Like its predecessors, the third season of “The White Lotus” took place in an exotic locale (Thailand), raised complex questions about wealth, race and power and was packed with a sprawling group of fascinating characters. While vacationing in a luxe resort, they grappled with trauma, religion, family, love and death — and were played by actors at the very top of their game who, if Seasons 1 and 2 are any indication, may well hog the Emmy nominations in the supporting-acting categories.
The first season, which competed in the limited series categories, grabbed three of the seven slots in the supporting actor category, and a remarkable five of the seven for supporting actress; the second season, which came after the show was reclassified as a drama series, took four of eight spots for supporting actor and five of eight for supporting actress.
Even for the most experienced vets in the cast, making “The White Lotus ” was an experience unlike any other. We talked to the 14 main cast members to hear about their time in Thailand.
MICHELLE MONAGHAN (JACLYN LEMON)
Jaclyn, the bronzed, aging TV actress clinging to her glory days, is the apex of the gal-pal trio: the rich, famous friend footing the bill. She’s also the one who slips most easily into gossiping behind the others’ backs, which had viewers breaking down the dynamics of female friendship on social media.
The Biggest Challenge
“Honoring Mike White’s great writing, his tone and on top of that, having the understanding of how beloved the show is worldwide, and wanting to be in service of the material. It was really a mental challenge, more than anything.”
Surprising Character Turns?
“Yes and no. It’s what Mike White does best: He creates really complex characters, specifically women. When I recognized that these ladies were presenting their very best selves and their perfect lives from Episode 1, I knew it was going to unravel for each of them, and I was just waiting with bated breath to see how Jaclyn’s character might unfold. So I wasn’t really surprised that she did something that betrayed the sisterhood to complicate those relationships even more.”
Fan Reactions
“In Episode 4, the girls were out having fun and you’re seeing them really connect. Seeing audiences get a kick out of Jaclyn and how affected she is was really great. And I thought to myself, ‘Oh, gosh, wait till next week.’ That’s the beauty of the show and what makes it such a fun, water-cooler [event] for people. One week you’re rooting for someone and then the next week, you’ve you turned on them.”
CARRIE COON (LAURIE DUFFY)
Laurie is a divorced, high-powered New York City lawyer feeling adrift. She starts out as the odd one out in the triangle but ends the season tearfully delivering a sincere speech to her childhood pals about friendship, aging and life that is a high point of the season.
Surprising Character Turns?
“I felt that Mike so deeply understood what he was doing psychologically with those women that everything that happened followed very logically. What’s been most interesting is how much the trio resonated with the broader viewing audience, and how much conversation there was about them.
I didn’t see a lot of discussion around how that hearkened back to Buddhism, [which] talks about uprooting the comparing mind, how the comparing mind is the source of great suffering and pain. It’s very smart for Mike to set this storyline in a Buddhist country, and yet [the discussion about the three friends] was mostly about cattiness, or people maybe even wanting to see Laurie put everybody in their place. In some ways they were mirroring exactly what Laurie was doing.
The Art of Mike White’s Casting
“He’s after something essential in each person, and he has a deep psychological understanding of all those characters. Everybody who finds themselves working on ‘The White Lotus,’ they go, ‘What is it about me that Mike White thought was akin to Laurie Duffy?’ and it forces real, maybe challenging, self-examination. In my work, I play smart women, so it’s not surprising to see me play this career-focused New York woman who’s clearly very educated, but maybe there’s an unhinged quality about me. I think Mike also understood that I do have a sense of humor, and that I would hopefully be able to deliver on some of the physical stuff that he was asking for.”
LESLIE BIBB (KATE BOHR)
A housewife and mother living in Austin who (gasp!) might have voted for Trump, Kate tries to keep the peace among the pals. “She had a good heart and was a really good friend,” Bibb said. “She’s the girl that’s not going to leave you at a bar. She’s going to hold your hair if you’re throwing up.”
Favorite Scene
“We’re so separated. I didn’t know Parker (Posey) was doing an accent until the show came out, and I remember texting Michelle and Carrie and being like, ‘How did we miss this?’ I have one scene with her, and she was saying things, like, ‘Yeah,’ ‘No,’ so I didn’t really get the full thing.”
