Episode 1: Origins

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Speaker 6 Here they come.

Speaker 7 Big smiles.

Speaker 8 Hi, everyone, and welcome to the official look back podcast for seasons one and two of the HBO original series The White Lotus.

Speaker 8 My name is Evan Ross Katz. I'm a writer, podcaster, and I've been a fan and champion of The White Lotus since day one.

Speaker 8 When I heard HBO was putting out a new Mike White series and that it would be starring Jennifer Coolidge, I was, as I like to say, instantly seated, popcorn at the ready, and I quickly learned how many of us there were.

Speaker 8 As we all know, the series chronicles a week in the lives of the guests and staff of a luxury resort chain in Hawaii and Sicily.

Speaker 8 Each season begins with at least one dead body, before rewinding to the beginning of the guests' vacation and unspooling the antics that led to the killing.

Speaker 8 Over eight episodes of this podcast, we're going to dive into these antics by analyzing how certain struggles over money, sex, and power can drive people to the brink.

Speaker 8 We'll also be breaking down the show's unforgettable theme music and examining a selection of its most memorable moments and storylines.

Speaker 8 So buckle up because everything you thought you knew about the White Lotus is really just the beginning.

Speaker 10 I had pre-recorded with a singer basically one note, this thing with the mouth,

Speaker 11 something like that.

Speaker 12 I jumped physically on him like I was a monkey and I was crying and I said, Mike, I love you.

Speaker 13 I love you, Mike. You Tiamo, I love you, Mike.

Speaker 14 I think they would have preferred somebody else for that movie.

Speaker 15 And Mike was like, no, I want Molly.

Speaker 6 It was like working with David Finch. We did it, I don't know how many times.
Felt like 30 takes.

Speaker 16 I was like, oh my god, this is a nightmare. I don't know what I'm doing.

Speaker 12 Politically, I'm probably more in love with the girls. The other hand, I'm like, now hold on now.
You're buying a hand that feeds you and how dare you?

Speaker 17 People thought it was sort of like a bit that I was doing.

Speaker 18 Like, he really believes it. And I was like, no, no, no, no, no.
This isn't some angle.

Speaker 17 That's the truth.

Speaker 19 I really had concerns that a black character in a subservient position with mostly white actors, this could be horrible.

Speaker 16 I knock the whole entire wine over. It explodes on the four seasons white couch and rug.
I mean, it ruins all the furniture.

Speaker 17 Mike White was saying things that I felt that I'd been screaming into the void and trying to get across to straight people.

Speaker 21 I watched it going, oh my God, I'm not crazy.

Speaker 12 Maybe it's just good to be killed off sometimes, you know, before people really hate your guts.

Speaker 8 Before we get into all that, I want to start off by talking about what led to the first season of The White Lotus getting made.

Speaker 8 The story goes back almost two decades and starts with something unexpected. A pair of shoes.

Speaker 3 I was wearing a suit and dress shoes, which I thought were nice shoes. And then I later found out they were cheap, ugly shoes.

Speaker 8 This is David Burnett, a Hollywood producer. In 2006, David was working at UTA when, upon a recommendation from a friend, he went in for an interview to become Mike White's assistant.

Speaker 8 The footwear almost cost him the job.

Speaker 3 Mike hated them and then didn't want to hire me because of my cheap ugly shoes.

Speaker 8 Still, Mike ended up hiring David and he and Mike became fast friends.

Speaker 3 We bonded very quickly, really on reality TV.

Speaker 3 We bonded on the amazing race, and I had two friends from college who had just won amazing race, which was an impressive feat at the time knowing someone who had won an amazing race and we bonded on our love of survivor about a year after david had begun working with mike mike left on a trip to spain david went with him as his assistant mike was supposed to be working on a new script but instead the two of them really just coasted we just drove around andalusia and we we we had a crazy like 14 city tour when mike was supposed to be working and i was there in spain supposed to be you know being his assistant and supposed to be helping him but instead it just turned into a vacation.

Speaker 8 It was on that trip that an idea for a series began to take shape in Mike's mind, an idea that would eventually grow into a television sensation.

Speaker 8 David remembers first hearing about it in Tarifa, Spain.

Speaker 3 We were walking on the beach and he said, I have an idea for a show. And it's basically like a honeymoon couple.

Speaker 3 And it's an upstairs, downstairs relationship. And at the beginning,

Speaker 3 the groom is at the airport and the bride is missing. We don't know what's happened to her.

