerelda exists almost entirely to thwart the idealistic new editor and his dreams of keeping journalism alive. Impacciatore, however, is a gifted, full-throttle comedienne who makes sure Esmerelda is much more than a villain. Small wonder Mike White wanted her for Season 2 of The White Lotus; indeed, it’s hard to imagine the anarchy unleashed whenever she and co-star Jennifer Coolidge are in the same room together…

DEADLINE: Esmeralda’s a very unusual character to appear in an American sitcom. Was she written specially for you?

SABRINA IMPACCIATORE: Allora… I think they’re definitely now writing around me, or what I bring to the character. I think the character at first was supposed to be played by an American actress, because I was told that they were just curious to see me in an audition. So I did the audition with my Italian accent, and they asked me if I could work on my accent to make it sound American. I said, “Yes, yes” — completely lying! — and then, when I finally got the role, they called me and they said, “You know what? We changed our mind. We love your accent.”

DEADLINE: How has Esmerelda evolved?

IMPACCIATORE: I think we literally created this character day by day. The main characteristic of the character was that she is a very manipulative person. That was the main thing. And then during the audition, I made a choice, because I was very worried that this character could be hated by people. So, I had this idea that she could be like… Do you remember the bird in the cartoon, Tweety Bird?

DEADLINE: Tweetie Pie!

IMPACCIATORE: Yes! This bird does the most horrible things, but from a point of view of surviving and saving his own life. So, I thought, this is what Esmerelda is doing. She fights for her life. She fights to stay where she is. She fights not to lose power. I mean, of course she doesn’t have so much power, but still there’s something there. And so I worked a lot about this innocence somehow. So, when she says or does something horrible, there is something about her that is very childlike. I worked a lot on her appearance. I mean, she’s in a documentary, so maybe she secretly believes she’s going to be a star one day. I thought she should have hair like Rita Hayworth. And in fact, on day one when I arrived on set and [showrunner] Greg Daniels asked us to improvise, I entered like this… [She tosses her hair back like a B-movie vamp]. And they didn’t get it! They said, “What are you doing?” I looked crazy. I said, “This is Esmeralda playing Gilda.”

We just finished the second season. Esmeralda does the craziest things, like you guys haven’t seen her do yet. I was talking yesterday with one of my dearest friends and I told her, “There is something really incredible about this project. I’ve been inspired every single day.” When an actor works on inspiration, there is nothing that gives you a higher joy, because you don’t act. You play in a real sense, like you are a kid. You get lost. I don’t even know what I’m doing. And so, I love Esmeralda. I think she’s a crazy twin to me.

DEADLINE: Did you do any research into the continuing decline of the publishing industry?

IMPACCIATORE: At university, I studied communication, so I think somehow I’ve always been interested in media. For a moment in my life, I thought I would be a journalist, and still part of me would love to be a journalist one day. You never know. But to play Esmeralda, I made sure not to know anything about journalism.

DEADLINE: There really are people like her in journalism. Esmeraldas do exist.

IMPACCIATORE: I can imagine that. I mean, Esmeralda, she’s the queen of bullsh*t. But she’s a very good seller. I think she sells things in a very intelligent way. Somehow, she’s smart, but she doesn’t really know about journalism. And, in fact, there’s a scene in Season 1…

I don’t know if no one ever noticed, but I start a scene holding in my hands a book that’s called something like The Basics of Being a Journalist. Something like that, something silly.

DEADLINE: Why did you want to become an actor?

IMPACCIATORE: I still have the diary where I wrote it down. I was eight years old. I was at school; they were doing the Christmas play, and someone put a veil on my head and said, “Would you like to be the Holy Mary?” It was a Catholic school here in Italy. And I remember, in that moment, with this veil on my head — I still remember this — I thought, “Yes, I am the Holy Mary!” [Laughs.] This this happens to me every time I wear something that I wouldn’t normally wear. Somehow it affects me very, very deeply in a very weird way, almost a bit like, Am I a crazy person? So, I wrote about that in my diary.

Then when I was 16, I started to study acting, but I didn’t dare to really dream about doing it professionally. When I was 18, I started doing theater. But when I went to audition to become an actress in movies, I was insulted — literally. Someone told me, “You are so ugly. What do you think you can do with this face? Forget about it.” I will always remember that, because it was a shock. That’s why I studied communication. I studied marketing, advertising, all these crazy things, but I never stopped studying acting. When I was 18, I found my first coach from The Actors Studio, but I didn’t have money to pay him and I didn’t want to ask my parents for money because they absolutely didn’t want me to become an actress.

And so I offered to do the cleaning at the school. I did this for three years, and I was allowed to participate to the class. And one day I decided to do an improv that was very dramatic to me. I started the improv, and everybody was laughing like crazy. I was feeling so sad. I thought, “Why are these people laughing?” I was doing it so seriously! But I kept doing it, and then I started to enjoy it. This improv lasted for maybe half an hour, and hearing people laughing made me very happy. And at the end of it, the coach said, “You have an incredible instinct for comedy.” And for many years I didn’t understand what that was!

DEADLINE: How did you make comedy work for you?

IMPACCIATORE: I’ve been working as a comedian for 12 years on national television in Italy, writing my own sketches, creating characters, stealing from reality, making parodies. That’s my cup of tea. But I love drama. I am a drama queen. And so for example, in my career in Italy, I really made very strong, dangerous choices to make sure that they didn’t say, “She’s just a comedian.” I wanted to become a complete actress. And in fact, my next project is a thriller.

DEADLINE: Is it true you used to do impressions?