Lessons from Mike White
“The importance of simplicity — just to trust that simple is better.”
Looniest Fan Theory
“I saw somewhere somebody said, ‘Oh, I heard Sam [Rockwell, Bibb’s life partner] came to visit you, and Mike White wrote that scene for him.’ It just made me laugh at how ridiculous that is. There’s a plan in action always on that show. A friend of mine asked me, ‘Did Sam improvise that whole monologue?’ That three-page, iconic monologue is essentially the crux of the show. The writing is perfection.”
NATASHA ROTHWELL (BELINDA LINDSEY)
Season 1’s Belinda returned in the latest round. Her relaxing holiday in Thailand takes a scary turn when she encounters Greg (Jon Gries), whom she suspects killed Seasons 1 and 2’s Tanya (Jennifer Coolidge). In the end, she accepts $5 million from Greg in exchange for her silence about Tanya.
Surprising Character Turns?
“Yeah, her taking the money. I think it surprised everyone, but I’m saying that as a viewer. As an actor and as Belinda, it makes total sense. I think she knew in that moment that she had the power, and how often in her life has she had the upper hand over a white cis man? There’s something intoxicating about that, even if corrupting. It made sense to me, why she did it, but I can see why others are like, ‘No, Belinda.’”
Lessons from Mike White
“I learn so much from him always. I did the same thing I did Season 1: I would come down to the video village and watch him work and watch the other actors. I had that privilege of being able just to see him move. I think he definitely felt the weight of this season — the show gets bigger, and you could see his strength meet the moment.”
The Art of Mike White’s Casting
“He’s not afraid to do what’s right for story, and he is not beholden to audiences’ expectations. I think that’s why I was cast in Season 1. It’s an unlikely casting, I think, to pick someone who’s mostly known for comedy to do this serious role, but he obviously knew what I was capable of. Why else do we have entertainment than to delight and surprise?”
JASON ISAACS (TIMOTHY RATLIFF)
A one-percenter who is in 100% deep shit due to an unfolding financial scandal, Timothy puts himself in a near-catatonic state by popping his wife’s (Parker Posey) benzos, all while contemplating suicide and nearly killing his entire family.
Biggest Challenge
“I just didn’t want to be the most boring person who’d ever been in ‘White Lotus.’ I knew that inside [Timothy’s] head were these raging storms and terror and suicide and despair and humiliation and all those things. I had to believe in myself and make the audience believe that I wanted to kill the people I loved and kill myself, and that was the most rational decision I could make. That’s a difficult place to get to, you know. The camera can tell when you’re lying.”
Favorite Scene
“I wouldn’t ever pick a scene with me in it, although I do watch it all. I loved watching Carrie. Her speech at the end was utterly brilliant. And also, I fell in love with my kids. I mean, Patrick, Sam and Sarah Catherine felt like my kids. I’m just so proud of their work.”
Lessons from Mike White
“One of the areas people miss out on appreciating is the atmosphere of play and freedom, which is not to say it’s all improvised, but he’s also fine with you improvising. It’s a kind of strange paradox. He’ll wander out from behind the monitor sometimes and walk around in a circle, and you can see him muttering to himself, and he’s obviously playing all the parts to himself. And then he comes over and offers so gently what seems like half a suggestion, but it’s actually a solid-gold, specific piece of direction, sometimes even a line reading. But he offers it in such a non-prescriptive way that you could be pulled into thinking he’s not sure of what he’s doing, or he’s splashing around for ideas. It’s either authentic or a brilliant piece of fake authenticity in that he makes you feel like you’re really in charge of your own character.”
PARKER POSEY (VICTORIA RATLIFF)
With her honeyed Southern drawl, the materfamilias of the Ratliff clan was a fan favorite. She’s as blissfully unaware of her kids’ sexual adventures as she is of her husband’s criminal dealings and can’t even imagine not being rich: “I just don’t think at this age I’m meant to live an uncomfortable life,” she tells Timothy. “I don’t have the will.”
