Episode 3: The Managers with Murray Bartlett and Sabrina Impacciatore

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Speaker 4 Look Larni, I know it's your first day on the job and I don't know how it worked at your other properties but here self-disclosure is discouraged especially with these VIPs who arrive on the boat.

Speaker 4 You know you don't want to be too specific

Speaker 4 as a presence, as an identity, you want to be more generic.

Speaker 6 Generic.

Speaker 7 Yes.

Speaker 4 You know it's a Japanese ethos where where we are asked to disappear behind our masks as pleasant, interchangeable helpers. It's tropical kabuki.

Speaker 4 And the goal is to create for the guests an overall impression of vagueness that can be very satisfying, where they get everything they want, but they don't even know what they want, or what day it is, or where they are, or who we are, or what the fuck is going on.

Speaker 8 Hi, everyone, and welcome back to HBO's official White Lotus podcast. I'm your host, Evan Ross Katz.

Speaker 8 Today, I am thrilled to be joined by two actors I absolutely adore, Murray Bartlett and Sabrina Impacciatore.

Speaker 8 They brought to life two unforgettable White Lotus managers over the course of two seasons, Armand and Valentina, who, despite being worlds apart in personality, share strikingly similar roles within the White Lotus Averse.

Speaker 9 I am Valentina, the Royal Works manager.

Speaker 9 I mean, I'm impressed that you're even here.

Speaker 10 Why are you impressed?

Speaker 9 It's a long trip from Los Angeles, and you're quite old, no?

Speaker 8 In this episode, the three of us will dive into the parallels between their characters.

Speaker 8 Not only do Armand and Valentina hold the same job title, they're both gay characters bending over backwards to accommodate a revolving door of mostly straight hotel guests.

Speaker 11 So many gay people work in service professions where you have to be obsequious, deferential, kind.

Speaker 12 You have to slap a smile on your face.

Speaker 14 Dan Savage is a sex and relationships advice columnist and podcaster. For decades, he's offered advice about sex and romance in his column, Savage Love.

Speaker 11 So many gay people negotiate really a straight world where we have to be not always on our best behavior, as our mom is definitely not, but we always have to be smiling at the faces of the straight people who are sometimes making us utterly fucking miserable because they have the power and they outnumber us.

Speaker 11 And so there's that, I don't want to say two-facedness of Armand, but the way he copes and navigates is, I think, very familiar to

Speaker 11 gay people, particularly from the earlier parts of our lives when we haven't been able to assemble our own friend groups.

Speaker 11 We haven't been able to self-select out of being completely surrounded by straight people all the time.

Speaker 14 Now, settle in for Sabrina and Murray's perspectives. And just so you're all aware, there is some discussion of sexually explicit topics in this one.
So consider this a content warning.

Speaker 5 Sabrina, Sabrina, you look gorgeous. You always look good.

Speaker 5 You do too everything. You do two every day.
Please, please.

Speaker 5 I get get to see you less, Sabrina, and uh it's such a joy seeing you and you look uh radiant.

Speaker 9 Oh my god.

Speaker 14 Now can you show Marie your heels though?

Speaker 9 Because I feel like Marie, guarda, look.

Speaker 5 Oh,

Speaker 1 oh my god.

Speaker 2 Yeah, not bad.

Speaker 9 And I can I can run in this, you know?

Speaker 2 I love them.

Speaker 9 Like I really love I could lick them for how much I love them.

Speaker 1 I get it. Because

Speaker 9 they are all like smooth and amazing. I love them.

Speaker 14 How did the two of you first meet?

Speaker 9 In real life, because

Speaker 9 in imagination, I met him

Speaker 9 a year before.

Speaker 9 I was dreaming about him.

Speaker 9 He was haunting me because

Speaker 9 I felt so much pressure to fit in his huge shoes. To me,

Speaker 9 I felt like I could never ever be able to

Speaker 9 not

Speaker 9 make people to regret him, you know?

Speaker 9 So I didn't sleep for many weeks with the idea. Yes, Mari, you didn't know that?

Speaker 5 Yes. No, I didn't know that.
No.

Speaker 9 Yes, yes, because when I saw your performance, Alora, me, I don't feel hierarchy about power.

Speaker 9 To me, the hierarchy is about talent. And so I feel in awe about big talent.
When I see a genius actor, I feel in awe.

Speaker 9 So, when I see him performing in that brilliant, unforgettable way, because really, I saw the series once and I never forgot anymore his performance.

