Episode 2: Money, Money, Money

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I do think that there's a purpose in helping even rich people, you know? Helping them to find healing, making them feel more present, more aware. Yeah.
Because rich people, they're the ones that, you know, fucking up the whole world. Yeah.
I mean, I know a lot of rich, white, fucked up people. They could really use you.
Hi, everybody, and welcome back to the White Lotus podcast. This week, we're going to zero in on the themes that underpin the show's first season, specifically how money shapes the way we behave in the world.
We all know that Mike White is a master of taking champagne problems and spinning them into biting satire. You want a pina colada? That's a lot of sugar.

Okay.

But baked into the show are urgent questions

about justice, power hierarchies, and exploitation.

Like, how does our relationship with wealth,

whether we inherit it, earn it, or lack it,

influence our treatment of others?

And how does the experience of struggle or privilege

shape our attitudes about the world? There were so many just very keen observations about how like rich people talk to poor people or young people talk to old people. This is Hunter Harris, a culture writer and podcaster.
I sat down with her to gain her perspective.

All of those interactions just felt like, oh my gosh, I'm at the best party right now. Also, the specificity of these families, the families all feel, the characters all feel very familiar.
And I think that the way that these are not stereotypes, but just archetypes that we can fill in the blanks ourselves works very well. A lot of these ideas emerge in the show's pilot, which hinges on a character who, surprisingly, doesn't appear again afterward.
Lani, portrayed by the actress Jolene Purdy. Will you be needing anything else at this time, ma'am? We meet Lani at the start of episode one.
She's a native Hawaiian and a trainee at the White Lotus, striving to make a good impression on her more experienced colleagues.

And she could easily be believed to be the show's lead.

One thing is just, where are the bags?

Right there, right behind you.

But Lonnie's storyline takes a turn when we learn that she's heavily pregnant,

a condition she kept from her employer for fear of losing the job.

Oh my God, there are all the babies coming or something.

No, no way.

No, I swear.

Baby.

Thank you. a condition she kept from her employer for fear of losing the job.
Oh my God, there are all the babies coming or something. No, no way.
No, I swear. Baby.
I hurt so freaking bad, I don't know what to do. Lonnie's story only lasts for one episode, all while the hotel guests are blithely beginning their vacations.
But her mini-arc underscores a crucial point. There's a small army of people whose sacrifices and invisible labor keep the White Lotus running, even if their stories aren't always depicted.
Lonnie, as like the first image of the show, feels like a disclaimer, that like maybe we shouldn't be doing any of this at all. I think the first time I watched the show, I expected Lonnie to be bigger or more important.
But ultimately, I think I kind of came around to the fact that she's not more important to the show. Because that's how the show is.
That's how the people would treat her. That's what the show is critiquing, this, you know, microcosm of society where this young, pregnant woman who needs a job is cast aside.
Just so that someone can get nicer pillows or someone can get a nicer table at dinner. And I think a very almost gamified way of watching television is like, how is this one little moment scene going to come back five episodes from now and like really turn everything on its head? And I almost thought, oh, maybe it's going to be a version of that where Lonnie is going to become like so integral to like a reveal at the end.
And I'm so happy. I think it's a better show because it wasn't.
In the first episode of this podcast, you heard how Hawaii became the show's setting almost by happenstance since the hotel was empty due to the pandemic. But the use of Hawaii as a setting is actually quite significant.
The legacy of tourism in Hawaii is one of extraction, of exploitation, of we've kind of taken this island and called it our vacation without any real concern or even sensitivity to the people who already live here. I mean, at least as a viewer, I thought that was Mike White kind of saying like, okay, we're trying to show what it is when white people come to a place where they are not from and really just destroy.
And I think that that is Hawaii, that it's like the most beautiful place. And yet everyone comes there to behave badly, to exploit and to destroy.
And it's a place where everyone has like their big epiphany, whatever. But we're seeing the people who make that fantasy real for them is very interesting.

It's kind of like the most perfect setting

for a story that is ultimately about dominance,

about people trying to exercise

or take more power over someone else.

It happens between Tanya and Belinda.

It happens between Olivia and Paula.

It happens between the parents.