Biggest Challenge
“The writers’ strike and the rush into production. And wrapping my head around a chunk of time [in Thailand], for me, it felt like a long-distance run, and I knew that Mike was on ‘Survivor’ and ‘The Amazing Race,’ and that this was going to be athletic and an adventure. I loved Thailand; the hardest thing about it, of course, was the heat and the sweat, but then you’re purifying yourself so it’s good to sweat.”
The Art of Mike White’s Casting
“I didn’t have to audition for this, I think Mike saw my work in ‘The Staircase’ and had this idea from the Michael Peterson family in that and by putting two and two together came up with the Ratliffs. [Max’s 2022 limited series explored the real-life case of Peterson, who stood trial for the murder of his wife Kathleen and eventually took an Alford plea. Posey played prosecutor Freda Black.] I was so excited to play the Southern woman. We haven’t seen Southern characters like this in a long, long time. I didn’t know [fmost] of the actors, so we go in and here’s the family, which is really cool, because a chemistry happens between all the actors, and somehow a family takes shape.”
PATRICK SCHWARZENEGGER (SAXON RATLIFF)
The eldest of the Ratliff kids is a womanizing finance-bro who goes from being the most confident in the family to the most unsure. A boozy bacchanalia erodes boundaries between him and his younger brother, Lochlan (Sam Nivola).
The Biggest Challenge
“My biggest fear was how to show the depth of the character and not have him be one-note. Things change as the second half of the show progresses but a lot of it is not on the page. We also just kind of built it in on the spot. Building that arc with Mike was just so important to me.”
Lessons from Mike White
“I knew that he was going to boost my career, and that it was going to be the most-watched show that I had done. All this stuff comes with a fear and a responsibility of its own. He’s a great director. He’s a great writer. To me, one of his strongest traits is casting. There were people that I had never heard of, just as I’m sure they’ve never heard of me. And then there were other people, like Parker Posey, that I had worked with before [on ‘The Staircase’] and when I found out she was playing my mom, I was thrilled.”
Looniest Fan Theories
“The funniest thing to me was the connection to ‘The Staircase,’ and how many people were putting together the Ratliffs and the Petersons — both being from Durham, North Carolina, and both of the dads were caught up in some sort of money laundering scheme. And referencing the owl theory [that posits that a bird killed Kathleen, not Michael, there were theories that] it’s gonna be the monkeys killing [people in ‘TWL’]. [Laughs] I started to read those things, and I was like, actually, these are pretty good!”
SARAH CATHERINE HOOK (PIPER RATLIFF)
“The middle child is the reason the Ratfliffs are in Thailand: She told her parents she was researching her college thesis on Buddhism, when in reality, she just wants to realize her Western fantasy of living in a temple for a year. That is, until she discovers the temple’s food is bland and worse, ‘You could tell it, like, wasn’t organic.’”
Lessons from Mike White
“I think the biggest thing that I took away from him was not to take yourself so seriously. He is this cerebral, really special, hard-working human, but really wants people having a good time. He allows us to laugh. He encourages it. He laughs through every take.”
The Art of Mike White’s Casting
“I thought Leslie was going to be the actress, and that Michelle was going to be the one from Texas. So when I found out that they were flip-flopped, I was like, Oh, wow! It’s funny because I talked about the same thing with Aimee. We both thought it was the reverse. Then of course, watching it, you’re like, this was the right way for sure.”
Looniest Fan Theories
“Sometimes I would see people being like, ‘There’s something going on with that girl, she’s definitely going to be the shooter [in the finale].’ I really liked that people could see that she was harboring this secret, and that there was some mystery as to what was going on with her and it made people hopefully intrigued with her story.”
SAM NIVOLA (LACHLAN RATLIFF)
The baby of the Ratliff clan drifts through his vacation in a haze of uncertainty. He’s drawn to Piper’s calm demeanor and easily manipulated by Saxon, whose determination to set his brother up with an experienced woman yields night of drug-fueled incest. Oh, and he almost dies after drinking a smoothie mixed in a blender full of poison.