Speaker 3 And then we'll kind of cut back and then you're going to travel through Southeast Asia exploring colonialism. And, you know, they're going to be staying at these incredible hotels.

Speaker 3 And you're going to have to see the same people at every hotel because the same people have the same travel agents and they're all doing the same tours.

Speaker 3 It's a honeymoon show just following a honeymoon couple, kind of like scenes from a marriage through Southeast Asia.

Speaker 8 We also talked about how it all began with the man himself, the writer, director, and creator of The White Lotus, Mike White.

Speaker 8 He tracks tracks the idea back to his time on The Amazing Race, which he went on with his dad, Mel in 2009, around the time he was working on his first HBO show, Enlightened.

Speaker 22 The Amazing Race was

Speaker 22 exactly what I felt like I was missing in Hollywood production, which was like, I love traveling, I love getting out of LA and this sense of an adventure.

Speaker 22 And

Speaker 22 I was like, how do I do this? I, you know, whatever. I'm smart.

Speaker 22 I can come up with something that will supplement my life you know i it's like i need to come up with an idea you know enlightened was great but like we we were basically on a soundstage in burbank and i don't want to do that again you know what i mean so like i had this idea i was like it should be like a couple on a honeymoon like amazing race i guess where it's like you're following this couple who's out of their normal element

Speaker 22 and over the course of the season they get to know each other in ways that they didn't really know each other which was kind of one of the main ideas of the first season, the Alexander Didario and Jake Lacey storyline, which is like a girl who gets caught up in the excitement of the wedding, and then she starts to realize who she's married to, you know, and then I thought maybe each season you'd follow a different couple on their hunt, you know, like on some trip.

Speaker 8 Mike and David ended up pitching the show around, but they had trouble getting bites.

Speaker 3 Mike always thought of this as an anthology series where each season there would be a different couple you're exploring, a different dynamic, different countries.

Speaker 3 And I think this was kind of ahead of its time where people were not looking for anthology series. There was a different iteration of it at one point that was going to happen around 2014, 2015.

Speaker 3 And Mike was in Sri Lanka working on it, and it was going to be a honeymoon couple. I think we were going to do Sri Lanka, Hong Kong, in Tokyo.
And then that fell apart.

Speaker 8 Fast forward to 2019, when Mike started writing a series called The Tears of St. Patsy.
It was set to star Mike's old friend, Jennifer Coolidge.

Speaker 22 I had another idea for Jennifer,

Speaker 22 a script that I had written about a woman who she's an actress and she's gonna get this life achievement award in some like obscure film festival in a foreign country and doesn't realize that the whole thing is just her her husband she's estranged from is trying to kill her before like the divorce goes through.

Speaker 22 And so it's like this conspiracy, you know, like, you know, dial-in for murder kind of thing.

Speaker 8 Mike and David shopped the tears of of St. Patsy around, but everyone sadly passed.

Speaker 8 Actually, some years later, during Mike's Golden Globe's acceptance speech for the White Lotus, he made reference to the experience.

Speaker 22 I know you all passed. You all passed on this show.

Speaker 8 That brings us to early 2020. We all know what happened then.

Speaker 7 It was 2020, and we were just facing a pandemic that had us all on lockdown.

Speaker 8 Francesca Orsi runs drama series and films at HBO, which means that in the spring of 2020, she and Casey Bloise, the CEO of HBO, were reeling.

Speaker 7 We didn't have much in the way of programming. We were facing complete open slots, just holes in the schedule, without anything to air other than reruns of Sopranos.

Speaker 7 Casey and I were talking and sort of spitballing about

Speaker 7 who we could reach out to that

Speaker 7 is

Speaker 7 great with story, could maybe

Speaker 7 bubble up with a cast

Speaker 7 and deliver a season of scripts quickly.

Speaker 7 No one came to mind except for Mike White.

Speaker 7 And I didn't say anything to Casey on the phone at that point. I was just thinking and ruminating on it.
But I just reached out to Mike independently just to see what he was up to.

Speaker 8 Remember how the original idea for the White Lotus came to Mike on a road trip through Europe?

Speaker 8 As coincidence would have it, when Francesca reached out to Mike in July of 2020, he was on another road trip, this time across the United States.

Speaker 7 I just remember getting a picture of him and his dog, and he said, I'm on a road trip. He was just kind of cruising.
And I said, hey, Mike, do you have a minute?

Speaker 7 I just want to talk to you about a couple things. He calls me, and I just said, if we gave you a certain box to play in, do you think you could turn around a show by such and such date?

