Episode 7: The Mike White-iverse

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Speaker 6 I think

Speaker 4 it's like every kid,

Speaker 8 like grown up, wants to be the hero of the story,

Speaker 8 and in the end,

Speaker 8 you know, you're just happy you're not the villain.

Speaker 9 You know what I'm saying?

Speaker 7 Is this about mom making more money than you?

Speaker 10 No, it's not about that.

Speaker 11 Hi, everyone. I'm Evan Ross Katz, and welcome to the final look back episode of the White Lotus official podcast from HBO.

Speaker 7 I know.

Speaker 11 Bittersweet.

Speaker 11 Mike White, the show's writer, director, and creator, was a success story in Hollywood long before the White Lotus. He'd made movies and television and had even competed on reality shows.

Speaker 11 But he was catapulted to a whole new echelon of stardom in 2021 when the white lotus made him a household name. By that point, I'd been covering pop culture and entertainment for over a decade.

Speaker 11 I knew that nobody was doing it quite like him. One thing that makes Mike's projects so distinctly Mike White is that he tends to work as a one-stop shop, an anomaly in Hollywood.

Speaker 11 Most TV these days is made by teams. Scripts are crafted by writer's rooms and a roster of directors tackle each season of episodes.

Speaker 11 Given the array of talent, it's sometimes hard to tell which ideas come from where or who to credit for what. But Mike spins all those plates, all on his own.

Speaker 11 So, today, for our grand finale, we're taking a step back to a pre-White Lotus era to retrace the work and life experiences that shaped Mike's earlier career.

Speaker 11 Because to understand the White Lotus, you have to understand Mike White.

Speaker 11 Mike's story starts in the 1970s in the foothills of Pasadena near Sierra Madre Eaton Canyon, just a five-minute walk from the forest.

Speaker 12 I was living in the suburbs.

Speaker 13 I was up in like the foothills of Pasadena and I was bored a lot.

Speaker 6 I kind of think I built out an imaginative world because I

Speaker 16 was

Speaker 17 understimulated in a sense.

Speaker 14 I wasn't weird because I, I mean, I'm sure I was weird, but I wasn't like a social misfit in the classic way that you might expect me to be.

Speaker 13 I was now bino practically, growing up in Southern California with a bunch of surfer buddies and skateboarder buddies.

Speaker 3 You know, I wasn't somebody who like smoked pot and wanted to listen to Bob Marley and chill.

Speaker 13 I was like, I'd get stoned and my mind would be hypermental and I would be wanting to write stuff or think about things and whatever.

Speaker 11 Mike's father, Mel White, was a minister and deeply embedded in in the local Christian community. As such, religion played an integral role in Mike's upbringing.

Speaker 21 When I was little I was a good God-fearing kid.

Speaker 16 My parents sent me to a secular school which was their great error because I realized like I went to like this preppy school with a lot of rich kids and

Speaker 13 I didn't want to be those kids but I I could tell they had better shoes. I could tell they had better toys.
I could tell they had better summer vacations.

Speaker 9 And then I would go back to the religious community that I was in where they were like all wearing polyester pants and like, I don't know, we'd have Bible camp and I'm just like, this is lame.

Speaker 13 I went to Bible summer camp and I thought I was possessed by the devil because I couldn't, you know, they'd be like, go find Jesus and accept Jesus into your heart.

Speaker 24 And then like, I'd go out into the night and I'd be like, Jesus never showed up.

Speaker 18 So I was just like, maybe I'm Satan's spawn or something.

Speaker 11 He received an introduction to playwriting at a young age by his second grade teacher, who happened to be the mother of the playwright and actor Sam Shepard. Very, very LA.

Speaker 23 I like bought his play when I was young and

Speaker 23 I got really into the way plays were written on the paper.

Speaker 31 I was just into words and plays and I don't know.

Speaker 32 So like I had a pretty imaginative life and I would try to like get the kids at school to reenact Airport 77 on the bleachers.

