The White Lotus S3 creator on not taking yourself too seriously

Mike White has two very different new titles streaming on Showmax this month: the third season of The White Lotus, a series he’s already won three Emmys for, and Despicable Me 4, the fourth biggest box office hit globally of 2024, which he co-wrote. 

With new episodes of The White Lotus hitting Showmax and M-Net every Monday, Jim Halterman caught up with Mike to find out more about writing, directing and executive producing the hit HBO show, which has won 15 Emmys so far and has already been renewed for a fourth season. 

Watch the trailer for The White Lotus

Why Thailand this season?

Originally, I wanted to shoot in Japan. I've spent more time there and I just had a vision for doing it in Japan. 

Then we got to Thailand and obviously it's such a lovely country and the people charmed us. Then I had a weird experience where I got very sick with some kind of bronchitis and they put me on a nebuliser, which I'd never been on before, and it kept me awake for 48 hours. In those 48 hours, the whole season came to me, so after I got better, I came to the producers and said, “I think I just came up with the season and it's in Thailand.’ 

Obviously, Japan is amazing and it would be incredible to shoot there, but it turned out to be such a great decision to shoot in Thailand and very life changing.

I've read a lot of Buddhism in my life for whatever reason, so the idea that Season 3 would be in a Buddhist country and grapple with some of the concepts of the Buddhist religion excited me. 

How do you keep The White Lotus feeling fresh each season? 

For the show to feel fresh, it needs to either expand or shift or change. The first season was a lot about privilege and a kind of upstairs/downstairs thing with the employees and the guests and the comedy of that. And then, when we were in Italy [for Season 2], the theme was more about sex and the dynamic between men and women. This season is dealing with more religion and spirituality and God, so the show itself and the kind of stories that these characters are facing are a little bit more existential and tragic. 

This season, Natasha Rothwell returns as Belinda Lindsey. Why did you choose to bring her back out of all the Season 1 cast? 

Natasha was amazing to work with and such a great actress and so fun. After the first season, there were a lot of people that were bummed that Belinda had such a melancholy fate and that she was stuck working at this hotel and her dreams of having this spa had been dashed. So I felt like there might be a way to revisit her story that would be satisfying because we left her kind of hanging there. The idea of working with her again was incentive enough. 

How do you explore masculinity this season? 

In my experience of going to Thailand, some of the expats I saw there, I thought, ‘What's the deal with that guy?’ There were a lot of people who were being very vague about who they were, where they came from, or what they did. 

Usually, I write these more hard-boiled type of characters like Rick, Walton Goggins’s character, and there's this trope of these bald men who are traveling alone or sometimes have younger girlfriends and you just feel like they may have left in the middle of the night from wherever they're coming from. That really seemed like something I could lean into as far as generating stories and characters that would be unique to the Thailand story. 

I think masculinity can be a kind of trap with this sense of having to live, think and be a certain way and how that isolates these guys. Jason Isaacs’ character and Walton's character are both guys caught in this isolating drama that they can't get out of. I felt like that was something that was worth exploring. 

This season, you also look at female friendship, especially through Michelle Monaghan as Jaclyn, Carrie Coon as Laurie and Leslie Bibb as Kate.

It was a Buddhist idea of how we see ourselves in the other and how certain people in our lives who are touchstones can create suffering for us just by existing. 

If you have people that you've gone through childhood with or have a long relationship with, some are more successful than others, whether it's in career or family. There are ways that you have maybe made bad decisions and just being around those people scratches certain wounds, even if they don't mean to. 

I had this idea of three friends that are almost interchangeable at the beginning. They're all blondes. They all have this voluble, excitable energy and then you start to see how they're all just slightly different and the differences start to really unravel their time there together. 

I just remember that there have been times where I've been on vacations, and you'd see women friends together, and you were just like, ‘I can't really get a vibe of what's going on?’ And then one would leave and then the other two would start talking. 

They're triangulating in some way. And so there's some of that in the early episodes. But it’s this sense of sameness and then focusing on the differences and how you have to justify your life to certain types of people that you have that history with you. 

What do the monkeys symbolise for you this season? 

There's this kind of monkey template motif that's been in all of the seasons a little bit. And there's a lot of hooting monkeys in the score. My personal feeling is we're animals and this season in particular is about people trying to reach their spiritual dimension at this animalistic base. There’s this kind of conflict between wanting to be this spiritual creature that has an idealism and working towards something that's some semblance of goodness, and then there's this antic monkey side that keeps putting you in situations that are compromised. 

Especially in the therapy sessions, we always put these monkeys sitting up on a tree watching them. And so, they have these spiritual conversations and there's this monkey watching, being like, ‘Oh, come on.’ 

I feel like there's a little bit of that in me, where you can't take yourself too seriously when you realise, ‘Yeah, you're this sapient monkey.’ 

Watch all three seasons of The White Lotus on Showmax, with new S3 episodes every Monday. The White Lotus S3 is also airing on M-Net, DStv channel 101, at 21:00 on Mondays.