Speaker 8 I want to take a moment to situate for listeners how unprecedented this is.

Speaker 8 It's really not every day that a writer, even an iconic one like Mike White, picks up their phone to find a TV executive begging you for a show idea. I asked David Bernat about that.

Speaker 8 This idea of getting a call from HBO saying, do you have an idea? That's typically not how it works.

Speaker 3 Never works that way. Yeah.
Never works that way. It's the opposite.
You're begging them to do something and never do they call you begging for an idea.

Speaker 3 And I think it's one of those things where maybe had we made the honeymoon show in 2009, it wouldn't have been as well conceived or well-received as what became White Lotus.

Speaker 3 This was like a once-in-a-lifetime that HBO calls you and says, we'll do whatever you want. Can you just make it? Whatever it is, just make it.

Speaker 8 After Mike and David had the green light, their first order of business was locking down a location.

Speaker 7 Because of the speed with which we were trying to execute everything, we were prepping while he was writing. He was casting while he was writing.
Everything happened at once.

Speaker 8 Francesca suggested that they just keep it simple.

Speaker 7 We had proposed to Mike, let's just go down to Palm Springs and take over a hotel. And that's what we pitched to him.

Speaker 7 But once the prepping and building process was underway and he had a production executive assigned and we hired a producer, then they started getting a little bit more sophisticated about the search.

Speaker 7 But the truth is, we were desperate on the creative side, the programming side, and we said, Mike, help us out, write something, shoot it, go to Palm Springs.

Speaker 7 But of course, it was ultimately whatever he wanted to do. If he could do it within the parameters of the budget, he could have gone anywhere.

Speaker 3 We were doing a search through the entire world at this time. It was in August of 2020, and we were at one point going to film in Australia.

Speaker 3 And we were like talking to the government, and we were scouting and we were budgeting.

Speaker 3 And because of the COVID quarantine rules at that time, there just was not enough time to get visas, quarantine the cast, quarantine the crew, and then make the show. And Hawaii was the one place.

Speaker 3 Maui, that four seasons hotel was the only place that said, okay, come and shoot. Everywhere else said no.
You know, it's an interesting thing to think about in terms of creative process.

Speaker 3 We didn't have an infinite amount of choice. We had one location, one place.
That's really what happened.

Speaker 8 Let's stop and break down this timeline for just a moment.

Speaker 8 Mike gets the call from Francesca in July. He and David Bernad lock down a location in August.
Then, just a few weeks later, they're packing their bags and they're flying to Hawaii.

Speaker 8 Just two months to conceive, catalyze, and prep what would become one of the biggest hits in recent television memory.

Speaker 3 We landed in Hawaii, you know, September 10th. you know, 9th or 10th.
We were starting production end of October. We had one script and we had no crew crew and no cast.

Speaker 3 And within five or six weeks, Mike had to write five scripts. We had to crew up.
We had to scout. We had to cast.
And that was season one of White Lotus.

Speaker 8 Mike started with the pilot. He knew he wanted a hook, so he wrote In a Dead Body, but there was a problem.

Speaker 22 I actually didn't even know who was going to die. The first season, I started writing in August, and we were shooting in October.
So it was like

Speaker 22 such an accelerated and compressed timeframe of writing. Like I wrote the first scene and it was like a bot, I was like, we should start with something, some kind of hook.

Speaker 22 But I didn't even know who was going to die. In fact, the person that I thought was going to die was John Grice's character.
Because that's why he had a cough and he was like sickly.

Speaker 22 And I was like, maybe. And then as I got deeper into the season, I was like, oh, no, that's going to feel like people are going to feel cheated by that.

Speaker 8 Interestingly enough, when John Grice read the first couple of scripts, he was convinced he was going to be the one to go.

Speaker 25 We were filming the scene where I was swimming and then I come out of the water and I'm talking to Jennifer. And it's funny, that day was a very nerve-wracking day because it was November 4th.

Speaker 25 That was the election day.

Speaker 25 And everybody was on pins and needles. I remembered we were just standing there and Mike, just kind of musing to himself, was saying,

Speaker 15 maybe Greg and Tanya will be in season two.

Speaker 25 And I said, what do you mean?

Speaker 5 He goes, I don't know, maybe Greg and Tanya will be, maybe they'll show up in season two.

Speaker 25 Like he just said that kind of off. And I heard, and I said, Greg's not going to be there.

Speaker 11 I said, what are you talking about? Greg's dying.