Speaker 19 Just like always trying to like make things more

Speaker 20 interesting than just playing tag or whatever the fuck they were into.

Speaker 28 When I was young, I really wanted to be older and sophisticated.

Speaker 31 And I got a subscription to the New Yorker and would read Pauline Kale reviews.

Speaker 23 And I was just a little precocious in ways that I'm not even anymore.

Speaker 13 I don't, as I became an adult, I just cared less about being an adult.

Speaker 2 I didn't think I was necessarily going to be like in the movie business or whatever, but I thought maybe I'd be like a playwright in New York City, like Edward Alby.

Speaker 11 Mike went on to attend Wesleyan University, a liberal arts college in Connecticut. Culturally, it was a sea change.

Speaker 27 Wesleyan was a lot of liberal Jewish kids from New York, and I mean, and there was lots beyond that, but it was just a very stimulating group of people.

Speaker 9 They were just more interested in some of the cultural stuff that I was into, kind of on my own in Pasadena, and just they're very engaged with the world.

Speaker 27 You know, a lot of activists, a lot of people talking philosophy and theory and it was great as far as like a budding playwright because it gave me a space to just do the stuff i wanted to do they just had a place where i you know i could get people together and put on little stuff and develop a voice i mean the people that i met at wesleyan are still some of the good friends i have to this day including meredith During his freshman spring at Wesleyan, Mike met Meredith Tucker in an acting class.

Speaker 11 She was a history major while Mike was studying theater. Meredith would go on to become a casting director and eventually cast The White Lotus.
But before all that, they were theater buddies.

Speaker 29 He's a really good actor.

Speaker 35 And I, I, one thing about all this writing is that he's not acting anymore.

Speaker 2 But I remember

Speaker 35 end of our sophomore year, they did Our Town, and he played the choir master, the drunken choir master. And I remember there was one scene, it was a silent scene.

Speaker 35 He's like walking across stage, and the guy was a drunkard.

Speaker 7 I just remember, I was like, that guy is a great actor.

Speaker 35 And everyone knew, like, you kind of knew, like, he was just so much more talented than the rest of us, and just so much more interesting than the rest of us.

Speaker 35 And what was interesting is he had all these older women theater majors who were like gobbed on him because I think they clearly knew. He was friends with all like the senior and junior actresses.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 35 like everyone kind of saw that

Speaker 35 he was going places. We had a review show sophomore year, and I was in his number.

Speaker 13 It was Broadway Baby.

Speaker 35 And I was like a homeless woman who's harassing theater goers. I still remember, I could do the monologue that he wrote beforehand.

Speaker 36 But I will spare you all now.

Speaker 35 I joke that I knew back in like 1989 to like grab onto his coattails and never let go. He's been so good to me.

Speaker 35 I mean, he's changed my life, you know,

Speaker 2 both professionally and personally.

Speaker 11 After college, Mike thought he might move to New York to pursue playwriting. Instead, the movie business beckoned and he returned to his West Coast roots.

Speaker 9 There was a guy in my writing class who's older than I was who came out to Hollywood and had sold some stuff with another guy and then

Speaker 13 that partnership ended.

Speaker 21 And so I literally got out of school and this guy was like, come to LA and maybe I have a job for you.

Speaker 24 I was planning on going to New York and be a whatever struggling playwright.

Speaker 13 But then, yeah, so I went to LA and I got work kind of right away that got me a foot in the door. And then I started just building out my own stuff.

Speaker 11 When Mike was 24, his dad Mel came out as gay. In the whites conservative Christian community, Mel's coming out was a bombshell.

Speaker 25 All of his community of friends rejected not only him, but like the whole family for some reason.

Speaker 26 So I just, I I ended up feeling very uninterested in the hypocrisy of that kind of religious community where everybody's like fronting and yeah.

Speaker 4 Well, I was familiar with Mike White initially because of who his father was.

Speaker 11 This is Dan Savage again. I'll let him tell you a little bit more about Mel.