And the Hawaii setting is just, I think,

Thank you. It happens between Olivia and Paula.
It happens between the parents. And the Hawaii setting is just, I think, a perfect distillation of that dynamic.
I'm going to unpack each of the dominance storylines Hunter just mentioned. Tanya and Belinda, Olivia and Paula, and the Mosbacher family more broadly.
But first, I want to switch gears for a moment just to talk about the very first character we see on screen, Shane.

Travel agent must have called. Finally getting some respect.

Shane, in a perhaps unlikely casting move, is portrayed by Jake Lacey, who up to his turn on

the White Lotus was known largely for a different sort of role.

Leading up to doing this, I think what people maybe were most like familiar with me doing was like good boyfriend stuff. Just like the sweet guy you meet at the whatever, the cafe.
Obviously, Shane is not a good boyfriend. He's a tool and a brat.
But when Jake sat down with Mike White to discuss the part, Mike framed the role in a specific way. When we first met in Hawaii, he sat with me and he was like, you know, I think Shane is a good guy who just wants to have a nice time on vacation and everybody is screwing it up forum.
And I also think that when you have a lot, a lot, a lot of money, there is a paranoia that comes with that about how you're being treated. And you don't know if people are being nice or rude because of what they assume you are or how they assume you are.

Or if you've done something and you didn't realize it and now they're put out.

Or if they want something from you.

Or if they're actually being friendly.

And so I think he's always trying to crunch the numbers on why he's being treated a certain way.

People have been coming for me my whole life.

I'm just playing the hand I was dealt. Like, yeah, it's a great hand.
And that's not my fault. Those two elements together for me were what I would lean on constantly if I was, you know, looking at a scene and being like, I don't know what's going on here.
And that is insightful beyond what I arrived with. You know, I was much more in judgment of this character.
And he was like, no, he's a good guy. Because in Shane's mind, he's a good guy, you know.
Right. And knew to, like, offer that to me instead of being like, he's kind of a dick.
Because then as an actor, you're like, no one walks around thinking, like, I'm kind of a dick. You know, like, I'm kind of rude to people, actually.
You go, you justify the way that you behave. Molly Shannon, who plays Shane's mom, Kitty, also got some great advice from Mike White on how to play a catty lady of leisure.
Well, I had somebody in my mind, kind of loosely in the back of my head who reminds me of a kiddie type. I won't say who.
So she was a little bit on my mind. But then Mike was like, no, no, no, you don't have to act rich because I think I was trying to act kind of snotty.
He's like, no, no, you're just natural. You just have money.
You're loaded. You're just a mom who's you're just rich and you know what I mean? He was like, throw it way casual.
You've have money. You're loaded.
You're just a mom who's, you're just rich.

And action, you know what I mean?

He was like, throw it away, casual.

You've had money for a long time, honey.

Yeah, you're making me sound like a trophy wife.

Well, what's so wrong with that?

I think she really just wants her son to be happy.

So I think she's like, here's what you have to do, honey. Keep my son happy.

Don't do this little job. Like, don't do that.
You're going to be taken care of. Why would you want to work? The show begins with Shane in the airport, gazing out the window as a body bag gets wheeled onto the plane.
And in doing so, he sets up for the audience the big mystery driving the show. Who's in the body bag? The thing is, that mystery is really more of a framing device than what the show's actually about.
Jake talked to Mike about that. This is after we'd shot it.
He was like, you know, I'm sort of making fun of the form. And I was like, what do you mean? And he was like, well, every show now is like a dead body.
It's like rich white people in a dead body. So I actually want to talk about how does money affect relationships, personal, private, public, at work, at home, family, marriage, employer, employee.
What does money do to not corrupt in a necessarily negative way, but just like taint those relationships or kind of put the thumb on the scale in one direction or another. And in order to do that, I show you a dead body at the beginning and then we don't talk about it for five episodes, and then you find out who the body is.

And so it's a little bit of a misdirect,

but I'm kind of tired of these shows.

I was like, dude, that's incredible.

After the dead body set up,

we pivot to meet the remaining cast of characters,

each of whom, as Jake pointed out,

conveys something specific about how wealth impacts relationships. He went to Dartmouth.
International finance. She loves him, but...
He's got a small dick. He's a closet Adderall snorter.
Gives him an edge at work. Makes his dick even smaller.
First up, Olivia and Paula, played by Sidney Sweeney and Brittany O'Grady. Hunter Harris told me that, like many, she relishes this storyline.