Speaker 25 Because I was so, I wasn't trying to be glib or funny. I was really invested in the character is dying that I didn't realize I was potentially talking myself out of a job.

Speaker 25 But I was like, you can't do that.

Speaker 24 He's dying.

Speaker 25 And he said, you can't tell me that.

Speaker 5 I wrote this character. I wrote this.

Speaker 2 I can do whatever I want with it.

Speaker 25 And he walked away from me kind of angry.

Speaker 25 But that was kind of a very revealing moment because I

Speaker 25 it just set wheels in motion in my mind.

Speaker 3 Well,

Speaker 15 am I not dying? Am I gonna live?

Speaker 22 The shift of having Murray's character die was something that I came up with like halfway through the. So it was not fully baked.
I was literally just riding by the seat of my pants.

Speaker 22 That was very stressful in its own way because we were prepping and I was still very

Speaker 22 much writing and it was

Speaker 22 scary.

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Speaker 8 During all the chaos, another department was hard at work, casting. From the get-go, Mike was super involved.

Speaker 3 Mike has always enjoyed that process. Meredith Tucker, a casting director who's amazing, has been working with Mike for,

Speaker 3 you know, well, since the very beginning of his career, I think she's amazing at finding those really interesting actors that are not obvious.

Speaker 8 Meredith, Tucker, and Mike go way back, even further than David and his ugly shoes.

Speaker 20 I call him Michael because I went to college with him and that's what he went by in college. I've known him since we were 18, and we are no longer 18, that's for sure.

Speaker 8 The pair kept in touch after college. Meredith would even stay with Mike when she was out in L.A.
for work. In the early 2000s, she cast one of the first movies Mike wrote, The Good Girl.

Speaker 8 Separate from Mike, Meredith went on to cast for a variety of HBO projects from Veeet to Entourage to Boardwalk Empire, in other words, all my favorite shows.

Speaker 8 When The White Lotus came along, she was the natural choice.

Speaker 20 We really were just casting off of the first script.

Speaker 20 We just started requesting self-tapes. You know, it's a process and sort of learning more about the characters as they go on.

Speaker 20 The thing that's so great about casting for Michael is that he can spot things that he'll need in episode, you know, seven that might not be apparent to me or even i mean the actor probably doesn't you know he always said i like people with a lot of colors that's his terminology that he likes to use the characters are so multifaceted you know and because he's such a humanist and i i feel like because

Speaker 20 even the most loathsome of characters he really does sort of have compassion for connie britton was the first person to be cast we knew who was going to play nicole first, just because Michael had a previous relationship with Connie from Beatrice at Dinner.

Speaker 9 I don't want to have to talk about it at all.

Speaker 9 I'm on vacation. I'm trying to unwind from the stress that is my life.

Speaker 20 And then we just sort of started filling out the cast around her, you know.

Speaker 20 It was just going through a lot of self-tapes, tweaking what he was looking for or trying to gauge what the tone is a little bit.

Speaker 8 An early challenge was Armand, the hotel manager, a role that ended up going to Murray Bartlett.

Speaker 20 Especially with Murray's role, like the first bunch of tapes we sent,

Speaker 20 we were sort of off a little bit. It was a little too broad, a little too overtly comedic.
And then he sort of explained what he wanted, and I hadn't sent Murray's tape yet, but I had gotten it.

Speaker 20 And I said, Go, I think you're going to really like this one guy. And he did.
Yeah, he really, he loved Murray immediately.

Speaker 8 I mean, who wouldn't? Here's how Murray remembers his initial thoughts on the role.

Speaker 6 I read the role and I was like, it's such a great character, but it would be a shame if this character just became this sort of buffoon. Like, I wanted him to feel real and anchored.

Speaker 6 And so it was really, it was weird. I had this really strong thing of like, I felt somehow kind of righteous or self-righteous about it.
Like, I'm not going to play this like a.

Speaker 6 Like, it is, it's already funny. I just, I want it to be somehow to feel anchored.
So I, I felt very, I had a strong opinion about it, which I don't always have.

Speaker 21 Sometimes just watching them eat every night makes me want to gouge my eyes out.

Speaker 8 At the time, just about everyone was holed up in their homes in lockdown. I try not to remember.
It was a bleak period for actors. Hollywood was basically shut down.

Speaker 8 Self-tapes had replaced in-person auditions, and to some, it almost seemed like they'd never work again. One self-tape story went particularly viral around this time.
It belonged to Lucas Gage.