Speaker 4 He was a ghostwriter for Jerry Falwell Sr.

Speaker 4 and I read Jerry Falwell Sr.'s books. I'm a little bit, you know, I have Anita Bryant's books.

Speaker 4 There's some part of me that wants to crawl into their twisted little brains and put my feet up and stay a while. And there's kind of a lesson in Mel White's life.

Speaker 4 The way gay people lived when we were closeted, you couldn't risk attracting too much attention or scrutiny to yourself. So you lived through other people.

Speaker 4 You lived through straight people, which as a ghostwriter is what Mel White did. He lived through people like Jerry Falwell and hid behind them.

Speaker 4 And what better closet door than Jerry fucking Falwell Sr. for a gay man who doesn't want to be scrutinized, doesn't want to be discovered.

Speaker 4 And the lesson in Mike White's career is once gay people are freed from having to hide and sublimate, look at what gay people can create, look at what gay people can do when they welcome scrutiny, criticism, attention in the way Mike has welcomed it.

Speaker 11 In 2000, Mike made the movie that you might call his big break, the indie black comedy Chuck and Buck, which he both wrote and starred in.

Speaker 11 The story follows a 27-year-old amateur playwright who's essentially stalking his childhood best friend, a guy he'd experimented with sexually when they were younger.

Speaker 37 Do you remember we used to play games like we were businessmen? Remember, we bought all those office supplies?

Speaker 37 And now you're like really doing it.

Speaker 37 Is it real now, or is it still like a game?

Speaker 11 The movie premiered at Sundance. In the indie world, it was a minor sensation, but it also earned Mike a lot of flack.

Speaker 13 Some people had a really strong, like, hostile reaction to the movie, to me as a persona in the movie, and it had such a variety of reactions that I

Speaker 13 realized I'll never be understood.

Speaker 17 You know what I mean?

Speaker 25 Like, I just kind of gave up. And like, and I realized, like, if you're making stuff, like, the kinds of stuff that I like, to make, it begs for a varied reaction.

Speaker 13 So if some people are going to hate it, that's part of what I'm doing.

Speaker 25 Chuck and Buck, it was a small movie. It didn't have a huge release or whatever.

Speaker 6 But I think

Speaker 28 because the script was so divisive and people would tell me like, I'm not going to fund this movie and you should not give people this script.

Speaker 22 And then the movie came out and like,

Speaker 13 you know, Entertainment Weekly named it the best movie of the year, of the year it came out.

Speaker 6 And it was also for me, like it made me go, okay, I can actually express myself in this medium and I should go with my gut and I should keep trying to develop that voice and not just be a writer for hire.

Speaker 34 Because at the time, I had written on Dawson's Creek and Freaks and Geeks, and I had a knack for being able to write other kinds of things.

Speaker 3 And so it was like, to me, that was probably the thing that made me double down on myself, I guess.

Speaker 11 Mike went on to write a bunch more movies in his developing voice, including Orange County, The Good Girl, and his biggest hit to date, School of Rock, in which Mike played the the unforgettable Ned Schneebly.

Speaker 19 Just dump her, man. Yeah, well, if you don't come up with some money, she's going to dump me.
She's fed up.

Speaker 38 Really? Because that would be a good thing. She's a nightmare.

Speaker 24 Come on.

Speaker 2 I may never have another girlfriend. I mean, just come on.

Speaker 11 In 2004, he came out with Cracking Up, a sitcom on Fox about a wacky, rich family in Beverly Hills. Molly Shannon played the mom.

Speaker 7 Mike and I met for coffee in New York City. This is years ago, before I had kids.
And we just got along so well. We went out for iced coffee downtown.

Speaker 7 And then we just kept walking and talking and walking and talking. And he was like, Yeah, I think you're too young to play the mom in Cracking Up.
You're too young. But we just got along as friends.

Speaker 7 It was just like an instant click. We just, it was great.
So, but then he came back around and was like, actually, I think you would be great to play the mom in cracking up.

