‘The White Lotus’ Stars Reveal How They Prepared To Join Mike White’s “Orchestra”
When Mike White landed in Thailand to film the third season of HBO’s The White Lotus, he was looking to create a symphony that could rival the sounds of Hawaii and Sicily.
The third season stars Leslie Bibb, Carrie Coon, Walton Goggins, Sarah Catherine Hook, Jason Isaacs, Lalisa Manobal, Michelle Monaghan, Sam Nivola, Lek Patravadi, Parker Posey, Natasha Rothwell, Patrick Schwarzenegger, Tayme Thapthimthong, Aimee Lou Wood, Scott Glenn, Charlotte Le Bon and Sam Rockwell.
“[The White Lotus] works best when it’s sort of like an orchestra. You want different voices and a whole variety. I also feel like that when it comes to casting, it’s fun to have actors who have different processes and different vibes. If you’re a connoisseur of taste, you want a little taste of this and a little taste of that,” White said, speaking during the Deadline Contenders at HBO Max event.
Watch the panel conversation here and scroll down for photos from the event.
When it comes to casting The White Lotus, that is a job led by White’s friend Meredith Tucker, with whom he was in an “overflow acting class” at Wesleyan together. “This is a moment to acknowledge my friendship with her and that we’re working together after all these years. She’s the best at what she does and that we can party together, is just so cool,” he added.
Tucker joined White on the FYC panel alongside Isaacs, Posey, Rockwell, Rothwell and Coon, who joined virtually, as they discussed their own processes for getting into character.
Tucker said it was important this season to make sure that the different groups had the right mix. “The Ratliff family, no pun intended, have an incestuous relationship, they are very into each other and don’t really need to have a relationship with people outside of the family. Then obviously the three women, showing their dynamic. Mike pointed out that he wanted them to sort of mirror each other, sort of look like each other,” she said.
White added, “Carrie, Michelle and Leslie, they’re very different actresses and people … so let’s make them look as much alike, because over time, the differences will start to accrue and that will bring the tension.”
(L-R) Jason Isaacs, Sam Rockwell, Natasha Rothwell, Mike White, Parker Posey and Meredith Tucker
Michael Buckner
Mike White
Michael Buckner
Sam Rockwell and Parker Posey
Gilbert Flores
Natasha Rothwell
Gilbert Flores
Jason Isaacs
Michael Buckner
Meredith Tucker and Mike White
Michael Buckner
Sam Rockwell
Michael Buckner
Natasha Rothwell
Michael Buckner
Parker Posey
Michael Buckner
The Survivor contestant also noted that he put Isaacs and Posey together as the married Ratliffs, a very rich family from North Carolina, as they have very different processes.
Posey, who played to the crowd with a couple of pronunciations of Lorazepam, said she asked White for a crumb of her character and he told her that she was the queen bee matriarch who’s lost at sea, while her husband is dealing with his own problems. “I love not thinking when I act. I learn my lines, front, back, left, right, up and down, and then Jason doesn’t learn his lines at all. It really was two different ways of working. But as Mike says, it doesn’t really matter, because it is family, and we all play in this symbiotic way, and we affect each other. We have Mike to trust in the execution of all that. It’s so fun to put that cake in the oven and have it come out like that,” she said.
Isaacs, who plays a financier in a world of legal troubles, said he doesn’t need to learn lines because when he looks at a script he just “knows it.” “But also, I like not to prepare what’s going to happen in the scene. I loathe those performances sometimes from much younger actors, where they’ve done something brilliant in the bathroom the night before and they’re going to do it in front of you, no matter if you spontaneously combust or drop your pants,” he said.
He said White gets a lot of credit as a writer but people don’t talk about what an “amazing” director he is. “He’s in the room with you. He’s in the moment with you, and he’s shouting things out from behind the monitor. He’s enjoying it. He’s writing it in the air, as it happens often as well, so you have to be on your toes. Because I knew Timothy was going to go through this enormous Greek tragedy, Shakespearean journey, I don’t want to get myself in the mood before it happens. I want to see what happens,” he said.
Coon, who plays Laurie, a lawyer and recent divorcée from New York who is on a girls trip with her Texas pal Kate, played by Bibb, and successful actress friend Jaclyn, played by Monaghan, said acting is always about relationships. “Scenes don’t happen inside of me. They happen in between me and other people,” she said.
The Gilded Age star added that the three women sent photos of each other when they were around 8 or 9. “We thought we might have met and talked about what vaccines to get,” she joked.
Tucker said that Hook, who played Piper Ratliff, “really could be a younger Parker.” “But if the performances and the writing isn’t there, even if you have people who look exactly alike, it really doesn’t matter,” she added.
White stressed that he did want the families to look related. He highlighted the fact that he thought in the first season, Connie Britton, Steve Zahn, Sydney Sweeney and Fred Hechinger, who made up the Mossbacher family, “look like a family.”
He said that he wanted the Ratliffs to be a “brunette version of that family.”
Rothwell, who plays spa manager Belinda Lindsey, the one returning character from Season 1, said there was an “emotional connection” with Nicholas Duvernay, who played her son Zion. “He’s very attractive. I’m very attractive. So that works,” she joked.
Rothwell added that Duvernay’s casting gave her some information about Belinda that she didn’t have before including the fact that she would have been a younger mother with a biracial son. “We have the same aura,” she added.
When asked what it was like to return to The White Lotus, she said she received great advice from Coon.
“Carrie gave me the best analogy. She said, ‘Returning to a character after a minute is like putting on a wet bathing suit. You’re like, this is mine. It feels a little strange, but it feels a thousand times better when you jump back in the water’,” she added.
The How to Die Alone creator and star said that her Belinda may return to White Lotus, which has been renewed for a fourth season. “Once she gets acclimated to these new circumstances, who knows if she’ll come back, but I don’t think it’s off the table,” she told Deadline.
Rockwell dropped in to White Lotus for a pretty memorable monologue. He credited his partner Bibb for encouraging him to take on the role even if he didn’t have a lot of time to prepare after Woody Harrelson dropped out. “I knew Mike, [Walton Goggins] and Leslie but I was nervous. Walt and I having a rapport, knowing each other for like 20 years [helped]. I knew that we would instantly have a Butch and Sundance thing,” he added.
White said it was “such a blessing” that Rockwell turned up. “Thailand’s amazing but it was not easy. It was towards the end of the shoot, we were in Bangkok, and Sam shows up and he brings the positive vibes. He’s friends with everybody. He’s totally prepared. On his big day with his monologue, he completely knew it inside and out. At that point, I was out of ideas, I can help no one, I’m living in the monitors. Thank freaking God for Sam Rockwell,” he added.
The White Lotus scored 23 Emmy nominations including for Outstanding Drama Series. Created, written and directed by White, he exec produces alongside David Bernad and Mark Kamine.