Speaker 16 Yes, I remember so vividly.

Speaker 8 In The White Lotus, Lucas played Dylan, a resort staffer who ends up having an

Speaker 8 intimate scene with the boss. But before Lucas even auditioned for the White Lotus role, he was on a Zoom call for another show when one of the producers had a, how shall we say, a mute fiasco.

Speaker 26 These poor people live in these tiny apartments. Like, I'm looking at his, you know, background and he's got his TV and, and, you know,

Speaker 16 yeah, muted.

Speaker 8 Lucas responded to the awkward with, if I may say, admirable self-possession and honesty.

Speaker 16 I know, it's a shitty apartment. That's why give me this job so I can get a better one.
All right.

Speaker 16 Um, ready?

Speaker 16 Oh my god, I am so, so sorry. No, it's totally

Speaker 16 listen. I'm living in a

Speaker 16 four by four box. It's fine.
Just give me the job and we'll be fine.

Speaker 8 Lucas eventually went on to post the clip on Twitter where it went crazy viral. Looking back now, he's grateful that it happened as it did.

Speaker 16 White Lotus was my next audition after that video. I was so excited about it.
I had originally got sent the role of Quinn, and then they told me I was too old. And I was like, I don't care.

Speaker 16 I need to find something in this. And then I saw the Dylan character.
And I sent a bunch of emails and sent a bunch of tapes. And

Speaker 16 yeah, it happened really quick though. I remember it was a fast process.
After my little infamous viral video moment, I'm like, oh my god, I was testing for this show, and I lost it.

Speaker 16 And this guy made a remark in my apartment, and now I'm like alone in my apartment. And if like, you just don't know.
And like, if I would have got that show that I tested for and didn't get,

Speaker 16 I wouldn't have been able to do White Lotus, and I would have probably had a completely different path.

Speaker 16 So I think just trusting that something out there is like, what's what's yours is yours and what isn't is not.

Speaker 16 And

Speaker 16 White Lotus has had a crazy impact on like the rest of my life and I'm just thankful for it.

Speaker 8 Of course, there was someone who was in the casting mix from the very beginning.

Speaker 12 It's a good feeling when you realize someone has money, because then you don't have to worry about them wanting yours.

Speaker 7 I think Jennifer Coolidge, no doubt, in his mind, in his heart, was always going to come out right in front.

Speaker 8 Here's Francesca again.

Speaker 7 Jennifer was a very early choice and one that he probably had in mind the moment I called him and said, this is what we want to do.

Speaker 7 He looked over at his dog and he's like, this is my way to finally work with Jennifer Coolidge.

Speaker 22 I was determined that if HBO liked this idea of a hotel thing, that at least one of the storylines would be Jennifer and work with her.

Speaker 8 Mike met Jennifer Coolidge in the mid-2000s in the most Hollywood way at a party for new Academy inductees.

Speaker 8 A couple years later, they played Love Interest and Gentleman Broncos, a very quirky comedy about science fiction writers.

Speaker 8 I first met Jennifer Coolidge, or Jen as her friends call her, over Instagram. I was a very vocal supporter of the show at the time, as I still am, and she sent me a very lovely message honoring that.

Speaker 8 She wrote, I want to send you a special thank you for your posts. You have been incredibly supportive, especially during the White Lotus months.

Speaker 8 I asked her if she'd come on my podcast, and she agreed. We met in person months later, and our bond felt immediate.

Speaker 8 When we sat down for our White Lotus conversation, it was clear that it would be her final interview dedicated entirely to the show, at least for a while. In that sense, it was bittersweet.

Speaker 5 That would have been fucking genius, right?

Speaker 8 You'll hear a lot of that conversation in a later episode. For now, we'll just stick to how she got introduced to the white lotus.
When Mike started workshopping the tears of St.

Speaker 8 Patsy, he reached out to Jennifer about the idea. Jen was naturally thrilled.

Speaker 12 He said, it's a very cool idea, he said, because not only will this be a great part for you, Jennifer, but we'll be going to very exotic lands and having this incredible experience.

Speaker 12 When Mike told me that it was not well received as far as like wherever he pitched it, he said, you know, we were turned down.

Speaker 12 I don't, I thought Mike was trying to spare my feelings. And the real truth was that he wasn't pitching it around town.

Speaker 12 In other words, that he had been sort of turned down early on by HBO or whoever it was,

Speaker 12 and that he was just placating me by saying, well,

Speaker 12 I did, you know, try some other places and we came close or whatever.