Speaker 7 So then he cast me as the mom. I remember I saw an actress on an airplane.
She's like, oh, you're so lucky. Every actress wanted that part of the mom on cracking up.
That's like the best part.

Speaker 7 Because she was like a pill-popping alcoholic with a complicated marriage. And so they have a therapist that moves into their house to help them with their kids and their family dynamics.

Speaker 7 And I remember thinking, Yeah, I feel so lucky I got this great part.

Speaker 7 It just, it was just the greatest job ever. Cracking up ended up being stressful for Mike, which he has spoken openly about in the past because the network was like, wait, we don't, we don't know.

Speaker 7 We don't want Molly locked up in the bathroom, pill popping. We want her like I love Lucy.
And, you know, they just gave these notes that were so frustrating to Mike.

Speaker 7 But Mike and I became very aligned during that process because I was like, don't be hard on Mike. He's my king.
Like,

Speaker 7 Jason Schwartzmann and I were like, oh, Mike's our everythings. And the scripts were brilliant.
Like, why are they bothering him?

Speaker 7 They were the greatest scripts, gifts from God, and a true joy and pleasure to perform brilliant, funny, ahead of its time, like a Primo Mike White comedy show.

Speaker 11 After Cracking Up finished, Mike contacted Molly with an idea for a new movie, Year of the Dog, about a secretary whose dog dies. This time, Mike directed the movie too.

Speaker 7 Mike stuck his neck out for me because I think that they would have preferred at that time a different woman as the lead for that movie and the financing. And Mike was like, no, I want Molly.

Speaker 7 I only want to make it with Molly.

Speaker 7 And so he really changed my career because I feel that with Mike, people started to learn that I could do drama.

Speaker 7 I got known famous from Saturday Night Live, but Mike was like, oh, Mike, Mike really knew me and could see me, could write for me. So I credit Mike to changing my whole career.

Speaker 7 I'm so grateful to Mike.

Speaker 11 This brings us to the 2010s, when Mike got to work developing his most ambitious project to date, his first series for HBO, Enlightened.

Speaker 11 I talked to the critic and writer Hunter Harris about the show's cultural significance and how it relates to the White Lotus.

Speaker 39 Enlightened kind of felt like a secret shared amongst like the, you know, people that I really respected and admired. Like, oh my gosh, have you seen Enlightened?

Speaker 39 Like, you haven't seen anything until you've seen Enlightened.

Speaker 39 To call it like an office dramedy sounds like too reductive almost, because the show really like blossoms and blooms in so many like really emotional ways.

Speaker 39 Laura Dern plays this woman who's just teetering on the edge of like a breakdown and she comes back to work after a breakdown and you see her trying to build new friendships, trying to

Speaker 39 make her life feel as big on the outside as it does maybe to her internally.

Speaker 39 There's one really incredible scene where Laura Dern has this whole monologue about how like she has this renewed sense of empathy for her mother because she acknowledges that her mother was like also once a child and that she has to kind of mother both of them in this like very prickly, difficult dynamic between the two of them.

Speaker 10 I will stop waiting for you to be the perfect mother.

Speaker 10 I will be patient with you.

Speaker 39 And the fact that Mike White was able to capture that so

Speaker 39 personally and also so viscerally, like the rage of like, why can't you be the mother I wanted you to be? But also I'm not the daughter that you wanted probably either.

Speaker 39 I mean, really, it's like some of the best writing on television I've seen ever. Between Enlightened and The White Lotus, you can just see how specific the vision is across any kind of setting.

Speaker 39 Enlightened kind of feels very far from White Lotus, and yet they both feel like they're made from the same specific brain.

Speaker 39 That is, you know, the mark of someone who I think is like really good at what they do.

Speaker 39 Laura Duran feels like she's doing a good thing and like really desperately wants to do a good thing, and that's what makes that so tragic.