Upon first watch, my favorite two characters were Paula and Olivia. And not, I mean, they were like, you know, like the mean, hot teens who, I mean, my God, it's like, I would do anything to get them to like me.
the way that a teenage girl and listen I've had this before and I've since lost it, can look at you and just like completely desabilize your entire sense of self. It's like, oh my God, I actually apologize for breathing your air.
I did not mean to. But I just thought that like the friendship dynamic between the two of them, where it's like one friend who, in Olivia, who is like wealthy, has everything at her fingertips, but, still wants the one thing that feels unavailable to her, which is whatever Paula has.

Paula likes this boy.

Now, suddenly, Olivia turns her eye to this boy.

Paula, you know, has these drugs.

Now, suddenly, Olivia really wants these drugs.

That kind of friendship dynamic felt very, you know, relatable to me in my life as a young woman growing up in high school and in college and even sometimes still today where you love someone so much but at the same time you're coveting them so specifically they were partying all night and making weird lesbian noises we weren't being lesbians dad yeah we were being sea hags it was called the untitled mike white project it was just quirky HBO show, and it was sent through my email during the pandemic. This is Brittany O'Grady, who plays Paula.
When she first read the sides for her audition, she had no idea what she was in for. I just remember getting the script, and it was the sides where Paula and Olivia are analyzing all the people in the boat.
And so I thought that Paula and Olivia together were going to be just these, like, quirky, funny, smart, alert characters. And little did I know that the arc was going to be what it was.
And they were really going to either resonate with people or irk people or trigger people. And the scene where Jake Lacey is swimming and he's, like to us at the pool, that was like one of the first scenes.
And me, Sydney and Jake were just like laughing. And so as Alex were like, this is such like tool behavior, like on his honeymoon talking to like 19 year old girls.
Similar to how Jake Lacey accessed Shane, Brittany had to take a specific angle in order to bring Paula to life.

The way I channeled her was so interesting because I had to really justify everything she did and I don't necessarily do, which I need to work on as an actor. I'm like, like I kind of judge my characters and judge myself at times in my life.
I guess that's human. But I think that the core emotion that I would feel is just isolated and not feeling seen or heard and seeing things as unfair.
It was almost like you're in a room and you feel like you're the only one, but there's a bunch of people around you and they don't understand you. They don't see you or they only see you in a certain lens is she your friend yeah she's my friend as long as she has more of everything than i do but if i have something of my own she wants it and i definitely related to that myself in my life when i was in college or just sitting at dinner tables with conversation being had and you being the only person of color or being a woman or being someone that wants society to progress forward and for us to learn how our actions impact other people.
It seems like Brittany knew intuitively. Olivia and Paula aren't just acerbic teens.
They're telegraphing what it looks like to be a Gen Z-er today. Most people admire people who achieve things, but you somehow look at it as if it's a personality disorder.
Making shit happen all the time is a compulsion. It staves off feelings of emptiness.
Or whatever. Okay, the real question is, what exactly are you getting done? Putin is an overachiever.
He's impressive, also evil. On the one hand, I can totally, I think politically, I'm probably more in line with the girls.
Like, you know, we probably shouldn't be going to Hawaii. Like, we probably should not be so thrilled that these Native people are performing for us, you know.
But at the other hand, I'm like, now hold on now. Connie Britton is kind of right.
Like, you're buying the hand that feeds you, and how dare you? It's funny how you're able to have so much compassion for all these groups of oppressed peoples you don't even know and yet not for your family.

Yep, okay. Who actually know you and love you.
You're a generation's only sacred value, biting the hand that feeds you. That is such a conversation that I just had not really seen on TV in such an intense, visceral way.
where I think that's also kind of like the skill of the show

is that the minute that you're siding with someone a little bit too much,

it turns on you in a second, and it's like,

oh, but actually these are kind of like two bratty teenagers

who don't know what they're talking about,

and they don't have to pay any bills, and they can't afford any of this.

And the fact that they are not even aware of their own privilege

is very telling.