Speaker 9 And

Speaker 9 that's why I was so scared. I was terrified.
I felt so much pressure. I cried also.
I have to say, I have to confess, I cried for you, Margaret.

Speaker 9 So then that's why when I met you, it was meeting a dream, meeting someone that you've been thinking about so much.

Speaker 9 And then when you finally meet him, it's BAM! It's an explosion. That's why, really, I remember that I saw him at that party.
I didn't expect him to be there.

Speaker 9 And I saw him, and I remember that I started to run run to him like and then yes we jumped

Speaker 9 we hug each other like this I remember very well because to me it was like oh my god

Speaker 5 I feel like I feel like we shared that energy and we we I from my memory we kind of flung ourselves at each other

Speaker 5 which which seemed kind of fitting I don't know. There was just perhaps a shared joy in what we'd both been through individually.

Speaker 9 And

Speaker 9 it was really, really a big, big emotion for me.

Speaker 14 And Murray, surely your dreams were being haunted by Sabrina.

Speaker 14 Yeah, was that the case?

Speaker 5 Well, I guess I kind of had the sort of inverse experience, really. I mean, first of all, well, let's start

Speaker 5 inversely, I guess, that when we met, it it felt like we knew each other, even though we'd never met.

Speaker 5 I mean,

Speaker 5 not just because we'd watched each other and sort of got to know each other, but I, you know, we took a special interest in each other, I think, without knowing that we were,

Speaker 5 without individually knowing that the other was doing this, but because we shared that kind of experience, even though they manifested, you know, in different ways, they were different characters, but there was a lot that they had in common.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 so there was this kind of incredible shared experience

Speaker 5 that we had. Very kind of bizarre and unique, which made me feel like I knew you very well and felt a great deal of affection and kind of understanding of what you've been through or something.

Speaker 9 Oh, yes.

Speaker 5 It's kind of odd, but

Speaker 5 it was interesting. But I guess, yeah, I guess my my inverse experience is that

Speaker 5 I had none of the stress of watching. I had all the joy of watching you.
I thought you were extraordinary in the show. And

Speaker 5 my job was already done. So I could just lose myself in what you were doing.

Speaker 5 But also.

Speaker 5 Because I, you know, I watched the show. I'm not great at watching myself in things.

Speaker 5 I don't think many of us are. I mean, I did watch and enjoy the first season, especially watching everyone else.
And Mike did such an amazing job. So there was a lot of joy in watching it.

Speaker 5 But

Speaker 5 watching you in the position that I played

Speaker 5 in the show gave me a sort of, I don't know, I got a perspective on my performance through you, I guess.

Speaker 5 Oh,

Speaker 5 because I got to see the, you know, the hotel manager that I was playing, just sort of in a, in a different form.

Speaker 5 Watching you was just sort of joyful and nerve-wracking in the same way that playing Armand was kind of nerve-wracking for me, just sort of feeling all the things that you were feeling.

Speaker 5 But I guess all that to say that when we met, there was this kind of rich

Speaker 5 history that we had together without having ever met.

Speaker 5 It's such a bizarre thing, right? I mean,

Speaker 5 it was true.

Speaker 5 It was very lovely and felt like family, you know, weird.

Speaker 9 Exactly.

Speaker 14 I'd love to hear from both of you about first receiving the offer to be on the show, finding out you're going to play this character.

Speaker 14 And obviously, we know the character, having seen you both bring them to life,

Speaker 14 but before they were brought to life, when they existed only on the page, what were your initial reactions?

Speaker 9 Well, me, I was almost having

Speaker 9 a stroke.

Speaker 5 Yeah, Yeah,

Speaker 5 yes, no.

Speaker 9 Literally, I was,

Speaker 9 I did two auditions and then

Speaker 9 no one said nothing for weeks.

Speaker 9 So I didn't know what was going to happen and I was trying not to think about it.

Speaker 9 So I remember this struggle about how can I not think about this audition that I did.

Speaker 9 And so, in fact, that day I was trying to kill my thoughts and it was a Saturday and I went inside a theater to watch a show because when I watch a show I lose myself and I don't think about anything else and I forget about real life.

Speaker 9 And so I was inside the theater and the show was on and I saw my phone that was vibrating and I felt this must be an important call because the phone vibrates in a different way. And so

Speaker 5 so I had to say to people like, hey, excuse me, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I have to go.

Speaker 9 It was like I didn't want to disturb the actors on the stage, no, so I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. And I was literally walking on the, on the, you know, on the seats like this, really?

