Intro for April 3, 2025

Dear Gossips,  

HBO is reporting that season three of The White Lotus is averaging 15 million viewers in the United States and obviously much more when other territories are factored. This number will go up after Sunday with the season finale so by today’s standards, then, it’s as close to monoculture as it gets for an English-speaking audience since Succession. 

Lately there’s been some speculation about how this season’s cast really got on behind the scenes during production. Jason Isaacs has alluded to tension behind the scenes and now people are wondering what the gossip is there which, I get the curiosity but I also don’t know if it’s all that surprising considering the conditions. They were on location, all of their characters are going through it, and it was hot AF, which almost every cast member has mentioned. Emotions were bound to fray, tempers were bound to shorten, and we don’t always have to be best friends with our co-workers. 

None of this is really addressed though in the oral history with the cast and producers published by The Hollywood Reporter yesterday – two covers below – but that’s not an issue because there’s better gossip, the inside baseball kind. 

Like the fact that Woody Harrelson was apparently in the running to play Rick (Walton Goggins’s character) but they wouldn’t pay him what he wanted. And in the end he agreed anyway but then had to drop out due to scheduling. The pay thing is interesting because, according to producer David Bernad, “Everyone is treated the same on The White Lotus. They get paid the same, and we do alphabetical billing” and “it’s not negotiable”. 

In the celebrity ecosystem that functions on hierarchy – some people are more special than others – this makes The White Lotus kind of an outlier. Also, supposedly everyone has to audition to be a series season regular. So it’s even more intriguing that they’re putting it way out there this way, now that season three has made the show more popular (and arguably powerful) than ever when you consider that, according to this oral history, almost everyone in Hollywood wants to be on it and everyone in Hollywood is watching. As Carrie Coon put it:

“These roles are highly coveted by all of our friends, so you want to show up and do a good job. You want people to say, “I’m glad it was you.” There’s a lot of pressure.”

Francesca Orsi, who is HBO’s Head of Drama, added: 

“I was on a girls trip with a few actresses, and it was so awkward. I love them as people and as friends, but everybody’s vying to be in that show.”

For Mike White, though, if this is to be believed, connections and profile don’t matter. As we know from his storytelling, there’s a sh-t disturber in him, he’s all about disruption, so it’s that much funnier that the way he’s set up the process for his show is in itself stirring up all kinds of competitive (and arguably healthy) flavour in the industry among performers. And it made me laugh that at first he didn’t give a sh-t about Lisa and whoever it was that was trying to influence him to cast her. 

“I did not know who Lisa or Blackpink was. All I knew was that there was a Blackpink girl [her bandmate, Jennie Kim] in The Idol, and I was like, “We’re not doing that.” Then I found out that there might be security issues, and I was just like, “No.” They were like, “She’ll audition.” Her audition was amazing. And Lisa’s so nice and uncomplicated, but I still didn’t want to cast her. I’m just used to not having so much attention; we don’t need it. But I wanted to be respectful to Thailand. She’s like Taylor Swift meets Princess Diana there.”

Of course Lisa eventually got the part of Mook and Mike came to realise just what a big deal she is: 

“She’s more than just a pop star, I just didn’t get it initially. When we cast her, there were people in the production that cried. And anything she does is scrutinized, so it’s a nice part. It’s not like she’s a tramp running around sleeping with married men. We got our fill of that.”

Mook isn’t a tramp…but we saw another side of her in the last episode when her sweetness melted away as soon as Gaitok told her he was a pacifist. That gradual shift, it was a twitch in her lips, as she leaned back when they were eating and the energy changed in the conversation… that’s what Mike White clearly saw in her audition, Lisa’s ability to subtly channel something more complicated in Mook, making her casting definitely not a stunt. 

To go back to Mike White and his attitude about how he governs the universe that he’s created, almost like an experiment within the experiment of telling these stories about messy, flawed, and often terrible people, I wonder whether or not Hollywood’s internal reaction to his show might end up shaping a future season. 

And speaking of Gaitok, aka Tayme Thapthimthong, the character we’ve all probably been shouting at through our screens the last couple of episodes because of how f-cking incompetent he’s been, you saw this, right? It’s hard to be mad at Gaitok when in real life Tayme is this cute. 

If you haven’t already, THR’s White Lotus oral history is a fun read, and homework before the 90 minute finale on Sunday!

 

Attached – Natasha Rothwell in Sydney yesterday. 

Yours in gossip, 

Lainey