Olivia and Paula turn a blind eye toward their positions of privilege

But I think that's a good one. are not even aware of their own privilege is very telling.
Olivia and Paula turn a blind eye toward their positions of privilege, positioning themselves instead as the enlightened arbiters of right and wrong, cool and uncool. Meanwhile, Olivia's dad, Mark Mossbacher, is having his own crisis of identity, specifically the challenge, challenge air quotes, of being a white man today.
One of my favorite dynamics on the show was the kind of conversations around race and masculinity, where Mark is saying, like, well, you know, men can't do anything. And, like, you all want to cancel men.
I mean, for years, I was the good guy. You know, I was the one in the room saying, like, hey, that's not cool to all the chauvinists and bigots.
And now I'm the bad guy. Or at least I shouldn't say anything on account of my inherited traits.
And I wondered, you know, where Mike White stands on that because there did seem to be a real sense of, like, you don't know what you're talking about to the two girls, which in some ways they didn't, but in some ways I think that they did. Mark's crisis of masculinity comes up again later when he learns that his father was gay.
You know, he was probably a bottom. That's how you mostly get it, receiving.
Dad, do you feel like your father was less of a man or something? What really struck me about that scene in particular is that you can see the way that they're, as a family unit, trying to, like, bend and understand one another, but also still kind of critiquing each other and kind of, like, tone-pleasing one another. But then they're also tee-heeing, being kind of annoying, like, just, like, trying to provoke him.
And Connie Britton, I think there is a way that she knows this language of what it means to be woke, whatever that means. And she's kind of offering an olive branch to them by saying, OK, I understand what you're talking about, but also like relax.
Like also we're off the clock. Like you don't have to do that.
You know, if he's having a negative visceral reaction to his father having gay sex, it's valid. It's fine.
Well, it comes off as homophobic. I think that is like a very funny dynamic between a mother and her daughter being like, okay, all that stuff that you're saying flies in seminar, but we're on vacation with your family and you need to like kind of dial it down.
Like you need to meet your father in this moment of like his kind of anguish over this revelation. As Mark faces his internal dilemma, his frustrations find a corollary in his son, Quinn, played by Fred Hetchinger.
What's real is, like gay, straight, whatever, we're just monkeys, just fucking monkeys.

Yeah? Yeah. While Mark is busy reclaiming his manhood, Quinn diverges from his dad.
He starts

hanging out with the locals on the beach, mulling on nature, and worrying about all the world's pain.

What does it matter what we think if we think the right things or the wrong things? We all do

I'm sorry. He starts hanging out with the locals on the beach, mulling on nature, and worrying about all the world's pain.
What does it matter what we think if we think the right things or the wrong things? We all do the same shit. We're all still parasites on the earth.
This journey ultimately lands him at his own understanding of what it means to be a good man in the world. During the rewatch, I was very moved, and I did not expect this at all, by the son, Quinn, and how he just kind of does not really fit within this family.
I mean, I don't know if you saw the election, but there's a male loneliness epidemic. And I really felt like, oh, I see how that happens.
I see how he doesn't fit in with his sister, doesn't fit in with his parents, and is kind of like looking for purpose and looking for a way to take ownership of his life as a teenage boy. Fred, his storyline, Mike pointed out partway through, he was like, you know, he's the only one who changes.
Jake Lacey again. He's the only one who grows here.
He's like the little prince, like he's the hero of the story. Everybody else stays in their shit, you know, They think they've grown or changed or had an experience, but they really haven't been present to the culture here or the islands or nature or anything.
He's the only one who breaks out from how he arrived. While Quinn is busy finding himself through the natural world, Olivia and Paula's storyline comes to a climax when Paula starts dating Kai, a native Hawaiian who works at the White Lotus.
Hey. Hey.
I won't stop. Sorry, I couldn't get away.
Come on, I got a surprise for you. Once Kai tells Paula about his initiative to benefit native Hawaiians, Paula encourages him to do something drastic.
Drastic being steal Olivia's mom's $75,000 bracelet from her safe. Kai ends up trying to steal the bracelet, only to be arrested for assault and attempted burglary.
Ultimately, Paula doesn't help Kai. She hurts him, and in doing so, ends up positioned squarely alongside the Mosfockers, despite her efforts to undermine them.
When I look back, I think the major feeling I would channel is just feeling alone or isolated or not being seen truly. And I think she retaliated in a way that also caused harm to Kai and to his future.
Do you need money or something?

No.

I just, you won't understand.

I have a scene where Olivia is hugging Paula after she did what she did,

and they're on this pull-out cot,

and Paula's crying.

And one of the takes I said, I'm sorry.