Speaker 39 You can feel how much she wants to improve herself and improve everyone else, but she just keeps bucking up against this wall of everyone else's ego, but she's still trying.

Speaker 39 Whereas on the white lotus, I think this desire to

Speaker 39 change others is much more out of control and dominance.

Speaker 11 Enlightened ran for two seasons before getting canceled, much to the disappointment of fans. I'm still mad.

Speaker 39 I mean, this is gonna sound weird, but I can totally see why it got canceled. Like, it's too good.
It's too smart. You had gold in your hands watching this show.

Speaker 38 Around this time mike made a perhaps unexpected career move he went on reality tv first appearing on two seasons of the amazing race and then memorably on survivor i had breakfast with mike the day before he left and he told me his whole strategy which i won't repeat david bernad saw mike through his whole survivor adventure i do think that's the best season that's my favorite season of survivor obviously i'm biased but incredible incredible i had lunch with him the day he got back and he had lost a lot of weight but I, you know, he said, he, he said to me he, he was sixth out.

Speaker 38 And then he had a party at his house for that episode. So I went in going, I know, I'm like, I have a secret.
Nobody else knows. He's going out.

Speaker 38 And he was being funny because that episode he won the immunity challenge.

Speaker 38 And I ran around his house. It was a party.
It was probably like 50 people there with my arms raised, yelling like a maniac, knowing that he had lied to me and that he keeps going forward.

Speaker 38 We were there at the live.

Speaker 2 It was a live finale.

Speaker 38 And and him winning that fire immunity challenge, I stood up in the live audience and I just yelled uncontrollably, my arms raised like a child. And

Speaker 38 I said to this to Mike, it's probably one of the happiest moments of my life. And I really thought he was going to win.
He should have won. He should have won.

Speaker 8 He should have in a just world.

Speaker 11 Hunter Harris was also a fan.

Speaker 39 On Cerva specifically, where people hide, you know, if they went to an IV or like, if they're a psychiatrist or if they're a cop or something like that, because like, you know, you always have a target on your back if you have one of these jobs.

Speaker 39 He did such a good job of being like, oh, I just kind of work in Hollywood.

Speaker 39 I just work in TV when he's not like maybe one of the most astute, I don't know, observationists in working in television, which I would be like, target on your back immediately.

Speaker 3 You're too good at this game.

Speaker 39 I think he's so good at like playing

Speaker 39 sweet, but also playing very cunning, but also not being too cunning, but also being very playful, friendly.

Speaker 39 And I mean, honestly, if you've talked to anyone who's directed actors, that sounds like exactly what you need to do.

Speaker 11 They're seemingly strange bedfellows, Survivor and the White Lotus, and yet I feel feel like they are a great double feature. Do you see similarities between the two shows?

Speaker 39 Absolutely. I mean, Survivor, first of all, let me say this.
When I started watching Survivor, I thought it was a show that you watched in the hospital.

Speaker 39 I thought this was a show that you watched on your deathbed. Plugs about to be pulled and Survivor's just on.
I thought it was like daydream TV.

Speaker 39 But when I started watching this series, I was like, oh my gosh.

Speaker 39 Like there are so many social dynamics, physical dynamics, of course, but the way that you can start an episode on the bottom and end, not on the top, but at the top of the middle, which is exactly where you want to be.

Speaker 39 And that's kind of where he rode throughout the entire season, which is perfect because you want to be someone on Survivor who is seen as not a weakness, but also a huge competitor for someone at the very end.

Speaker 39 You want to be the person that they bring along with them, but you also don't want to be someone that's like, oh, I can cut you easily and not feel like I'm losing a real vote.

Speaker 39 And that, I think, is, that's really the mark of a genius, honestly. That means more to me than Mensa.

Speaker 11 For those of you who are familiar with my work, you might know that my dedication to Survivor goes way beyond fandom. I'm a connoisseur of the show.

Speaker 11 I even have my own podcast dedicated to it called Drop Your Buffs. You could say I'm kind of obsessive.