Surprising Character Turns
“I guess the decision to not clean out the blender is the one that everyone online thinks is dumb, but it’s funny because I didn’t think about that at all. When we were shooting, that was not something that came up as a problem. I feel like he’s just lazy. It’s also like, I’ve done that in the past. If all you’re making is the same thing in the blender and you know that your brother has made, like, three protein shakes that morning, you’re just assuming that it’s the residue of protein shake.”
Lessons from Mike White
“I’d say the main thing I learned is that you can wield power on a set as a director and be really nice. Lots of directors think it’s cool to treat the set like the military and be really forceful and intense and have this weird hierarchy. Mike just wants everyone to feel good and happy. That is part of what makes the show so good. When you’re enjoying your job, the fruits of your labor are going to be higher quality.”
Looniest Fan Reactions
“I tried to distance myself from social media. It’s a massive show, and the reaction has been equally massive. Mostly it’s all been great stuff, but even if it’s people saying you’re doing such a great job, it’s still overwhelming to be looking through all the comments of all this stuff. So I try not to look at it too much. But I’d say I find all the memes really funny. Like, everyone’s saying ‘This twink can multitask’ about me.”
JON GRIES (GREG HUNT/“GARY”)
The one and only character to have traversed all three seasons of “The White Lotus,” from Hawaii to Sicily to Thailand. In Season 3, he is “Gary,” but Belinda recognizes him as Greg, the man who likely had a role in the death of Jennifer Coolidge’s dearly departed Tanya.
Lessons from Mike White
“I truly think that he’s the modern-day Edward Albee. His themes are one of the reasons audiences love these shows: They’re multilayered and cannot just be taken at face value. Ultimately, the viewer is going to be sucked into digging into a deeper meaning. Or if they don’t want to, it’s a wonderful ride either way, you know?”
Favorite Scene
“Definitely Carrie Coon’s revelation to her friends, where she breaks down and really assesses how these relationships build. That moment for me was one that brought tears to my eyes, it was so universal and so, so true. I think that when Walton Goggins is listening to Sam Rockwell’s monologue, as brilliant as that monologue’s writing is and as brilliant as Sam Rockwell played it, there’s some gravitas that’s so well delivered by Walton’s listening.”
Looniest Fan Theory
“One of them was that Greg kills everybody. Some of these things were so outrageous, you know? Or that I was going to resort to a plan B when it came to Natasha’s character and her son, and that I was going to figure out a way to get rid of them—which I guess those were a little more on point, but not some of the crazier, tragic, end-of-‘Hamlet’ type ones.” [Laughs]
WALTON GOGGINS (RICK HATCHETT)
Rick’s journey at the White Lotus is the most tragic. He arrives in Thailand looking miserable, barely able to smile at his earnest girlfriend Chelsea (Aimee Lou Wood) because he is so fixated on tracking down the man he thinks killed his father. But the elderly gentleman (Scott Glenn) Rick finds and shoots dead turns out to be…his father.
The Biggest Challenge
“The anticipation of working on ‘The White Lotus.’ I’m a fan of it and have been a fan of Mike White’s for a very long time. When I got the invitation to come and play, it came with an extraordinary amount of exuberance and joy, quickly followed by anxiety and dread for fear of dropping this ball and not being able to live up to Mike’s expectations or the expectations that I would have of myself. That lasted for a couple of days, as is the case with any job that I do, to be quite honest with you.”
Favorite Scene
“Working with Sam [Rockwell] — the time that I had with him was so special. But the scene that probably meant the most to me, other than the ending, was the conversation that I had with Scott Glenn from Rick Hatchett’s perspective, the catharsis that conversation had on Rick. The thing that haunted me from my first day of reading these scripts was that confrontation. I suppose it was getting that time with this boogeyman that looms so large in Rick’s imagination. It was something that will always stay with me.”
Fan Reactions
“I anticipated the negative reaction to Rick in the first couple of episodes as the trite older man [dating a] younger woman. I saw that, and thank God the audience stuck with him and with the two of them as a couple because it is so deep and nuanced as it evolves over time. I knew, or I had hoped, that the ending would be as visceral as it was for people because it was that visceral to me — our ending, Rick and Chelsea’s ending.”