And then Mike came to me, he's like, don't say sorry. He's like, don't say sorry.
She's not sorry. I was like, damn.
Okay. Like it was, and that was hard.
Like it was challenging because I think there's a lot of women of color that constantly are being made to be small or made to accommodate whiteness at times. And so that was an interesting call out from the perspective of that character specifically.
I fucked everything up. It's okay.
It's okay. It was a big production.
I was 24 at the time. I'm now 28.
And it was intimidating, but also very, I don't know, I just felt so empowered and lucky and determined to play Paula. And I felt like Mike was such a champion for me as an actor and such a champion for Paula's storyline.
Once the show aired, Brittany saw an array of responses to the character of Paula. Some people identified with her, others not so much.
Normally, in my experience, people just blurt out and tell me what they think, and then they're like, done. So, people, I've definitely had some people be like, oh my gosh, loved Paula.
She, like, she was the Robin Hood. Like, she was the one that saw everything.
And then some people were like, I didn't really like her character. Or, my mom didn't really love Paula.
And then there was a lot of online talk dissecting the characters. And a lot of people either related to Paula and felt like she was super justified.
Some people felt like Paula benefited from the experience of the family. And she was a part of the system of oppression, which I thought was a really interesting, in-depth take.
What Britney's alluding to here is the idea that Paula, in the finale,

makes a choice to align herself with the Mossbockers.

In the episode, Paula stands up to Olivia, finally giving her a piece of her mind.

I'm not my parents, Paula.

But you are.

Actually, you are.

You think you're like this rebel, but in the end, this is your tribe. And yet, after Paula throws away the necklace and then cries to Olivia, she essentially chooses her tribe as well.
Better to be aligned with the power and wealth than to position yourself against it. At least then you reap its benefits.
The Olivia-Paula relationship finds a parallel in another season one dynamic, Belinda and Tanya. I talked to Hunter about it.
From minute one, it felt sort of tragic to me that Belinda is allowing herself to get so hopeful because of who Tanya is, because of the show we're watching, perhaps, but also just because of the way that, at least

in my experience, a certain type of white woman has engaged with Black women and Black people.

And so I watched it with a real sense of tragedy, horror, tension.

Here's what I'm thinking, Tanya. We could do a consultation.
That way I can get a better sense

of what's going on with you and your body. And I could give you a cranial sacral, which I always

recommend. So no massage.
I think you'll find this really cathartic. When Tanya meets

Thank you. your body and I could give you a cranial sacral, which I always recommend.
So no massage. I think you'll find this really cathartic.
When Tanya meets Belinda, their roles are very clear, right? Belinda is a healer of sorts and like she is being paid to help Tanya. But then it's like Tanya just kind of her own loneliness makes it seem like she is looking for something more.
I don't know that she actually is. I don't know that Tanya really needs a friend or wants a friend because Tanya just moves very minute to minute.
It's like right now she needs a woman, right now she needs a man, right now she wants a boyfriend, you know, all of that, which I think is kind of interesting about her. But the Tanya-Belinda relationship, in my mind, from the very first watch, like from minute one,

it made me just because I'm a Black woman that I just felt like this is not going to go well.

Belinda ought to have a very clear sense of what the boundary is between someone that is paying her for her time versus a real, like, true friend. And I don't think Tanya would understand that boundary at all, obviously, because that's what ends up happening.

We got the chance to talk to Natasha Rothwell, who plays Belinda, about the experience. Before The White Lotus, Natasha was known for a variety of roles, from her star-making turn on Insecure to a personal favorite of mine, her appearance as a tired but passionate teacher in Love, Simon.
I'm classically trained. I came up in the theater.
And while I love comedy, comedians can do drama. And to be allowed to do that and for the world to see it was the thing that was the most emotional for me.
It was allowing the industry at large, but the world at large to be able to understand that, you know, plus size Black women aren't a monolith. Like we contain multitudes.
that, to me, was the exciting part. And then to have that vulnerability of being seen in a new way, be met with such love, that was really powerful, to have work exist in the world where I was able to showcase my flexibility as an actor.
When Natasha learned about the show, she said that her first thought was, how in the world are we going to make a TV show during a global pandemic? Which I think is an understandable thought to have. I hadn't left my house, so I was just deeply concerned about like, what were the protocols? Like, how are we going to do this? And like, how do we act six feet away from each other? And then after the COVID piece was sort of discussed amongst my team, I really had concerns, not because of Mike, but just because of the world we live in, that a Black character in a subservient position with mostly white actors, written by someone who was not a person of color, I was like, this could be horrible.
Like, not for anyone meaning it to be, but just because it's just the world we live in.