Speaker 9 I was like walking on people.

Speaker 9 And then I went out of the theater and they were my

Speaker 9 two Italian agents on a video call

Speaker 9 and they told me this unbelievable news and I started to cry and laugh and scream.

Speaker 9 And I still was in the theater, I was in the foyer, so there were people that looked at me and I couldn't stop crying and screaming.

Speaker 5 It's

Speaker 9 oh my gosh, I will never forget that moment. Never, ever in my life.
Forever, forever.

Speaker 14 Yes. What about for you, Marie?

Speaker 5 Oh my God. Well, it was weird because we were completely locked down.
I did my audition in my garage and I did one audition

Speaker 5 with my Australian accent and I did it American because I usually audition with an American accent.

Speaker 5 And I was at dinner and again, like my phone rang twice, I think. It was a different vibration.

Speaker 5 There was something about the vibration. I was like, this seems like it's important.

Speaker 5 And I only read the first script,

Speaker 5 which I think was probably good.

Speaker 5 Because once I found out what was ahead of me and what this character went through, I was equally like thrilled and excited and terrified, which is what usually happens when you get a job.

Speaker 5 You know, you're like, oh my God, I want this job. And then you get it.
And you're like,

Speaker 5 oh, shit. Now I got to do it.
But the phone call came and it was my agent. And they told me.
And I was like, great, this seems so weird because we're in a pandemic and

Speaker 5 now I'm going to Hawaii and I love Mike White and it sounds like there's great people in the cast, but I didn't really know who. I knew very little.

Speaker 5 And then Mike called me the next day and he was like, you know, I'm so happy that you're doing the job and blah, blah, blah. So you've read all the scripts, right? And I was like.

Speaker 5 No, no, I've read the first review. He's like, there was a pause and he was like, oh, oh, well, we better get you those scripts.

Speaker 5 So I read the scripts on the way over to Hawaii and then I was, you know, like, so excited, but also like,

Speaker 5 oh my God, this is an incredible role, which I, you know, I'm so lucky and thrilled to play, but also like terrified, you know, because you like, you want to do it justice. It's

Speaker 5 such,

Speaker 5 you know, Sabrina, like, I don't, well, I don't know what it was like in the second season. I imagine it was similar.

Speaker 5 I mean, we played and we, you know, we ad-libbed sometimes, but the script was so amazing, so specific, so detailed. Pretty much everything that you see, what I did anyway, is written.

Speaker 5 So it was, it was extraordinary to have that handed in your lap. And then the first night we arrived and we were gathering,

Speaker 5 it must have been the first night that we all came out of quarantine and we all met at this big table at the Empty Four Seasons Hotel in Hawaii.

Speaker 5 And Jennifer Coolidge came late as only Jennifer Coolidge can in the coolest most amazing way and she was like she looked at me she was like you

Speaker 5 you get to play the role that I wanted to play and I was like oh

Speaker 5 this is so much Jane Coolidge wanted this role

Speaker 5 like no pressure

Speaker 5 so it was like it was sort of a slow unfolding of me realizing that I that I had the role and and what the job was and that it was actually real.

Speaker 5 It was such a surreal, it was such a surreal experience anyway, but also in

Speaker 5 the midst of a pandemic and all of that. It was just, it was a strange and wonderful thing.

Speaker 14 Yes. It's also a strange and wonderful thing imagining Jennifer Coolidge as Armand.

Speaker 5 Right?

Speaker 5 I mean, a mindfuck. It would be kind of incredible.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I'd like to see that. That sort of

Speaker 5 went through my head. I was like, yeah, maybe you should be playing this.

Speaker 5 Yeah,

Speaker 5 I can see it.

Speaker 9 But it's funny, just, sorry, it's funny that he said, I had a strong idea about the character. While me, it was totally the opposite.
I didn't have an idea

Speaker 9 because this character

Speaker 9 was

Speaker 9 not totally described as your character in the first season.

Speaker 9 So I had like

Speaker 9 only few scenes, no? When you have only few scenes,

Speaker 9 the script was so brilliant.

Speaker 9 But at the same time, I think that Mike

Speaker 9 didn't

Speaker 9 hadn't already

Speaker 9 defined totally this character, totally, no? So I was feeling very, very lost at the beginning, like lost, and I was scared because of Murray.

Speaker 9 And so I remember the first days as a nightmare because I didn't know how to play this character. And actually,

Speaker 9 day two, I had to play a scene with Jennifer and with John Grice.

