There is a scene in the second episode of The Night Manager when Camila Morrone’s character, Roxana Bolaños, makes a showstopping entrance at a party wearing a deep red Versace gown slit to the hip. Her appearance as the archetypal femme fatale belies the twisty layers that make television’s long-awaited comeback so compulsive. It has been ten years since John le Carré’s espionage novel first came to the BBC, with a cast including Tom Hiddleston, Olivia Colman and Hugh Laurie. The original series made a star of Elizabeth Debicki. This time Morrone is its leading lady.
That’s quite the Jessica Rabbit entrance, I tell her as she sits opposite me in a Mayfair restaurant, shower-wet hair, bare face and dressed in off-duty model uniform of all black (Zara) with battered Nikes. “I was adamant about wearing Versace and wearing red for that moment. I said, Roxana needs to walk in in this bombshell colour. It’s a very fiery Latino colour. I had a really clear vision of the first time we see her in her real form, which we will come to see exactly what form that is,” she says teasingly.
Now 28, Morrone was a teenager when the first series aired in 2016 and she fought hard for the role. “I do that with no shame. I will harass a director via email and send a love story about what I feel about a character. When I knew they were casting season two, I asked if there were any female roles and they were reading women a little older than me in their mid-thirties. When I heard they were looking for a Latin character I was like, you guys, come on, this is written for me!”
The series started on January 1, and it is as glossy, sexy and suspenseful as the first time we met Jonathan Pine (Hiddleston), a former soldier turned luxury hotel night manager recruited by the British intelligence officer Angela Burr (Colman) to infiltrate the murky world of the criminal arms dealer Richard Roper (Laurie). This time Pine is a low-ranking MI6 surveillance officer lured back into action and dispatched to Colombia under a new alias: the wealthy businessman Matthew Ellis — all champagne, swagger and loafers (no socks). “Roxy” emerges as a central force but “you can never really read what side she’s on”, Morrone says. “All I can say is that Roxana ultimately chooses herself. She is by no means a damsel in distress.”
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Coat, £1,200, and red skirt, £580, Toga. Sandals, £540, Neous
PHOTOGRAPHS: CHARLOTTE HADDEN. STYLING: TIM TOBIAS ZIMMERMANN
Satin gown, £1,850, Stella McCartney. Trousers, £961, and leather tassel earrings, £558, Michael Kors Collection. Hoops (throughout), Camila’s own
PHOTOGRAPHS: CHARLOTTE HADDEN. STYLING: TIM TOBIAS ZIMMERMANN
Before becoming Roxy, Morrone was best known for the adaptation of Taylor Jenkins Reid’s novel Daisy Jones & the Six. She held the screen to devastating effect — and was nominated for an Emmy — as Camila, the put-upon wife of Billy Dunne (Sam Claflin), whose head is turned by the band’s frontwoman, Daisy (Riley Keough). There were indie roles in Mickey and the Bear and Patricia Arquette’s directorial debut, Gonzo Girl (“Everyone should have lunch with Patricia Arquette once in their life”). But before that Morrone was mostly prefixed as “one-time girlfriend of Leonardo DiCaprio” — they dated for four years until 2022, and much was made of their 22-year age gap.
She is gracious when I ask about her fame by proxy. “When you’re an actor people will always find things about your personal life,” she says. “Perhaps with projects that will change, but it’s something that comes with the territory. Having grown up in Hollywood, I was around it. I was around celebrities. It’s normal [for people] living in LA to see Brad Pitt at the coffee shop, you know? I knew how ruthless the industry was, and the scrutiny and the spotlight on people in this industry.” She is referring now to Al Pacino, who “is technically not my stepfather, but he was my mom’s partner for a very long time”.
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Leather coat, £5,730, and leather skirt, price on application, Khaite. Shoes, stylist’s own
PHOTOGRAPHS: CHARLOTTE HADDEN. STYLING: TIM TOBIAS ZIMMERMANN
Morrone was born in Los Angeles in 1997 to Argentinian parents: her mother, Lucila Solá, was a model and actress who later appeared in Modern Family, and her father, Maximo Morrone, was a male model, fronting campaigns for Dolce & Gabbana and Versace in the Nineties, photographed by the likes of Bruce Weber and Richard Avedon. “My dad was a stud. I’m like, gosh, have you seen my dad in the Nineties?” she says, pulling up on her phone a sexy black-and-white Steven Meisel shot of him with Linda Evangelista. “It was, you know, Naomi and Kate and all the mega supermodels. My dad was on a par with them. He has got some iconic stories, but that’s for another day.”
Morrone attended Beverly Hills High School, the school the Nineties teen drama Beverly Hills, 90210 was based on. “That wasn’t what it felt like going there, but you are still among abnormally wealthy kids, kids of celebrities and people whose parents own the biggest clothing line. My parents, we got a little rental apartment on the outskirts that still had the zip code so I’d be able to go there. I’m grateful my parents stretched themselves so I could get the best education.”
Leather apron top, POA, Ewusie. Leather jacket, £990, and leather trousers, £925, Situationist
PHOTOGRAPHS: CHARLOTTE HADDEN. STYLING: TIM TOBIAS ZIMMERMANN
Leather top, £550, Enami. Trousers and studded belt, POA, 16Arlington
PHOTOGRAPHS: CHARLOTTE HADDEN. STYLING: TIM TOBIAS ZIMMERMANN
Black patent leather dress, £4,515, and shoes, £910, Ferragamo
PHOTOGRAPHS: CHARLOTTE HADDEN. STYLING: TIM TOBIAS ZIMMERMANN
Her parents separated when Morrone was nine and her mother went on to have a decade-long relationship with Pacino, with whom she remains close. “How lucky am I to have known him and to have been raised in his presence. I mean, he’s the Messi of my industry. I think I’ll always look back on my childhood and be in awe that I was in the presence of someone like him.”
