It’s a good week to be Michelle Monaghan. Episode five of “The White Lotus” has had everyone abuzz since airing Sunday night, with Monaghan’s character Jaclyn caught in one of the episode’s major cliffhangers. In the midst of talking about the show, Monaghan was also celebrating her first beauty campaign, for U Beauty. After the news was announced earlier in the day, the actress was on hand at The Mark Hotel Tuesday evening for a celebratory dinner hosted by U Beauty’s Tina Craig and Katie Borghese.
“I’m so excited about this campaign,” said Monaghan, sporting a pale pink Khaite slipdress. “I’ve been a longtime fan of their products and it just felt like we were all aligned in terms of what our beauty standards are and what our goals are.”
Framing the dining room were several blown-up images from the campaign, which Monaghan said was a little “surreal” to walk into.
“I can say that I’ve never really enjoyed looking at myself so much,” she said. “They really did such a beautiful job.”
Inside the U Beauty x Michelle Monaghan dinner.
Courtesy of Bre Johnson/BFA.com
While on set in Thailand shooting “The White Lotus,” Monaghan especially relied upon U Beauty’s resurfacing compound, which she called her “holy grail” product.
“It helps lighten my dark spots and some of my sun damage and texture of my skin. It brightens my skin, which was actually a really key component in Thailand because it was so hot there. It was really hard to wear makeup so I wanted my skin to be healthy. So the resurfacing compound was lovely,” she said. “It gives me a nice glow.”
The rest of her Thailand beauty routine included drinking lots of water and applying bug spray, but she also incorporated U Beauty’s lip plasma into her character Jaclyn’s wardrobe.
“I use the universal lip plasma, but for my character, I chose it in rose. She likes to make a statement,” Monaghan said.
The room buzzed around her as she chatted with reaction to Sunday’s episode, which saw Jaclyn seduce a man she’d previously been encouraging her friend Laurie to go for.
“I’m hearing through the grapevine that there are two different schools of thought. There’s a lot of people who are like, ‘Go Jaclyn, go get yours.’ And then there is another school of thought where Jaclyn broke girl code with Laurie,’” Monaghan said. “We all knew that that was going to spark conversation. And I think that we’ll see how it all kind of pans out [in] episode six. But I think Jaclyn sincerely wanted Laurie to hook up and have a great time and deserved it. I think Jaclyn is the type of person that needs a lot of external validation, and she wasn’t getting it. She was getting a little bored. She went out, had some fun, hit the ‘f–k it’ button and was thinking, ‘I’m going to tell the girls about it in the next morning.’ I don’t think she feels like she’s done anything wrong — but we’ll see how the ladies feel.”