Speaker 9 And I was so intimidated. In this scene, I was supposed to interrupt them.

Speaker 9 They were fighting, they were having a discussion, and I was supposed to interrupt them. And for the first two takes, I didn't interrupt them

Speaker 9 because I was too much intimidated. So, the AD, after two takes, she came to me, she said, Sabrina, you are supposed to talk in this scene.

Speaker 9 I said, Oh, I'm so sorry, I don't want to disturb you, really.

Speaker 9 So, can you imagine that's how everything started. And so, I just followed Mike's indications for the for the first days.

Speaker 9 And

Speaker 9 he told me this sentence that was,

Speaker 9 the more she's bitchy, the more she's funny.

Speaker 9 And me, I was having a big trouble being bitchy with Jennifer because I was too intimidated and I just wanted to to jump on my knees in front of her, you know, like I love her so much.

Speaker 9 I can't be mean. And exactly in that day,

Speaker 9 that's the moment where the Peppa Pig line came out because I was so desperate that had to be bitchy. And that's what my brain saved me in this moment.
And from that moment, like something

Speaker 9 made a click inside of me and I got the character

Speaker 9 there in that moment. I understood, okay, because Mike was so happy about that.
When I saw him so happy, I felt, okay,

Speaker 9 this is the direction.

Speaker 9 And

Speaker 9 then actually, this character came out day by day.

Speaker 9 It was such a journey of discovery with Mike.

Speaker 9 That's why Mike

Speaker 9 became so meaningful to me, because this was a journey that

Speaker 9 surprised me very, very deeply, very, very deeply, in a very deep emotional way.

Speaker 9 And yes, I understood the character at the end, I think.

Speaker 5 I think it's fair to say.

Speaker 5 Well, I know that you're not alone in that because I felt the same thing. And I know some of the other actors

Speaker 5 in the first season felt that as well. I mean, we wondered whether it was because we just hadn't,

Speaker 5 you know,

Speaker 5 it was... the pandemic.
And so we hadn't, there was no rehearsal and

Speaker 5 we hadn't met Mike before. A lot of us hadn't.

Speaker 5 The first week, I was terrified. And there was a couple of nights where I was like, oh my God, this is a nightmare.
I don't know what I'm doing. And I think,

Speaker 5 I mean, first of all, I think that that's kind of like, I don't want to say healthy, but I think that we all go through that to a certain extent at the beginning of a job.

Speaker 5 Like you're still figuring it out. You can figure it all out in your head or in rehearsal, whatever.
But when you get to actually do it,

Speaker 5 it takes a little while sometimes for it to reveal itself to you. And on my first scene, we did that scene.
It was like working with David Fincher.

Speaker 5 We did it, I don't know how many times, but like it, you know, it felt like 30 takes. And each take, Mike just kept getting me to do different things.

Speaker 5 And I was like, oh my God, I'm not getting what he wants. This is like, I just like, he hates what I'm doing.
Like, I'm not getting it.

Speaker 5 And then I came, we finished, and then I came off

Speaker 5 set or to the side of of the set. And one of the other actors was there.
And I was like, man, that was really intense, like really tough. And he was like, yeah, no, he's did that to me too.

Speaker 5 Like, I think he's just sort of getting to know us. Like, he wanted to see what, who are you in this character, you know, and what is this?

Speaker 5 And, and actually, we shot a couple of scenes and then we reshot them because he rewrote some of the stuff around

Speaker 5 what we were doing. Like, it, I think he, you know, he, and I think it's such a beautiful thing.

Speaker 5 And it's easy as an actor to be intimidated by that because you think, you know, I'm, I'm getting it wrong. And as we know, there is no wrong.

Speaker 5 It's just, you know, you're just figuring out who you are in the character. And Mike leaves space for that.

Speaker 5 I mean, the script didn't really change much after those first couple of scenes at all, but, but he, he adjusts to what you're

Speaker 5 bringing to it. And it's such a beautiful thing, I think.
But it is a little terrifying in the beginning because everyone's finding it and you're sort of finding it with him.

Speaker 5 And then you keep finding it with him. But it becomes, from my experience anyway, after that first week of terror, it was incredibly fun.
And

Speaker 5 he said one thing to us the night before we started shooting that it was really important to him that everyone had fun. And we were like, yeah, yeah, everyone said that.
But that's...

Speaker 5 so important to him that everyone has fun.

