Affairs, wild parties and shattered friendships – White Lotus is back
Settling down to watch a new series of pitch-black comedy The White Lotus has to count as one of the most delicious of guilty pleasures.
What could be more diverting than watching the billionaire class – ignoble, shady, shallow and inadequate – as they struggle through a life-changing and sometimes deadly vacation in stunning surroundings?
The first series of the murder mystery-cum-social satire was set in a luxury resort in Hawaii and broadcast in 2021. It was a surprise global hit, attracting ten million viewers per episode and scooping dozens of awards.
Series two, which went out in 2022, was also a triumph and made the career of British actor Leo Woodall – currently starring in Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy.
And now comes series three, streaming from Monday and set and filmed at the Four Seasons resort in Koh Samui, as well as other jaw-droppingly beautiful locations around Thailand.
The headline names this time around are Jason Isaacs, who played Lucius Malfoy in the Harry Potter films; Patrick Schwarzenegger, the suitably buff son of actor and bodybuilder Arnold; and singer Lisa from one of South Korea’s biggest bands Blackpink.
Charlotte Le Bon as Chloe in the new series of pitch-black comedy The White Lotus
As for what happens on screen, all the actors have signed ‘multiple’ non-disclosure agreements to try to keep the identity of the body found floating in a meditation pond a secret – and of how and why the murder happened. There is also set to be a big name guest star who joins mid-series.
But the story of the filming of the show – complete with fall-outs among the cast, heavy drinking, and heat so intense that one of the crew found their Crocs melted into the floor – is a drama in its own right, albeit with no murders.
Isaacs, 61, revealed that there had been outbreaks of dengue fever and food poisoning on set.
He also said the atmosphere inside the 5-star hotel – their home during filming as well as the set – became distinctly intense at times as they all lived and worked in the same space for eight weeks. They then moved on to film in Phuket and Bangkok.
‘It’s a kind of crucible, a five-star gilded cage,’ he said in a recent interview. ‘There’s no question that sometimes it is absolutely fabulous, and sometimes it is Lord Of The Flies.’
He added: ‘It was a theatre camp, but to some extent an open prison camp: you couldn’t avoid one another. There are tensions and difficulties, I don’t know if they spilled from on screen to off screen, or if it would have happened anyway.
The Four Seasons Koh Samui, which formed the set and was where the cast stayed
‘There were alliances that formed and broke, romances that formed and broke, friendships that formed and broke. It’s a long period of time for people to be away from their family with an open bar and all the wildness being in Thailand allows.’
Isaacs confessed: ‘I can’t pretend I wasn’t involved in some off-screen drama.’
However, he explained in the interview with The Guardian that this is nothing new when it comes to the filming of The White Lotus and that the producer Dave Bernad and show-runner Mike White have seen it happen before.
There were certainly rumours of on-set friction among the cast of series two, including between actors Aubrey Plaza and Michael Imperioli – who both played guests – all of which were denied.
Meanwhile Woodall and Meghann Fahy fell for each other during the filming and are still together. Isaacs said: ‘I can’t speak for them [Bernad and White], but I imagine they think it feeds into the on-screen drama, and they might well be right.
‘I think the heat contributed to fissures appearing. We’ll all see one other again [for the premiere] and I’m sure we’ll be hugging and kissing and remembering it fondly. But there were times when things were not quite so fond.
Sex Education’s Aimee Lou Wood plays Chelsea…
… while Patrick Schwarzenegger stars as eldest son Saxon, an alpha bro
‘I was in some ways used to it, but within a couple of weeks my wife [who was with him on set and used to be an actress] went, ‘Some of these people are f***ing mad.’ I said, ‘No, it’s just a bunch of actors away on location, love. You’ve forgotten what it’s like.’
Bernad, meanwhile, said in an interview: ‘Whether it’s subconscious or conscious, people take on the persona of their character. Like any workplace, if you spend that much time together, people start to get annoyed with one other.
‘On normal productions, you work, then you go home to your family. Here you work, and you go home to the same people.’
As Isaacs indicated, one of the main issues was heat, because they had to switch the hotel’s air conditioning off in order to film.
With the temperatures reaching 30C, plus heat pouring off the lights, it became almost unbearably hot. Actors were revived with sachets of isotonic powder and ice packs between takes, but still many of the crew fell ill as the weeks went on.
And it seems that in the evenings, a party vibe often took hold as the actors recovered from their physically demanding days.