Speaker 8 So Jennifer didn't really believe Mike, even after he cast her as Tanya in the white lotus. For her to entirely trust his story, it took him declaring it to the whole world.

Speaker 12 When I heard him at an award ceremony talk about how he tried to get it made, you know, the Tears of St. Pass he made, I was like, oh yeah, you're not, this isn't.

Speaker 12 I don't know, somehow I was like, why? He can't be telling the whole these giant rooms of people that we were going to really do it if he really wasn't.

Speaker 12 And then, I don't know, you know, sometimes when someone says, you know, I really love you or something like this, and you don't really believe them until you see the ring or something.

Speaker 12 But when he sort of said it publicly, I was like, oh my God, Mike, you really did try to get this going? You know, I mean, all of a sudden it was just very real.

Speaker 12 You know, it was almost like he had film footage or something of pitches to these groups.

Speaker 8 Mike reached out to Jennifer soon after the call came from HBO. He said that he was working on a different project for them, one that could be produced safely during the pandemic.

Speaker 12 He said, I'm writing something new, Jennifer. I'm writing a story.
HBO is interested. I'm writing a

Speaker 12 series

Speaker 12 about rich people on vacation. And I just remember thinking, like,

Speaker 12 oh, that doesn't sound very good.

Speaker 12 I think I did get my hands. He did send me the script.
But, you know, I'd already,

Speaker 12 a lot of us had just gone down the tubes. I certainly had during COVID.
I was, I don't think I dealt with COVID, the whole COVID thing very well.

Speaker 12 And I, so I just, you know, sat in a house in New Orleans with a girlfriend and we ate, we ate these vegan pizzas,

Speaker 12 I don't know, four or six of them a day. You know, we were, it was a terrible time.

Speaker 8 Always the same flavor or did you have like variants?

Speaker 12 We didn't care. Those vegan pizzas were so delicious and it's so weird.
I think we ate them so often that I don't know, I don't think we've ever revisited them.

Speaker 12 I don't think there's any food better than pizza to really stuff your feelings.

Speaker 22 If you've had like four,

Speaker 12 you can barely

Speaker 12 have a thought.

Speaker 12 But, you know, yeah, and it just didn't feel like there was ever going to be an end to, you know, the whole COVID. I felt like it was just, I don't know, it was just so scary.

Speaker 12 So when Mike, you know, sent the script and everything like this, I was like, well, there's no way I can recover from that.

Speaker 12 You know, even, you know, when they get the green light, I don't know if I'll be, I don't know if I could ever be in ready, ready in time for this thing. And of course, guess what?

Speaker 12 He got the green light. Of course he did.
And I was like, well, there goes that, because I'm not going to do this.

Speaker 12 I decided I wasn't going to do it. I made that conscious decision.
I was working on my lie as to why I couldn't do it, but I was 100%

Speaker 12 positive about my decision was a good one to not do it. And then Mike, who's so in tune with people through the airwaves, like you can be in another country and Mike knows what you're thinking.

Speaker 12 And he just, I remember that I was in New Orleans, I was in my bed, and that you hear that little ding on my cell phone in the middle of the night.

Speaker 12 And I looked at it and it was a message from Mike, and it just said,

Speaker 21 Are you you afraid?

Speaker 12 And it says, I knew, he knew I was going to bail. You know, it wasn't until I was at a girlfriend's house.
She's asking me, are you going to do that show with Mike White in Hawaii?

Speaker 12 And I said, no, I'm not. And she said, what do you mean? And then I just said, yeah, I'm not doing that.
I'm not doing, I'm not, I'm not going to put myself in that position.

Speaker 12 I don't want to be in a bathing suit in Hawaii with all these people. I just, I'm not doing it.
And then I got that one of those, you know, speeches of a lifetime.

Speaker 8 Was it your friend that ultimately convinced you?

Speaker 11 Yeah.

Speaker 12 Yeah. She was like,

Speaker 12 this is the dumbest thing you've ever said.

Speaker 12 And you're an idiot. And, you know, I'm here to like talk you out of this.

Speaker 12 Just never forget that moment, you know.

Speaker 8 Do you think she knew?

Speaker 12 I think, yeah, she's a very, really really smart person. And yeah, I think she was just like, oh, you're, she's going to, you know, she's going to like ruin this fucking great moment.

Speaker 12 This great thing is coming her way and she's going to screw this up.

Speaker 12 I mean, I wish I had it on tape. I'll never forget.