Speaker 5 And it was, you know, I mean, that's sort of one of the secrets i think of of any kind of acting is is once you get over once you can push through your self-consciousness and your fear of like humiliating yourself or whatever and you can just have fun with it that's the best place to be i think and and mike allows you to do that if you're willing to leap off into it with him you know it's such a beautiful thing oh my gosh it's so interesting that you both had these sort of breakthrough moments in the role.

Speaker 14 It sounds like you both were feeling intimidated, you know, unsure of the decisions that you were making. And then through doing the work, you found the character.
So I think it's just so interesting.

Speaker 14 There are all these parallels between you both as these characters, but also it sounds like these actors, which makes us being all in conversation together all the more enriching.

Speaker 14 I want to get into some specific scenes with each of your characters. Murray, there's a scene that stays burned in my brain and the brains of many fans of the show.

Speaker 5 I wonder what that might be.

Speaker 5 Listen,

Speaker 7 I'm obsessed with you.

Speaker 1 I want to get you naked.

Speaker 1 What do I gotta do?

Speaker 7 You know, tomorrow off, I'll give you whatever shifts you want.

Speaker 1 It's planning tonight.

Speaker 14 It's a scene that takes place midway through the series. It's between your character and Lucas Gage's character.
It takes place in an office. There might be some ass eating.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I mean, it wasn't written specifically that that was what happened in the scene. Before we started shooting, I had a 45-minute meeting with Mike.

Speaker 5 That was the only time that we had really to talk about stuff.

Speaker 5 And that whole meeting was really about him saying, you know, I don't want you to feel uncomfortable about any of the stuff that we're doing.

Speaker 5 Like, there's a few scenes where there's some obviously confronting things or whatever. and um so but we never really got into specifics so

Speaker 5 from my memory

Speaker 5 he sort of left it up to lucas and i to figure out what we felt comfortable with and

Speaker 5 and so

Speaker 5 lucas and i came up with this idea of like oh my god what if we did that

Speaker 5 um

Speaker 5 and so we went to mike and said we think this should be like an arse eating thing and he was like he said he he paused and then he he paused and then he went can we do that

Speaker 5 and we were like we think so we're we're up for it so you know i mean you know those scenes when you actually do those scenes you're like oh my god why did we decide to do this

Speaker 5 because because it is kind of confronting and it was you know the reason why we chose that is because we're being caught and we were trying to think of what would be for those characters that catch us,

Speaker 5 what would be the most shocking thing for them to see?

Speaker 5 And that seemed like that would be it.

Speaker 5 So,

Speaker 5 you know, most shocking, most confronting for them.

Speaker 9 You see the genius actor, no? Yeah,

Speaker 5 but I was

Speaker 5 I was surprised, I guess, that I was surprised that there was a big reaction. We kind of hadn't thought about it.
We were like, this will be funny. It's also like a great shocking moment.

Speaker 5 Like, it's definitely memorable, but like we didn't realize that it would become a how memorable yeah yes

Speaker 5 or that you know that would really like stand out as a moment i mean the way that it did i guess

Speaker 8 now i'm going to break from the murray and sabrina interview for just a moment to talk to a few others about this famous scene first up is dan savage who you heard from the top of the episode he's a sex and relationship columnist and a podcaster so it's not infrequent that analingus will come up as a topic in his work.

Speaker 12 Well, it's interesting that a lot of straight people freaked out about it as much as they seem to do because there was another show on HBO, Girls, that pioneered or already showed us what analingus looks like.

Speaker 12 And again, we see the older person about to eat the younger person's ass, which is, you know, as a gay man, I was like, okay, that's usually foreplay for anal sex, like, usually,

Speaker 12 particularly among adult gay men

Speaker 12 with access to showers, it's usually what comes first before anal. So, it wasn't as a gay man, I wasn't like flabbergasted that they might be, one might be eating the other's ass.

Speaker 12 I was like, this is the progression. This is the beginning of the ass play.

Speaker 12 And it was interesting.

Speaker 5 I actually saw that episode with a straight friend who got a little like uncomfortable about it.

Speaker 5 And I had to,

Speaker 1 I was just like, how could you read me?

Speaker 12 You'd see how often analingus comes up. And I recommend it to straight people all the time who are thinking about experimenting with anal sex as far play.

Speaker 8 I did get a chance to talk to Lucas Gage about the scene. He didn't know Marie personally before their storyline on the white lotus, but like many, he knew his work.

Speaker 6 I mean, the most familiar I was with him was Sex in the City, to be honest. That character was seared in my DNA.