Speaker 11 So when I knew we'd be talking about Mike's time on Survivor, there were two people I absolutely knew we had to get.

Speaker 2 Your character had a name, though.

Speaker 40 Like, that's a big deal.

Speaker 41 He did have a name.

Speaker 40 I was American woman number two, okay? I was nameless.

Speaker 11 Angelina Keely Keely and Alec Merlino both joined Mike during the David vs. Goliath season of Survivor.
The three of them kept in touch afterward.

Speaker 11 So much so that Mike actually invited Alec to appear on season one of The White Lotus in a small role and then invited Angelina as well as another cast member, Kara, on to season two.

Speaker 11 But before that, they were just strangers meeting on an island.

Speaker 41 I remember getting off the little, you know, when we paddle on the raft and we all get off and we can finally talk to each other? People are kind of sizing each other up and

Speaker 41 Mike never stood out, not in a bad way. No one stood out.
And then it was a week in.

Speaker 41 Someone mentioned, do you know who that is? And I said, no.

Speaker 41 And they're like, haven't you ever seen School of Rock?

Speaker 6 And I'm like, oh,

Speaker 41 Ned Schneebly.

Speaker 41 And then that was that. You know, I didn't know like how much he had written.
I didn't really know

Speaker 41 to what extent who he was until I got to the white lotus. And then I'm like, oh, dang, like, this guy's a big deal.
He's in charge.

Speaker 41 Everyone goes to Mike. I'm Mike, dang.
He's like the king.

Speaker 2 Kingpin Mike.

Speaker 40 I feel like this is going to be, this needs to be a nickname.

Speaker 36 Mike's game was so social.

Speaker 40 Like he and Kara, I think, were the best social players of our season, like hands down.

Speaker 40 He had a way of cutting through the game and like transcending it and making you feel like a human again and not just a player who's playing this competitive game.

Speaker 40 He and I connected about our French bulldogs, about being vegan and vegetarian. And Mike did such a good job of kind of like laying low.

Speaker 40 Like he, I think he knew that for the people who knew of his stardom, he wanted to kind of like temper that with like just being a really laid-back person. And he is laid-back.

Speaker 40 So I think that naturally came out.

Speaker 11 As pals of Mike, alums of survivor, and devoted fans of the white lotus, both Angelina and Alec can easily spot the parallels between these two shows.

Speaker 40 It's the little corks that make people who they are, right? It's like the big personalities. It's like people being funny and being people, but also this weird like

Speaker 40 competition and how do I get up on someone else and how do I win, right? They're both about winning.

Speaker 2 I remember one time he laughed.

Speaker 41 He goes, the more I watched the White Lotus, the more I realized it's exactly like Survivor.

Speaker 41 Like if you think about classic Survivor, it's like always in between parts, they cut to the B-roll of like the shark and then like in the white lotus they cut to b-roll of just like this like ominous like ocean you're like oh what are they setting up and then like angelina said like is there a winner but like in the white lotus there's always someone someone who dies

Speaker 11 i also asked mike about the white lotus survivor parallels which many of us super fans were quick to spot and he had a pretty good response It's a survivor ripoff.

Speaker 32 It's a fictional survivor ripoff.

Speaker 3 What's funny is that Chuck and Buck came out the summer of

Speaker 15 2000.

Speaker 27 So it came into the theaters like end of June 2000, which is exactly when Survivor premiered.

Speaker 12 And I remember watching Survivor in the same place where I was when I was, you know, doing the press stuff for Chuck and Buck and seeing that first cast and the types of people that were represented in that show.

Speaker 5 You know, now we were so saturated with reality television, you don't realize how radical it seemed to see some of the dynamics that were going on in that show and the people and how they talked and how they weren't very likable, but they were how it shapeshifted in this kind of way, where, like, one minute you see someone this way, and then they just were like real people, you know what I mean?

Speaker 13 Which they were, obviously, but also kind of like characters.