Speaker 12 I mean, it was the most, you know, I mean, in my lifetime, I can think of like, you know, just don't interfere with this great thing that's coming your way, Jennifer. Don't mess this up.

Speaker 12 I promise you, if you do not do this job, you're going to have horrendous feelings to deal with that you won't be able to make it right.

Speaker 12 These moments don't come around that often and she was just right about all of it.

Speaker 12 I don't know, you know, you just sort of, I don't know, we all sort of talk ourselves into terrible decisions sometimes.

Speaker 8 And I just can't believe how lucky I was.

Speaker 8 I asked Mike about Jennifer's hesitation. He remembered it slightly differently.

Speaker 22 I mean, I assume she's telling the truth, but I didn't really,

Speaker 22 there was no way she was not going to do the show because I was going to go to New Orleans or wherever the freak she was, grab her and pull her over there.

Speaker 22 Because I was like, this is the whole idea, the whole point of it was to like do this with her. And so like, there was no way she was going to get out of it.
Jennifer's very good at like disappearing.

Speaker 22 She's very elusive.

Speaker 22 And sometimes she'll disappear and I'm like, there's a reason why she's disappearing. There's something going on.
And so then I, you know, like I start poking around.

Speaker 22 She's also somebody who, if you just send a

Speaker 22 Factual text with like are you coming to the like with a straight up question?

Speaker 22 She will not respond the only things she'll respond to are things that are more like funny or evocative or weird or whatever She does not like to be pinned down She likes a more absurdist text and then she'll come back with her own hilarious like look yeah like super long text about whatever whatever but like yeah the the text she will not respond to is what time should we meet for dinner?

Speaker 5 Then it's just like, nothing.

Speaker 8 So this time, Mike won. He pinned Jennifer down for the role of Tanya.
That fall, Jennifer flew out to Hawaii like the rest of the cast, ready to hit the ground running.

Speaker 8 Or rather, hit the ground to their hotel rooms in quarantine, and then hit the ground running after a safe time period. The pandemic aspect of the production was quite unique.

Speaker 8 It's rare that any cast and crew are all staying under a single roof, and even rarer still that they're not permitted to leave the premises for any reason.

Speaker 8 Little cliques formed, like Jake Lacey, Steve Zahn, and Fred Hetchinger, who were all staying at the hotel on their own.

Speaker 8 Other cast members brought along family members or partners, like Natasha Rothwell, who brought her sister, and Brittany O'Grady, who brought her then-boyfriend, now husband.

Speaker 8 Given the size of the ensemble cast, there was a lot of downtime between the scenes. For some, that meant snorkeling, tanning, or swimming in the pool.

Speaker 8 For Mike and David, that meant running around trying to pull together loose ends.

Speaker 3 There was a point, like we always joke, where it was like an experimental show where maybe the show didn't turn out. They just never would have aired it, but they needed to take big swings.

Speaker 8 Even during production, they were still figuring out what the show was. It didn't even have a title.
For a long time, it was simply referred to as the untitled Mike White Project.

Speaker 8 I asked David about the story behind the title.

Speaker 8 Where did the name the white lotus come from?

Speaker 3 Yeah, the original title was The Lotus.

Speaker 3 And I think it came from the Lotus Eaters, which is a kind of

Speaker 3 a reference to Tennyson. Murray Bartlett talks about it in season one.

Speaker 3 that the name didn't clear. There was a hotel called The Lotus and we couldn't use it.
So then we came up with a list of like 15 other titles

Speaker 3 and the white lotus was a flower in Hawaii. So that's why we chose it.
People think it's the white lotus because it's Mike White. That's just a coincidence.

Speaker 3 We were in Hawaii already filming and it just felt like, oh, that's an obvious connection because of the flower.

Speaker 3 But you know, when you're choosing the title, at that point, we're like, it's a limited series. We didn't even know genuinely if we were going to ever finish.
It may never air.

Speaker 3 We don't know if it'll ever air. So you're not really thinking it through or giving it that much weight.

Speaker 8 At one point during production, there was a COVID scare. Several cast members had been exposed and a bunch of people got put in quarantine.
This was around the holidays, 2020.

Speaker 8 The production shut down. Some left Hawaii for home.
The only problem, the show wasn't finished yet.

Speaker 3 We were about three days away from wrapping season one and basically we had to shut down production and go home. So we never actually finished season one.

Speaker 3 And there was this moment and everyone's schedules were crazy and COVID was crazy and who knew what was going to happen.