Speaker 6 And,

Speaker 6 you know, I had recognized him from various shows, obviously looking.

Speaker 6 I just, he always stood out to me as such an amazing actor, but I knew him best from the Sex in the City episode.

Speaker 14 That afternoon, I was high on another feel-good drug, the new gay friend.

Speaker 5 Could you be more fantastic?

Speaker 14 And they say you can't meet men in bars.

Speaker 5 Well, that was true for me last night. I went to trade, hoping to meet someone new, but just just a shake so I've been a boyfriend Sydney.
Hmm. And the only person I met was you.

Speaker 5 Not that I'm disappointed.

Speaker 14 And your boyfriend doesn't mind if you date other men?

Speaker 5 Not date. Have sex with.

Speaker 14 Oh right, right. The international gay rules.
Absolutely.

Speaker 4 Blowjobs only, no last names.

Speaker 5 The gym is a free space and never ever show up at the same place wearing the same shirt. But then I just crossed over into a whole other set of rules.

Speaker 8 Lucas tells me he was just as surprised as Murray that their sex scene went so viral.

Speaker 6 Up until 10 minutes before we called to action, it was an anal sex scene.

Speaker 6 That was a thing that me and Murray had come up with on the spot of let's make it ass eating rather than just a normal anal sex. Like,

Speaker 6 I think it's more interesting and I think it's more shocking if you were to open a door and see that in a way.

Speaker 6 But that being said, I did not think it was going to

Speaker 6 blow up like that on the internet. And I think, I mean, it's great.
It's cool. It felt like,

Speaker 6 you know, you want to have those iconic moments and those memorable scenes and leave a stamp on the show. But I truly, it was like such a spur-of-the-moment decision.

Speaker 6 Like, we're about to roll, and then me and Murray and Mike are just discussing really quick, like, what can we do? That's even more funny, or more

Speaker 6 interesting, and more shocking. But Mike is constantly

Speaker 6 open and collaborating on the day. So, if it's kind of like best idea wins, and I think that's a really sign a good director and a good writer, a good actor, if they're able to

Speaker 6 not be married to their ideas and be able to kind of shape-shift into whatever's fresh and

Speaker 6 alive in the moment.

Speaker 14 Finally, we talked about the scene with Francesca Orsi, who runs drama series and films at HBO. Now, HBO had aired an analingus scene in the past, but the White Lotus scene was still quite audacious.

Speaker 15 There have been over the course of various shows, I'd say, and experiences and scripts and cuts that we will debate on whether something might be too risque or, you know, maybe inappropriate.

Speaker 15 There's a fearlessness in Mike and what he always

Speaker 15 proposes and how he writes and what it is that he's delivering. Never once on White Lotus have we ever challenged these audacious scenes? If anything,

Speaker 15 they made us blush, they made us gasp, but they made us feel gleeful and they made us burst out loud with laughter. So more.

Speaker 15 Go for it. If it's rooted in character, we're good.
If it's rooted in psychology, we're good. And you know what? It always feels earned.

Speaker 15 And sign us up for more.

Speaker 8 Now, back to the Sabrina Murray interview.

Speaker 14 Keeping on theme of the ass, another memorable scene of yours takes place in the season finale of the show.

Speaker 1 Oh, oh, fuck.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I'm in the pineapple suite and there's a fucking turd in my room.

Speaker 8 Somebody got in here and took a shit, not in the toilet, in my luggage, on my clothes.

Speaker 2 What the fuck?

Speaker 14 Can you talk about your reaction to learning that your character would not only be shitting in the suitcase, but that we would be seeing this act play out on screen?

Speaker 14 I think it's very different to imagine it versus to see the way it was realized on the show.

Speaker 5 Right.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I mean, you know, rewind back to when I was flying to Hawaii, having not read any of the scripts and getting to that point and being like, I what?

Speaker 5 I'm going to be the guy that like shits in a suitcase on TV. Okay.

Speaker 5 You know,

Speaker 5 I love Mike White so much and I had been a fan of him for years.

Speaker 5 So I just, you know, like, I mean, I can't say there weren't moments where I was like, oh my God, that is like kind of confronting or how is that going to play out?

Speaker 9 But like, I just thought it was brilliant.

Speaker 5 I mean, I got lucky because we were supposed to shoot that scene. At a certain point, a couple of weeks before when we were supposed to shoot it, something happened.

Speaker 5 I think someone got like a, you know, a false positive, but they were not allowed to work. They brought that scene up and we were like, I was dressed for another scene.