Speaker 30 There was something about that was just like, this is this is new, this feels new.

Speaker 28 And I think, as far as storytelling, and what I hope White Lotus is,

Speaker 23 is

Speaker 23 something that feels alive and lively and not predetermined.

Speaker 31 And the characters shift like that.

Speaker 3 It feels credible, but also unexpected in that way that life is.

Speaker 19 And they reveal themselves in different ways.

Speaker 22 And each thing, you think, oh, maybe this is going to happen and then it's slightly different.

Speaker 28 But when you step back, it feels inevitable or it feels like it's built to something that was kind of designed.

Speaker 22 But at the same time, within it, the storytelling feels, yeah, lively and not canned.

Speaker 3 There's definitely this feeling of suspense, but just like in Survivor, really a lot of the times it's just people sitting around talking by the fire, but you have this sense of dread that something is going to happen.

Speaker 11 As Mike's Survivor episodes were airing week by week, there was one oust that caused quite a stir among fans, when Mike went after Survivor favorite Christian, ultimately blindsiding him and getting him eliminated from the game.

Speaker 11 After the flack Mike got following Chuck and Buck, it was like bad deja vu.

Speaker 3 I remember when survivor came out, you know, I voted out Christian and there was a week where all the survivors were like, are you okay?

Speaker 19 Because online I was getting so much shit for like being this rich guy who's destroying the financial dreams of everybody's favorite latest survivor character.

Speaker 25 And I was like, you know what?

Speaker 3 I've been through this before.

Speaker 28 You know, you just got to ride it out. You know, today I'm the villain.

Speaker 31 In a couple months, maybe I'll be seen in a different way.

Speaker 13 Having been in the public eye in whatever little way that I have for as long as I have, you have to take some hits if you want to take some wins too.

Speaker 11 When I interviewed Mike, he was in the midst of editing the final episode of season three. He'd literally just been at the editing suite when we logged on.

Speaker 11 He said he'd been working nearly non-stop and that he was burnt out. And so, as we talked through his trajectory, feelings started to bubble up.

Speaker 9 The first season was tapping into a lot of that feeling that was going on in the cultural conversation in general about privilege and entitlement.

Speaker 25 And so I think there's a part of me that is working out my own material

Speaker 33 reality changing. You know, my dad was, he didn't believe that Christians should own homes.

Speaker 29 He thought to be

Speaker 13 a servant of Christ, you should walk with the poor.

Speaker 3 And then I went to this school where there was a lot of rich kids and they're rich families and I would go to their houses.

Speaker 25 So I was always kind of fascinated by rich people and had, I guess, a fascination that was tinged with, I want want that or I want to have this and this feeling of judgment or, you know, like, are we all going to hell for like being materialistic and not going to church every day and offering up all of our earthly possessions?

Speaker 31 And then now having this conflicted sense of, am I supposed to be a success?

Speaker 9 Isn't that what everybody wants?

Speaker 31 And then also at the same time, now that you're a success, you're no longer a David.

Speaker 28 You're a Goliath.

Speaker 17 And it's like, is anyone rooting for you? And should you unload all of these things so that you can be a David again and you can stay true?

Speaker 15 You can be Jenny from the block or whatever. You know, you're just like, what does the culture want from me?

Speaker 11 We know that Mike being a one-stop shop has been paying off. I mean, clearly, it's given us pure and unadulterated Mike White in every episode of The White Lotus.

Speaker 11 But the pressure was also taking a toll. He was stressed.
He was exhausted. He was, you might say, in survivor mode.

Speaker 33 I feel like I tried to do a career hack, which was make a show where we go somewhere new, where there is no routine, there is no drive on the 405 to the 10 to work.

Speaker 9 It's a total life enhancement type of job.

Speaker 31 At the same time, what I didn't realize is that even that becomes your life.

Speaker 3 Like I don't have a life outside of the show.

Speaker 28 In fact, the show is even more my life because I never go home.