IMPACCIATORE: I did parodies that became very, very successful. I did parodies … Do you know this show, Big Brother? When the first edition of Big Brother exploded in Italy, I did parodies of the biggest characters in that show, and I became super-famous with that. And then another character that I did was Tomb Raider. You know Lara Croft? If you go online on YouTube — and you look for Sabrina Impacciatore: Tomb Raider — you’ll see what I’ve done. I’ve done these stupid, crazy sketches where I was Lara Croft, talking to the guy that was playing with the joystick.

DEADLINE: When did you get into drama?

IMPACCIATORE: Allora, let me think. My first dramatic roles was in 2001. A big Italian director saw me in a comedy show and offered me a role in [Unfair Competition], a movie where I was playing a secret agent working against the Nazis. That was my very, very first dramatic role, with Ettore Scola. That was my first movie for feature film. He saw me on stage on theater and he asked me to do an audition, and then I got my first role, and that was life-changing. And then I did The Last Kiss by Gabriele Muccino, who was the director of The Pursuit of Happyness with Will Smith. Anyway, I started with that role and from that moment, really my life completely changed because they found me believable.

I got some nominations for some important awards, and so — thank God — from that moment, my range was more clear. Because until that moment for, let’s say for 15 years, people thought I was just a comedian. And after 15 years I changed direction. And then when I went on stage again, I chose the most dramatic roles.

DEADLINE: What kinds of roles?

IMPACCIATORE: One was Venus in Fur [by David Ives]. That was a huge success. I did it for three seasons on stage, always sold out. It was a lifetime role for me, really incredible. And I won a very beautiful award as best actress. And then I did another very, very dramatic role that was a monologue by [Italian author] Natalia Ginzburg, called The Dry Heart. And this was the most dramatic role I’ve played so far: A one-hour monologue of a person that starts innocent and pure then progressively gets crazier and kills her husband. [Laughs.] That was something!  I lost a lot of weight. And then one morning, I woke up and I had white hair.

I went a bit too far, just a bit too far. In fact, one night someone knocked at the door of my green room. She came in and she said, “I will never forget what I’ve seen on stage tonight. But I am a therapist. You have to protect yourself because you are taking a big risk. You are going to places that maybe you can’t come back from.”

DEADLINE: You were also in Season 2 of The White Lotus. How did that come your way?

IMPACCIATORE: With a call from my agent. They said, “Sabrina, they can’t find this character. You are the last actress in Italy. They have seen everybody. They are desperate.” Because, I think, I was a little bit older than the character, they didn’t even think about me, I think. So I did a self-tape. Allora, do you want to know how long it took? I started at 12 p.m. and I finished at 1 a.m., because I’m an obsessive creator, and I was never happy. It was during Covid, and at the end of 13 hours, I had 125 takes.

I didn’t know which one to choose. And then I called my friend and I said, “I’m having a panic attack.” And she came over at 2 a.m.. We sent it, and after one day, I got the call from my agent screaming, “Sabrina, you became the first choice for HBO and Mike White, and now Mike White wants to meet you in person.” I had to travel all night long to see him, because I was shooting a movie in the North of Italy.

Meeting Mike, I was like a crazy person, so tired, but in character. I had dressed up, and while I was there I made a strong choice to offer a more emotional Valentina. At first, he didn’t want this kind of character. In the script, Valentina was much more tough, dry, manipulative, not emotional. And I made this suggestion, and Mike shed a tear, so this is how I got him. And he entered in my heart forever. That was an incredible experience.

DEADLINE: And what happens when you and Jennifer Coolidge get together?

IMPACCIATORE: We became almost a couple! In Sicily, we spent so much time together, me and her, and we had the best time. We had so many dates, me and her, having dinner, me and her, going shopping, me and her. Jennifer is one of the most brilliant and the funniest person I’ve ever met in my entire life. So day one, when I met her, I was so much in awe that during a scene when we were together, I didn’t dare to speak. And for three takes, I didn’t say a word. And then after three takes, my assistant came to me, she said, “Sabrina, you have to say your lines.” I said, “I’m sorry, but I don’t want to interrupt her.” I adore her. She’s a genius. I hope that one day we’ll work again together.

DEADLINE: What did The White Lotus do for you? Was it a big leap?

IMPACCIATORE: [Incredulous] It was LIFE-CHANGING! Imagine this. Imagine an Italian actress that is not 20 years old anymore, who is not working anymore because they are getting old. That’s what I was diagnosing: A kind of creative cancer. I was dying because I thought, “I cannot live without acting. I’m going to die soon.” And then this audition arrived, and I was born again. A new life, a new everything. I have to write a novel, because, allora, yesterday I was at lunch with one of my best friends and she said, “Sabrina, do you know that if we Google ‘Italian actress’, there is Sophia Loren and you?” I couldn’t believe that. There’s Sophia Loren, me, Monica Bellucci… I mean, it’s unbelievable.

This is a miracle, and now I have an international career. I have two films in the Tribeca Film Festival: Julian Schnabel’s movie, In the Hand of Dante, where I play a super-dramatic role — even if it’s a cameo, it’s super-hyper-dramatic. And then I have a comedy, Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass. Imagine my life now!

The writers of my life that take magic mushrooms every day and then write the script of my existence, they decided to premiere these two movies on the same day at the same hour, the same time at Tribeca. Come on, the timing is unbelievable — I did the Julian Schnabel movie three years ago! Anyway, I’m living something that is not even a dream. It’s real life with a miracle happening, and I can’t even begin to express how I feel.