Speaker 5 Suddenly we were doing that scene, which was kind of great because then I was like, okay, let's go.

Speaker 5 But yeah, it was, it was,

Speaker 5 it was

Speaker 5 painstakingly detailed and precise in the way that we shot it.

Speaker 5 We did all different angles. I had like a five-minute conversation with the props guy about the, what he made the, the, like, the, the shit out of.
And like, it, it was like, which was extraordinary.

Speaker 9 Yeah. What was that?

Speaker 5 It was like also like a few different chocolate bars and like, I think peanut butter or I don't know, like a whole bunch of stuff. It was, it was very, very specific.

Speaker 5 And he was like, he was so awesome and it looked amazing. And then, you know, so we did all this stuff.
Luckily, I have really strong quads because I was squatting over that suitcase for a long time.

Speaker 5 And then, you know, I think right at the end,

Speaker 5 we shot the wide shot and Mike was like, we're just going to get the wide shot. Like, we're never going to use it.
But like, you know.

Speaker 5 So

Speaker 5 the day of, I think that that. or maybe the day before that episode aired, Mike called me like sounding really anxious, like, you've seen this episode, right? You've seen it.
I was like, yeah.

Speaker 5 And he said, well, you know, like, because I told you that we weren't going going to use that wide shot but like it was just the best shot and i just i hope you're not upset and i mean it's like it's an amazing

Speaker 5 right it's an it's an amazing shot and of course it's like the one that you use and it's so incredibly graphic which they didn't i think they they probably did use the the actual practical stuff that we had there, but a lot of it, I think, was done in post.

Speaker 5 But yeah, it was, it was, it was an extraordinarily long and detailed shooting of that scene that ended up in that one wide shot that was, you know, kind of brilliant.

Speaker 14 Speaking of viral moments, Sabrina, on season two, I recall one of the first big viral moments was this Peppa Pig moment that we spoke of earlier. Yes.

Speaker 14 You know, you talked about getting to that place, but I'm wondering what it was like for you, seeing the reaction to that scene online.

Speaker 14 I feel like that was a big moment for viewers and establishing the fact that this show that you loved the first time out, you're going to love it again this time.

Speaker 9 Alora, first I would like to say about the reaction on set

Speaker 9 because I said Peppa Pig, and then right away I felt they are going to fire me right now because

Speaker 9 I said something that was very offensive somehow, no?

Speaker 9 And so then the take finished and no one was saying a word. Like, I mean, I felt, oh my god, I have to explain who is Peppa Pig.
I didn't say that Jennifer is a pig, this is the cartoon.

Speaker 9 So I went to run, I ran away to get my phone and I looked for a mage of Peppa Pig. And I went to one of the producers and I said, Hey, look, look, look,

Speaker 9 this is the cartoon. I'm not saying bad things about.
Really, I remember that that moment I was sure to be fired.

Speaker 5 Can you imagine?

Speaker 9 I was so scared. But then look at Jennifer and Jennifer could not stop laughing.
He was like,

Speaker 9 She was laughing like this, like a child. And then John Grice came to me and he said, You made Jennifer laugh.
That's very rare. She's going to love you for life.
That's what he told me.

Speaker 9 And I will never forget that moment.

Speaker 13 Hey!

Speaker 10 Yes. Hello.
Hi.

Speaker 15 Yeah, could you take a photo of us

Speaker 15 on the best spot?

Speaker 9 For sure.

Speaker 15 You look so pink. Guess who I am?

Speaker 10 What? What?

Speaker 3 Peppa Pig.

Speaker 15 I'm Monica Viti.

Speaker 9 Monica Viti is dead.

Speaker 9 But yes.

Speaker 14 When you think about both of your characters, is there a single image that stands out as a memory or like a significant snapshot? of the character for you.

Speaker 9 I don't have the image. I have the deep, deep, deep memory of what I felt.
I think that the highest feeling that I felt while I was playing that role was in a scene at the bar.

Speaker 9 When Mia invites me to the room,

Speaker 9 I will always remember that moment.

Speaker 10 Tantia Huri Ate,

Speaker 10 Tantia Huri, Ate,

Speaker 9 I don't know who that person was. It was not me.

Speaker 9 I think it was a parallel life where I really, really felt that struggle. I really felt it inside my bones, inside my veins, everything.

Speaker 9 It's like I was Valentina. I was Valentina.
I was not Sabrina. I was Valentina.
I will never forget that, to be honest, that was, I think, the first time in my life I felt something like that.