Isaacs said: ‘People are away from home and, you know, there’s a lot of Bacchanalian behaviour going on. I’m not telling stories out of school. It’s just grown-ups doing whatever we like. Thailand is a place full of parties, and we are not immune.’
Outwardly, at least, nothing could be lovelier than the Four Seasons Resort Koh Samui. It is set on 43 acres of steep, forested hills, which plunge to the pale blue Gulf of Thailand below.
The series follows the billionaire class – ignoble, shady, shallow and inadequate – as they struggle through a life-changing and sometimes deadly vacation in stunning surroundings
Naturally there is an infinity pool and a bar, CocoRum, plus a spa, The Secret Garden.
Actor Sam Nivola – real-life son of actors Emily Mortimer and Alessandro Nivola who plays Isaacs’s fictional son in this series – said: ‘I have never, ever in my life experienced the level of luxury that we did when shooting this show. It was mind boggling, and it has completely ruined our standards for time immemorial.’
The show was filmed there last February and March, with the hotel closed to outside bookings.
But with the excitement around the White Lotus franchise having reached fever pitch, the hotel’s general manager JJ Assi says that on some days the hotel security had to put a stop to drones overflying and boats anchoring, trying to get a look.
Some tourists even turned up, at the resort insisting that they wanted to be a part of the cast.
‘One lady from Israel walked around the headland three times saying she wanted to be part of the show,’ he said. ‘One time she hurt herself and was bleeding.’
The White Lotus is the brainchild of Mike White, a former reality TV contestant and actor turned writer and director, who came up with the idea of a murder mystery with a satirical edge when executives at HBO asked for a project early on in the pandemic that they could film in a standalone setting to keep to Covid protocols.
The result, filmed at the Four Seasons Resort Maui at Wailea, touched a chord with audiences who could only dream of getting away on holiday, let alone in such luxury.
The hit show also spawned unforgettable characters such as hot mess heiress Tanya McQuoid – reviving the career of US actress Jennifer Coolidge, who delivered memorably crazy lines such as: ‘At the core of the onion is just a straight up alcoholic lunatic!’ and ‘Wow, look at this view! I wonder if anyone’s ever jumped from here’.
Series two, filmed at the Four Seasons San Domenico in Sicily, sparked not a little fervour over British actor Theo James’s on-screen nudity. James later admitted that he had worn a prosthetic penis for the scenes.
So who is staying at the White Lotus this time around? Arriving via boat are the Ratliff family, from North Carolina.
Financier patriarch Timothy is played by Jason Isaacs and his pill-popping wife Victoria is played by Parker Posey.
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Patrick Schwarzenegger stars as eldest son Saxon, an alpha bro, while awkward Lochlan – who seems to be in love with his brother – is played by Sam Nivola. Daughter Piper is played by Sarah Catherine Hook.
Both Schwarzenegger and Isaacs repeatedly appear naked in the show – with Isaacs joking of his full-frontal flash: ‘Well, I’ve done it now, so enjoy it while it’s there.’ Schwarzenegger, meanwhile, says that as the series goes on there are some episodes he won’t be watching with his parents or siblings.
‘I think that episodes five and six, there’ll be some times that I take some bathroom breaks… or maybe I won’t watch that episode, but I don’t know, we’ll see – but they’re [his family] super excited.
‘And I think that overall I just put a lot of trust into Mike. I mean, obviously, doing certain nudity stuff, you know what Mike has done with it in the past seasons, and how he always loves to kind of push the envelope and continue to excite. I didn’t have any hesitations towards it.’
Also enjoying a tropical break in Thailand this series are three blonde friends played by actresses Michelle Monaghan, Carrie Coon and Leslie Bibb.
But the togetherness of their girls’ trip soon dissipates thanks to simmering resentments and one too many cocktails.
And shady middle-aged man Rick, played by Walton Goggins and his much younger hippy girlfriend Chelsea, who is played by Sex Education’s Aimee Lou Wood, will also arrive on Koh Samui.
The story of how the plot for series three came into being is suitably dramatic. Mike White says that the idea came to him after he was hospitalised in Chiang Mai – where he had been scouting locations – due to bronchitis.
He was put on a nebulizer and says that he ‘dreamed’ the entire plot overnight.
Whether he’s struck gold again remains to be seen, but the series certainly seems likely to live on in the memories of those who star in it. As he says: ‘Embedded into the show is a little bit of Hotel California – you can check in, but you can never leave.’