Natasha's team reached out to Mike to see if he might be willing to meet with Natasha as a writer so that she could share her ideas about how to make Belinda more authentic. To her surprise, he agreed.
When I say he pounced at this opportunity, like I was blown away by the collaboration of Mike and his excitement over working with me to the point where I like got emotional with my agent because I was like, he's, he's, he's Mike White, echo, echo, echo. You know what I mean? And I was just like, I had just written on Insecure.
Like I didn't have the resume he has in terms of writing. And so for him to want to work with me, I was just ready for it to be like, yeah, send him like an email and he'll consider it.
But we sat down and went through every single episode together. For some viewers, Belinda was the audience proxy, a kind of moral compass amid a hotel full of entitled guests.
I think audiences over-identified with Belinda as well because they didn't want to identify as the guests. They were just like very much not wanting to be seen as the problem.
And so I do think the support around Belinda was sort of twofold of just like folks really wanting to see more from this character but also trying to absolve their own sins by rooting for her. There's this woman, this guest, this rich white lady.
She took me out to dinner and she said if I wanted to start my own wellness center she'd fun the whole thing. Mom, you have to do that.
That fucking place exploits you, Mom. That lady says jump, you say how high.
I'm serious. Work it.
Get your own thing going. You deserve it.
All right, we'll see. We'll see.
I think the Tanya-Belinda relationship is one of the finer points of the show. The point that it gets very, you know, note perfect.
Because Belinda, you know, believing in Tanya is so tragic. It's so like, oh, she will disappoint you.
And then I think on one level, Belinda knows that. And I think someone else even tells her that, right? She has a scene with Armand, maybe, where she watches him behaving badly, getting so intertwined in these people's lives a little bit too much.
And she's warning him, like, OK, you know, be careful. Yeah, I'm OK.
I'm not going down that road again. Then get rid of the pills.
Absolutely. 100%.
And then she's, you know, being kind of captured by the exact same romance. Oh, maybe this one woman can change my entire life.
Tanya makes Belinda feel very special because she's almost a mirror reflecting what Belinda has poured into her. And just like the small ways, like come to dinner with me, even though like this is your place of work.
Why would you want to stay at work late? But then the minute that Tanya gets her cup filled by someone else, even a little bit, then she's like, digmatized, like, okay, see, I wouldn't want to be, uh. Over the course of the season, Belinda gets slowly crushed under the weight of Tanya's, what do we want to call them, antics? Tanya dangles a carrot in front of Belinda, the promise that she'll help Belinda start her own business, before pulling it away entirely at the last minute.
It's pretty heartbreaking to watch.

Belinda ends the season with her pain

entirely ignored by Tanya and drained of the energy

to help yet another white woman looking for sympathy.

I don't want to burden you with this.

I'm just having a moment.

What do you think?

You want my advice? I'm all out. That was the end of Belinda's run.
Until recently, when it was announced she'd return for season three. I wasn't holding my breath for a more in-depth story for Belinda, even though that's what I wanted, because I understood her function in the season to be an agent of change for Tanya, but also bring a humanity to those folks in the service

industry. And I felt like, you know, in my mind, I'm like, tick, tick, you know, like,

the job was done. Although as a writer and as an actor producer, of course, I want to know

where she lives and why she doesn't quit this job. There was more to her for sure.
And when season two came, there was I try to explain to people like I had zero expectations of like, oh, season two, I'm going to come back. Like I didn't I didn't think it was like repertory theater in that way.
I thought it was very much like one and done. And I couldn't wait to see what the new class like, like had to offer.
And when I saw Jennifer come back, I remember texting her. I was like, yes, bitch.
Like, I was so excited for her. I think that's why when I heard about the season three, I was just like, out of my body excited because it was just like, oh, it's we're going to do we're going to do the thing.
We're going to make her like we're going to dive deeper. And that was just like such a treat.
To close out Natasha, I asked her a hard question. How has this show changed her life? So many ways.
Personally, it made me realize like I need to like lean in to what I can do, which is really hard because imposter syndrome is very real. And even recently I heard this black woman on Instagram was just like, imposter syndrome for people of color is not a real thing because it's just us realizing how we're actually being perceived.
It's not like in our heads. And so to look at it

through that lens, it's, oh, this world that often sees me in a certain light is seeing me in a new

way. And that, I don't know why I'm getting choked up, but it's a powerful thing to be a part of

something that allows you to be seen more fully. And that is life-changing both professionally and personally.