Speaker 9 And I remember that after that moment,

Speaker 9 after that scene, I literally jumped on him, like I jumped physically on him. Like

Speaker 9 I was a monkey. I was a monkey around him and I was grabbing him and I was crying and I said, Mike, I love you.

Speaker 5 I love you. My cutiamo, I love you, Mike, I love you.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Speaker 9 And he said, don't thank me. You just did it.
You, yourself.

Speaker 5 I thought

Speaker 9 I was someone else, somewhere else.

Speaker 9 in another time, in another space, in another heart, in another body, in another brain. Thank to him.

Speaker 9 He allowed me to go in this mysterious place and now I'm back and I have to thank him.

Speaker 9 So that's the image that I have. It's an emotional image, it's not a picture.

Speaker 14 What about for you, Marie?

Speaker 5 There's one where I'm in my office and I found the girl's drugs and I'm just looking at the drugs and wondering if I can control myself. Because I think that's a huge

Speaker 5 thing thing for the character is definitely like a kind of an anchor point for me of like this

Speaker 5 he's overwhelmed by all this like obnoxiousness and all the kind of the insanity of the world around him

Speaker 5 and

Speaker 5 trying to resist

Speaker 5 his

Speaker 5 escape hatch

Speaker 5 you know being his

Speaker 5 potential addiction to or you know lapsing into his addiction with those with those things

Speaker 5 and I think what I love about that moment is it's it's quiet and he's not moving and it's just him by himself and when he's by himself sometimes at least it's

Speaker 5 it's kind of dark and sad yeah and the the other moment that springs to mind which is more of a sequence really is being completely high doing the dinner service where it's just like

Speaker 5 that that's unforgettable yeah it's it's so sort of

Speaker 5 because it's connected to that first image because it's that's what happens when he like really leans into that and it's equally sad and also just like ecstatic you know like because it's because he's taken a bunch of drugs um and he's running away but it's also like he's in ecstasy and he's feeling like what he wants to feel without the drugs as well, I guess, you know, or maybe, you know, without the drugs at all.

Speaker 5 But I, and

Speaker 5 interestingly, that second, that scene,

Speaker 5 Mike being the person who just makes you sets the

Speaker 5 atmosphere so that you can be your best and kind of sink into what you're doing, played the music that you hear in the show when I'm doing the dinner service, like

Speaker 5 incredibly loudly, so that I could just,

Speaker 5 and we sorted out this choreography with the camera. I mean, it went a lot longer than what you see.

Speaker 5 It's like it was this incredible dance that we did, and it was, and I, it was, that, that was the experience that I had with losing myself. Wow, you were so lucky.

Speaker 9 I'm so jealous.

Speaker 5 It was so released that was

Speaker 5 such an incredible

Speaker 5 amazing

Speaker 14 Thank you both so much and thank you for creating an atmosphere in which we all felt like we were all getting to speak with one another but it's you because my god you created this atmosphere The questions were so right.

Speaker 9 We couldn't stop talking.

Speaker 8 Well, that's that. An iconic meeting of the White Lotus managers' minds.
Two brilliant actors and indelible characters, Armand and Valentina forever.

Speaker 8 Next time on the White Lotus podcast, we will be delving into season two through the lens of its major themes: sex and romance.

Speaker 14 Some people will say to me, like, oh, I felt so bad for her.

Speaker 9 Then it's like, no, why?

Speaker 14 She was playing the game the whole time, just energetically, like, enjoying the game.

Speaker 11 Harper and Ethan being very

Speaker 11 superior about the fact that they never lie to each other. Well, then there's no gulf to bridge.

Speaker 12 Then there's no mystery. There's no eroticism in their relationship.
They're not fucking.

Speaker 14 He just looked at me.

Speaker 9 He just watched and listened.

Speaker 14 And then he was like, oh, I'm sorry. I thought you were, I thought you were like doing a bit as Portia.

Speaker 5 And I was like,

Speaker 5 whoa.

Speaker 14 Like, it just hit really deep because then that's when I realized, like, whoa, am I Porsche?

Speaker 14 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 14 Fact-checking by Gray Lanta. At Campside Media, our executive producer is Josh Dean.
Sound design and mix by Bart Warshaw at Cocoon Audio.

Speaker 14 Special thanks to Michael Gluckstadt, Allison Cohen-Sorokach, and Kenya Reyes from the HBO podcast team. Thank you for listening, and I'll see you next time.