Speaker 3 So we actually went home and spent all of January, beginning of February, not knowing if we would finish the show. And Mike was editing.

Speaker 3 And we then had like a week window where Natasha was doing insecure at the time.

Speaker 3 And like, you know, Connie was going to do a movie and Steve's going to do a movie where we basically had to bring everyone back for a week in Hawaii. And it was like a logistical nightmare.

Speaker 3 But that week was really magical. A lot of incredible stuff happened that week because we had also seen the edit.

Speaker 3 So we picked up some different scenes and we shot Jennifer's iconic scene that week while we were, you with the urn and the boat.

Speaker 3 And it's such a funny thing because it could easily have never finished had we not been able to find that time with everyone. And they weren't contractually obligated to us.

Speaker 3 They were off doing other stuff. So there's this weird good fortune that kind of came together.

Speaker 3 But yeah, that was one of the most stressful moments of my career that, you know, between Christmas and when we did this pickups, how can we get everyone back to actually finish the show?

Speaker 3 Thank God we got that urn scene. I know.

Speaker 9 Of course. Mother, mother, mother, mother.
Yes. Yeah.

Speaker 13 I can't do this. not going to do it.
I just realized it's too early for me. It's okay.

Speaker 9 But my mother, mother, mother.

Speaker 8 For me, the immediate draw of the white lotus was the show's commitment to exploring characters with moral gray areas. There's this thought pattern you often hear, people are doing the best they can.

Speaker 8 And this show seemed to say, well, even if that is true, what happens if the best they can comes at a cost to to those around them? Or in some instances, simply isn't enough?

Speaker 3 What then?

Speaker 8 This was a show exploring the complexities of human existence in a way that I simply wasn't seeing on television at the time. And as such, I was hooked.

Speaker 5 And the rest of the world, they were too.

Speaker 8 Long before they went live, HBO saw early cuts of the episodes. Francesca remembers screening them.

Speaker 7 I remember Casey and I receiving the early cuts and us just

Speaker 7 literally peeing our pants, cracking up

Speaker 7 at the just the raw cuts without even going through mixes or sound or looping or any of it. And

Speaker 7 they were perfect. There was a perfection to them.
He's very much in tune with what makes an HBO show and what we need as programmers and executives.

Speaker 7 He understands the pressures we're under and as much as we want a big hit, he wants a big hit. This is a man that's been writing since he he was seven years old.

Speaker 7 So yes, he's gifted, but he's just so skilled. He just knows how to execute a story.
He knows what appeals to an audience. He knows how to

Speaker 7 have fun, but also say something with a show. He knows how to be provocative and thoughtful and

Speaker 7 really deep, but knows how to entertain. And that's a rare, rare, rare skill.

Speaker 7 Honestly, we were just really happy for Mike that he has that global recognition because not only does he deserve it as a as an artist, but he's just a really good guy.

Speaker 7 And I like that the world loves him.

Speaker 8 Next time on the White Lotus podcast, we'll be diving further into Mike White's biography to discuss how all of his experiences came together to inform his making of the White Lotus, from his religious childhood to a sint on survivor to the fabulous enlightened.

Speaker 22 I went to Bible summer camp and I thought I was possessed by the devil. He'd be like, go find Jesus and accept Jesus into your heart.

Speaker 22 And then, like, I'd go out into the night, and Jesus never showed up. So, I was like, Maybe I'm Satan's spawn or something.

Speaker 20 He was just so much more talented than the rest of us. And what was interesting is he had all these older women theater majors who were like gobbed onto him because I think they clearly knew.

Speaker 14 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.

Speaker 12 That's like the best part.

Speaker 3 I stood up in the live audience, and i just yelled uncontrollably my arms raised like like a child and it's probably one of the happiest moments of my life

Speaker 8 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 8 Fact-checking by Gray Lanta. At Campside Media, our executive producer is Josh Dean.
Editing and sound design by Ewan Lai Trimuen.

Speaker 8 Special thanks to Michael Gluckstadt, Alison Cohen-Sorokach, and Kenya Reyes from the HBO podcast team.

Speaker 8 If you liked what you heard, please, please, please tell a friend about us and subscribe so you don't miss an episode.

Speaker 8 And whether you're a die-hard fan or this is the series you've always been meaning to watch, and I really hope it's not the latter because spoilers galore are coming up soon, head to Max to stream both seasons of The White Lotus now.

Speaker 8 Thank you for listening, and I'll see you next time.