Oh, Mr. Patton and Ms.
Undecided.

Finding everything to your liking?

Actually, I think you put us in the wrong room.

We were supposed to be in the honeymoon suite.

We've talked about Mike's exceptional writing.

Now I want to highlight an example from Shane's storyline that showcases just how sharp it can be. Shane spends much of season one in a feud with Armand, the hotel manager, about his room assignment.
He wanted the pineapple suite and was given the palm suite instead. You guys made a mistake.
Okay, so just don't up to your mistake.

It's all I'm asking.

Shane may act like a baby,

pouting and grumbling and moaning

and getting all worked up.

But ultimately, he isn't wrong in his suspicions.

Armand did screw up the booking

and Shane wasn't given the room he was promised.

I talked to Jake Lacey about that.

We were doing press for this

and I would be like,

you know, Shane's not wrong. Like they lied to him.
He is paying an exorbitant amount of money for a room. And then they gave him the wrong room.
And people, I think, thought it was sort of like a bit that I was doing as like a PR whatever. Like he really believes it.
And I was like, no, no, no, no, no. This isn't some angle.
That's the truth. This guy got fucked and he's paying $20,000 a night.
He's going to spend $150,000 at this hotel. And you gave him the wrong room and lied to him about it.
The way that he goes about addressing that is egregious. But the root of what's happened here is that he was lied to.
And that in each of the characters, each of their stories, each of the relationships or moments of friction, Mike has written everyone that you can understand where they're coming from. And then you put people with like different points of view and opposing needs in the same room and a limited supply and a lot of demand and like, it's going to go sideways, but there's no one that's really purely the villain or the hero.
Like, it's not black hat, white hat, good guy, bad guy. You just go, what a mess.
Wow. I spoke to Hunter about this gray area, too.
I've definitely seen that judgment. People thinking that, like, Connie Britton as Nicole is, like, you know, such a mean-spirited bitch.
People hating Shane because he's like just obviously so arrogant and obnoxious and like such a mama's boy. And all that stuff, you know, is true or whatever.
But at the same time, it's like I don't think about watching this show and thinking like, okay, you're bad, you're good, next. You're bad, you're bad, next.
Like, because that's just like it's a TV show. And I think maybe it was because I had been familiar with Mike White's work before that I never wondered if he knew that this person was bad or this person was good.
They're all behaving badly. I mean, my goodness.
Like, go outside. Everyone's behaving badly.
The Shane and Armand conflict culminates in the finale when Armand memorably sneaks into Shane's room to leave him a special something in his suitcase. We're going to get into that scene, I promise we will, and the Armand character in depth in our next podcast episode, but for now I'll just say it's a pretty remarkable ending.
Jake Lacey thought so too. I'd seen the first script when I arrived in Hawaii, but that was it.
And we had to quarantine for a week in our rooms. And they left five binders of all of the completed scripts in our rooms, in our hotel rooms.
So then I was just alone reading these scripts. And I, at the end of the last episode, I was like pumping my fist in the air out of enthusiasm for what this was.
And also remember being like, are they going to let us do this? You can do this? Like, I don't know why I thought that. It seems so naive.
It's not like we're doing something hardcore sexual content or like wild violence or something. I've heard that a good ending has to be

both inevitable and surprising. And that felt exactly that.
Really, like when Murray dies,

when he takes a shit in the suitcase and then gets killed, I was like, yes! Oh my God! That's it for this time. Next time on the White Lotus official podcast, we'll dive into the season one and season two hotel managers, Armand and Valentina.
I felt, oh my God, I have to explain who is Peppa Pig. I didn't say that Jennifer is a pig.
I remember that that moment I was sure to be fired. We went to Mike and said, we think this should be like an ass-eating thing.
And he was like, he paused and then he went, can we do that? 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.

Fact-checking by Gray Lanta.

At Campside Media, our executive producer is Josh Dean.

Sound design and mix by Bart Warshaw at Cocoon Audio.

Special thanks to Michael Gluckstadt,

Alison Cohen-Sorokach,

and Kenya Reyes from the HBO podcast team.

Thank you for listening, and I'll see you next time.

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