Speaker 17 One day I'll step back from this and see it as the thing that it is, you know, or have some perspective on it.

Speaker 19 But right now, I'm like, the show has overtaken my life despite all my efforts to have some management over it.

Speaker 26 It just feels like I failed that.

Speaker 19 So it's a blessing, but it's a little crazy making because you just are like, when you put everything into something,

Speaker 26 you want it to work and you want it to be fulfilling and you want it to fulfill all these parts of your life.

Speaker 26 And the truth is, what I really need to do is build out parts of my life outside of the show, but I, it's just kind of like this thing that just sucks sucks up everything.

Speaker 11 It was startling to hear Mike so overwhelmed.

Speaker 11 But as he spoke, I couldn't stop thinking about how, even amid the stress, he curated such a joyful experience for each and every one of his collaborators. And I didn't just think that.

Speaker 11 I'd been told it.

Speaker 11 He makes you feel completely safe while also creating a space for you to explore.

Speaker 7 He's not precious at all. Like I would say his style is very laid-back, fun, like a party atmosphere.
Like, yay, let's just shoot.

Speaker 1 I literally jumped on him and I was crying.

Speaker 42 And I said, Mike, I love you. I love you.
Mike, you, Diamond, I love you, Mike. I love you.
Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you.

Speaker 1 I was just a student of Mike.

Speaker 36 Like, I'm not afraid to admit, like, I nerded out quite a bit and I would sit in village and just watch him work.

Speaker 41 I remember sitting at a dinner table and I pointed to everyone and I said, Steve Zahn, this is a role of a lifetime.

Speaker 2 Connie Britton, this is a role of a lifetime.

Speaker 5 He changed all our lives.

Speaker 11 I wanted to express to Mike what he meant to these people, to give him some of that perspective he was perhaps lacking. I gave it my best shot.

Speaker 11 I have to tell you, Mike, actors don't often talk about their experiences working on shows with as high of regard as they do when it comes to not just the white lotus, just working with you in general.

Speaker 11 People really seem to like working with you. Not just the writing, not just the characters that you create.
They like working with you, the vibe that you create on set, being around you.

Speaker 11 I don't think that's common.

Speaker 2 That's nice to hear.

Speaker 32 I'm like right now, honestly, just because I was like, I'm so

Speaker 26 stressed about

Speaker 34 coming through for all these people. I'm somebody who believes...

Speaker 30 as an artist that of course

Speaker 31 if it sucks then none of it is worth it. But at the same time, I also believe it can't always just be about the destination.

Speaker 31 You have to be there choosing cool places and cultures that I'm excited about.

Speaker 34 I have to do it from a place of enthusiasm and without being cheesy, love.

Speaker 9 And that's how I'm going to get what I need to get.

Speaker 31 I can transform this. I can do this.

Speaker 9 So that's, that's a, that's something that I feel like is, it's important to me as far as my way of approaching this.

Speaker 13 Because like I learned very early on, if it's all about results, you're never going to be happy.

Speaker 3 Because every once in a while, you just get the wave and you ride the wave, but sometimes you're out in the water and you're splashing around.

Speaker 26 You have to enjoy that part of it too, because that's really most of your life is just waiting for the wave.

Speaker 11 And that's it for the White Lotus Lookback Podcast. I have so enjoyed riding this wave with you all, and I can't wait to watch and talk and meme out season three with all of you.

Speaker 11 I don't have any spoilers, but I did hear that someone dies.

Speaker 11 The White Lotus Podcast is a production of HBO and Campside Media. This episode was hosted by me, Evan Ross Katz, and produced by Natalia Winkleman.
Our associate producer is Aaliyah Papes.

Speaker 11 Fact-checking by Gray Lanta. At Campside Media, our executive producer is Josh Dean.
Editing and sound design by Ewan Lai Tramuen.

Speaker 11 Special thanks to Michael Gluckstadt, Allison Cohen-Sirokach, and Kenya Reyes from the HBO podcast team.