Aimee Lou Wood reveals her Mancunian accent helped land her role in The White Lotus

She was bullied as a child for her thick Stockport accent.

Now Aimee Lou Wood has revealed that her Mancunian voice was key to getting cast in the latest series of The White Lotus.

The actress, 30, posed at the red carpet Los Angeles premiere of HBO hit The White Lotus on Monday evening, alongside co-stars Patrick Schwarzenegger and Jason Isaacs.

In the new series, which is set in Koh Samui, Thailand, Ms Lou Wood plays free-spirited Chelsea among the latest batch of luxury hotel guests.

She said: 'My character was meant to be American and then I did a self-tape, one in an American accent and one in my own.'

She added: 'They were like, "Yeah, we want your own voice," so my character is going to be from Manchester.'

The star, who found fame on the Netflix hit Sex Education playing the hapless schoolgirl Aimee Gibbs, has also said that when she was at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts she had been advised to tone down her accent but has since found that people love it.

She said: 'They [RADA] said Received Pronunciation was going to be the main accent we needed, so I should know when to dial my accent down, but that's not been the case at all - if anything, people ask me to amp it up.'

The Bafta award-winning actress plays the young girlfriend of Rick, played by The Fallout actor Walton Goggins, 53, who takes her to Thailand for a couple's retreat but has other motivations behind the trip.

Filmed at the Four Seasons in Koh Samui, the cast stayed at the hotel for different periods of time with Aimee revealing she stayed an extra month.

Patrick, 31, who plays Saxton Ratliff in the show, was joined on the red carpet by his famous father Arnold, 77, who swerved a photograph with Patrick's mother, his ex-wife Maria Shriver, 69.

Instead, Maria, who divorced her ex in 2021, posed alongside Patrick and his fiancee Abby Champion, and daughter Katherine Schwarzenegger and son-in-law Chris Pratt.

The HBO series, created and written by Mike White, is set to debut its newest season on February 16, 2025. 

The first season premiered in July 2021, was set in Hawaii and received 20 Emmy nominations across 13 categories and 10 wins, the most wins of any program that year. 

The second season, which premiered in December 2022, was set in Sicily and garnered 23 Emmy nominations, including Outstanding Drama Series, and five wins.

Season three looks to build on the critical and audience success of the first two seasons when it drops on February 16 on HBO. 

Aimee previously said she found her character 'claustrophobic' and opened up about her 'many f***ing mental illnesses' which made filming hard, admitting she was homesick. 

Speaking to Elle UK, she said: 'I am someone who has so many f***ing mental illnesses, and there's nothing wrong with being mentally ill.'

She added: 'But that extra month, it really makes a difference. I was like, 'Oh, another month, ok' It did feel like The Truman Show, social experiment vibes, a lot of the time.'

Returning to her friends in London, Aimee said: 'I was crying at the beautiful London litter, it was home.'

As for the star-studded cast, including Harry Potter's Jason and the American actress, Michelle Monaghan, Aimee said: 'If we didn't have each other we would all have gone mad.'

'Because we were so far away from home and everyone was homesick, and it's so claustrophobic because you film where you live.'

'There's no separation, you walk out and you're on set. Filming in a hotel, living in a hotel, like you become a White Lotus guest, you actually do.'

'It became so meta. There were times when we'd be out for dinner and someone would start accidentally, verbatim, saying their lines from the show. It all became so merged and so confused.'