The number of people on Earth who are capable of running in slow motion across a sunny beach while a camera ogles every inch of their body to a ’80s synth-rock soundtrack now includes Alexandra Daddario. Deadline reports the True Detective and San Andreas actor is set to star in the big-screen reboot of Baywatch, the trashy soap spectacle that taught the world about David Hasselhoff and Pamela Anderson’s breasts. There might have been some plot, too, not that anyone noticed.
As we reported previously, the action-comedy also stars Zac Efron and Dwayne Johnson, two fine actors who were 100 percent cast for the way they look shirtless. Daddrio will be playing Summer, a lifeguard who also happens to be the girlfriend of Efron’s “aerobicized life saver,” a descriptor that your mom would totally freak out about if applied to anyone you were dating in real life. She reportedly beat out a number of other candidates. including Pretty Little Liars’ Ashley Benson and Vampire Diaries’ Nina Dobrev. Plus, she recently starred in the postmortem comedy Burying The Ex, so she has experience dealing with awful garbage that’s come back from the dead.
Between this and the road-trip sex comedy she’s doing with Kate Upton, Daddario doesn’t seem like she’ll be getting much chance to stretch her acting chops, which are on display in films like indie horror Bereavement and the aforementioned HBO series. Instead, something tells us she’ll still be required to stretch, and asked to wear outfits which draw attention to things besides her acting talent. We look forward to the thoughtful discussion of postmodernist appropriations of retro camp through cinema in the comments below.