Frisky vacationers, searing warmth and monkeys: Thailand was the right setting for the brand new season of HBO’s “The White Lotus” to discover the darkish secrets and techniques and base needs of the jet-set class, its creator mentioned Monday.
After visits to Hawaii and Sicily, season three of the smash-hit steamy satire about well-heeled and badly-behaved resort company takes place on the tropical island of Koh Samui.
The solid and crew spent six months, primarily on the Four Seasons Resort Koh Samui, which served because the present’s major setting and the actors’ real-life resort.
According to creator Mike White, it was the toughest season but, not simply as a result of increasing variety of characters and episodes (eight).
“Thailand was a beautiful place to shoot, but it also had a lot of challenges,” White informed a press convention. “There were days I was like, ‘maybe I’ll just die today, I don’t know!’ So I’m proud that I got through it.”
The shoot needed to deal with sweltering temperatures, outbreaks of dengue fever and meals poisoning, and wildlife together with big monitor lizards, snakes and tarantulas, based on a latest Guardian article.
Actors described a “claustrophobic” environment wherein “tensions and difficulties” and “off-screen drama” have been rife — all fueled by the resort’s open-bar coverage.
Actor Walton Goggins, who performs a surly vacationer with a younger girlfriend (Aimee Lee Wood) and a mysterious vendetta, described the expertise as like being “in my own ‘Apocalypse Now.'”
‘It was a reckoning… spirituality, life and loss of life, and 18 actually gifted actors in entrance of the digital camera that Mike assembled, going by means of an existential disaster… sequestered in a five-star resort.”
Leslie Bibb, enjoying one in every of a trio of feminine buddies attempting to rekindle the closeness of their youthful days, described the shoot as “hot-ass, haunting chaos.”
“It literally was hot… but also the relationships are hot and complicated. It’s sexy and hot, and it just feels like you’re on the pulse of something.”
As normal, the primary episode begins with the arrival of disparate teams of company at a luxurious resort for every week’s keep. We know from the primary scene that tensions will soar, relationships will fray — and somebody will find yourself useless.
This time, the vacationers are staying at a spa resort selling meditation, remedy and self-care, subsequent door to a Buddhist monastery.
White, the present’s creator, mentioned he was fascinated by “people wanting to be their ideal self and to be more than the base animal creatures that they can be — and then there’s this antic force that keeps pulling them back out to ‘monkey land.'”
Those primal instincts are signposted with frequent photographs of lascivious monkeys, ominously lurking within the rainforest timber that encompass the luxurious resort.
Season two introduced again the primary run’s beloved ditzy millionaire Tanya McQuoid, memorably performed by Emmy-winner Jennifer Coolidge.
The third installment brings again Belinda (Natasha Rothwell), Tanya’s long-suffering spa supervisor from the White Lotus Hotel in Hawaii.
Belinda pays a go to to her fictional luxurious chain’s Thai sister resort, the place workers embody Mook, a “health mentor” for company, performed by Okay-pop sensation Lalisa “Lisa” Manobal.
An enormous international star along with her performances in lady group Blackpink, Manobal left her native Thailand for Korea at age 14, and mentioned the prolonged “White Lotus” shoot offered a uncommon probability to “reconnect” along with her household and homeland.
Other new solid members embody Michelle Monaghan, of the “Mission: Impossible” movies, and Patrick Schwarzenegger, son of legendary motion star Arnold.
The youthful Schwarzenegger has a number of nude scenes, and admitted he was nervous concerning the prospect of watching the present along with his well-known household.
“They don’t know anything,” he mentioned. “There’ll be some times that I take some bathroom breaks… or maybe I won’t watch that episode.”
“The White Lotus” season three debuts on HBO this Sunday.
© 2025 AFP