Her situation offered a unique perspective on Hollywood’s fickle duality. She has previously said: “My dad and I shared a bed until I was 15 because I had no other room to sleep in.” Her father supplemented commercial work by becoming a headshot photographer and later a wine salesman. “He reinvented himself many times, but I definitely grew up … there were times of shortage. And, of course, my mother was with a person who was successful, so I had very much two different lives. Due to her relationship I got to experience things that were perhaps more glamorous and privileged than I did with my dad.”
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Leather jacket, £990, Situationist. Skirt, £855, Magda Butrym
PHOTOGRAPHS: CHARLOTTE HADDEN. STYLING: TIM TOBIAS ZIMMERMANN
Aged seven, Morrone accompanied her mother to auditions after school. “I’d watch all these beautiful women go in, all these Latin bombshells who looked like Sofía Vergara, and they were getting a hard no all the time. My mom was in speech class trying to get rid of her accent. She would get spray tans because she was very fair-skinned and they had a notion of what a Latina looks like, and I guess she didn’t fit that.”
Morrone signed a modelling contract at 15 and left school to home study. “I’m someone who has always been financially responsible and I want to always take care of myself.” She was sent home from a swimwear shoot that year for being “too fat”, she says. “You’re not on these high-end, high-budget sets where there’s protection for young models, and you’re changing in front of grown men. Absolutely, there were experiences that weren’t right.”
She was, she says, “too curvy for the runway”, and became a Victoria’s Secret model. Shapeshifting into an actor proved a battle to win over casting agents. “They all saw me as a model, so I had to try and figure out how I would leave that behind and morph into the new Camila. I always knew I wanted to be an actor because I was quite hammy and loved attention as a kid. But I think it took me a minute to really go for it in fear of rejection.”
Morrone with Sam Claflin and Riley Keough in Daisy Jones and the Six; with Tom Hiddleston in The Night Manager
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Modelling was a bootcamp for how to become an adult. “I know how to compose myself in a work environment. I know how to show up to work on time. I know how to be professional and prepared.” I tell her I interviewed the model Kaia Gerber recently who told me something similar. “My bestie!” she squeals. “I love my girls. Suki Waterhouse is one of my best friends and we became like sisters on Daisy [they were co-stars]. But it’s hard to keep up with these women who have these grand lives. Suki’s on tour, Kaia’s doing multiple projects, Hailey Bieber is, you know, raising a family and a multibillion-dollar business. It’s so unsexy, but we’ll send schedules to each other. We make it work, we FaceTime like crazy and send each other messages on Instagram. Our love language is memes.”
It’s a far cry from high school, where Morrone felt like an outsider. “There were these cliquey groups and I never grew up with one big girl group. I feel like finally, now in my twenties, I have this friendship where I’m, like, I love these women and I know that they will be in my life for ever.”
Morrone also counts her Night Manager co-stars as friends. They hung out between takes in London, Spain and Colombia, bonding over British snacks. “Tom’s backpack was like the hub for all the goodies. He has a little sweet tooth. In Columbia, it’d be 5pm and we were all getting our end-of-day work crash and he would just pull out a backpack full of Walker’s.” The crisps? “No, the little shortbreads that are completely addictive and like 100 per cent pure butter.”
Before she leaves Morrone asks me the difference between Earl Grey and English breakfast tea. She’s heading for high tea at Claridge’s with her mum and her “childhood bestie” Laney, who flew in from LA for The Night Manager premiere. They are joined by Morrone’s boyfriend of two years, the music video producer Cole Bennett. “You go on one date, then a second date and, oh, here we are. And you go, I really like hanging with this person. I always love this quote that we started a conversation and it never ended. It feels like that.”
Morrone is not so much looking ahead to the future as charging at it full throttle. This year she has the Netflix horror series Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen, from the producers of Stranger Things, and she has just wrapped filming the period drama The Age of Innocence in Prague. Approaching 30 is at the forefront of her mind. “God, I’m like, how am I gonna do all these things to prevent ageing? Men get older and they become silver foxes and we’re googling facelifts at 41 years old, you know? I’m already like, how soon can I get my facelift?” she says with a laugh before adding: “Jokes, jokes!”
As she heads off for finger sandwiches and family time, she is reflective on the past ten years. “I feel really proud of where I’ve come. I sometimes can’t believe I’m working opposite Tom, and in a show that Olivia Colman is even existing in. That was not my reality ten years ago. I have had to prove to the industry, to casting directors, to directors, I’m going to work my butt off. I’m going to show up prepared and I’m going to work harder than anyone in that room.” I don’t doubt it.
The Night Manager is on BBC iPlayer and Prime Video
Hair Luke Hersheson at the Wall Group using the Beauty Works 22in Barely There Clip-in Set in Raven and Arabia Doll Make-up Anne Sophie Costa at Streeters Nails Saffron Goddard using Dior Manicure Collection, Le Baume and Dior Vernis Set Design Nicholas Rogers Local production Town Productions