AIMEE LOU WOOD (CHELSEA)
Optimistic and open-hearted, Chelsea floats through her stay at the White Lotus with a smile and the conviction that she can heal her dejected boyfriend Rick, whom she considers her soulmate. When every other guest seems on the brink of disaster, she stays above the fray, only to be caught in the crossfire set off by the bullet Rick puts in his father.
The Biggest Challenge
“I was so nervous when I turned up. It’s such an ensemble piece that you don’t want to be the weakest link. It was scary. You’re with bloody Walton Goggins and Michelle Monaghan and Leslie Bibb and Carrie Coon and Parker, Jason. What’s so amazing is, once you’re with them, we’re all completely equal. Mike really sets that — there’s no hierarchy. The way that he was so playful freed everyone up. Everyone on that job was so themselves, and because Mike’s such a rare creature himself, he spots that in everyone. You get to know everyone on that set, and you go, ‘Oh my god, we’re a bunch of weirdos. We’re a bunch of absolute weirdos.’ And that’s why it works.”
Life After “The White Lotus“
“Watching that final episode was a deeply profound experience. My whole perspective on the part changed because I’d been in Chelsea goggles for the whole of filming, Chelsea’s reality. And then all of a sudden, I’m watching it. And because she died, I could see her, as Aimee. It felt really trippy. It was this very profound, emotional thing. So you’re going through this huge spiritual change and at the same time dealing with the reality of [life now], or like [headlines saying], ‘She’s mad at SNL for [making fun of] her teeth.’ It’s been a very, very interesting time. A lot of what I’ve learned spiritually has helped me deal with the other stuff that’s come with [a higher level of fame]. It’s almost like I needed that to prepare myself for the change that was happening.”
SAM ROCKWELL (FRANK)
Frank enters the picture mid-season, when his old friend Rick (Goggins) asks him for help tracking down the “bogeyman” of his imagination. The two meet in a bar and, in Season 3’s most talked-about scene, Frank opens up about his sex addiction and how it relates to both his fetish for Asian women and his confusion about his own identity. The soul-baring monologue lasts more than four minutes and leaves the audience in the same state as Rick: stunned.
Favorite Scene
Being on the boat with Walton Goggins. We were both wearing sunglasses. That’s one of my favorite moments. It’s as close as Walton and I will ever get to James Bond, I think.
Lessons from Mike White
It’s an extraordinary thing that Mike did with that monologue. He uses it as an opportunity to summarize the feeling of the whole season, in a way—the duality between selfishness and trying to find spirituality.
Mike is very nimble. He wants everything to be very real. And he’s not afraid of a pause. I actually started doing the monologue very quickly, and he said, “You can slow down.” And I said, “OK, I just don’t want it to be ‘Doctor Zhivago.’” And he’s like, “It’s okay. You can slow it down.” So he’s not afraid of that. It doesn’t always have to be about pace.
TAYME THAPTHIMTHING (GAITOK)
The British-Thai actor worked as a bodyguard in Thailand before being cast as the hotel security guard who’s infatuated with a colleague (Lalisa Manobal). In the finale, he kills Rick (Walton Goggins) in retaliation for the murder of the owner of the hotel—and maybe also to impress his love interest.
Favorite Scene
“The one that I’ve really felt was so impactful was the ending scene with me and Rick. That scene brought my character full-circle — how I started him off the first few episodes as worry-free, very friendly. I enjoyed working through all those emotions and the layers, and the last scene just really brought it all together.”
Lessons from Mike White
“He went through the script with me and asked, ‘Do you think Thai people would do this or that?’ He was so considerate of the people, the culture. You can see how his attention came out on screen by the attention to detail in different scenes. He portrayed the Thai-ness of it.”
Life after “The White Lotus”
“It really took me down the path that I’ve always wanted to do. I honestly almost much gave up [acting] a few years ago because I never thought that I would actually get here. I didn’t really just want to do films in Thailand, I wanted to do Hollywood films, and it is absolutely surreal that I’m here.”
This story first ran in the Drama issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine. Read more from the issue here.
