The White Lotusbrings a new cast of characters who cant stand one another to Sicily.
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Harper has a job.
The women seem to resent each other in the subtle ways of people who insist they should be friends.
Bells ring in the background.
Children wander across the square.
Thecaffedown the street sells Italys best granita.
Its the kind of evening that could convince you the things they write in magazines are true.
The White Lotuss writer, director, and creator,Mike White, 52, slips into the scene.
Then Ethan made a killing from selling his tech company.
Suddenly, Daphne and Cameron decided to invite Harper and Ethan on vacation.
You saying, You dont work, and her reacting.
For the second season, White persuaded the connection to send him to Italy.
White loves the types of feelings that involve wishing you were someone else or somewhere else.
He chooses to describe this season as a bedroom farce with teeth.
I feel like Ive cracked the code, White says.
And I really dont want to fuck it up.
The White Lotuswas originally a child of necessity.
So White turned back to an old love: travel.
He set off on a road trip with his dog across America.
Mike is brilliant, and hes also fast, Orsi tells me.
Even beforeThe White Lotuspremiered, White had the idea that it could grow to multiple installments.
Hes not someone who thinks in terms of multi-season architecture, so an anthology felt like a good fit.
HBO was initially interested in only one season, until the show started to air last summer.
Also, wouldnt you want to go on vacation somewhere between St.-Tropez and Sicily?
Etna that overlooks the wine-dark Ionian Sea.
The hotel would be closed for the winter, so they could start filming during the off-season.
And the place didnt lack personality, as some mega-resorts they visited did.
The hotel eventually opened for actual tourists, putting theWhite Lotusactors amongWhite Lotusesque visitors.
It was like a weird video game where we were living in a simulated reality, Plaza says.
I liked not having that separation.
Once the special guests of the wait staff, they were suddenly among a much larger group of people.
We were all giving the new guests the side-eye, like,Who are these randoms?
The added trips make the season more expansive, though not necessarily much more expensive.
He is delivering something fiscally impressive, Orsi says.
But while working in Palermo, he heard a local myth that stuck in his mind.
He started to work out an idea about sexual politics.
I guess Im focusing more on the guy whos lying to the girl, White says.
Yes, he is a Moor, but to me its more about the adultery aspect.
On both seasons, White has worked without a writers room.
He directs all the episodes and exerts almost total control over the final product.
The White Lotushas always been a show about White, in a sense.
The story stayed with the colonizers, and critics noted the colonized could seem like props.
White felt his intentions on that front were read uncharitably.
The characters talked in what he dubs Twitterspeak, regurgitating basic social-justice language at one another.
One referred to himself and the other guests as parasites upon the earth.
White didnt want to chase that vibe all over again.
Ive written a whole body of work.
I stand by that season ofThe White Lotus,but its not the full reflection of my interests.
On the show,theteste di moroappear in the hotel room shared by Harper and Ethan.
But okay, shes not a criminal; she doesnt have any described mental illness.
Although is anyone really a normie?
Both Plaza and Sharpe are biracial, while James and Fahy are white.
Your sense of what makes a healthy relationship is challenged a bit, White says.
Coolidges Tanya is on vacation alongside her beau from last season, Greg (Jon Gries).
The actress is a close friend of Whites, and he just wanted to work with her again.
Tanya is still adrift emotionally, hoping another trip might put her at ease.
The story grew out of Whites experiences traveling with his own father to find their roots in Sweden.
The opposite of what happens in this show, which is not such an ideal situation.
Abrahams character, Bert, takes things to an old-fashionedly sexist extreme.
Mike gave me permission to be an asshole.
Weaving between the stories of the vacationers are the locals.
And as the season progresses, they get entangled in the vacationers various dramas.
Each iteration of a White Lotus resort must have its own fearsome hotel manager.
This season, the Italian actress and comedian Sabrina Impacciatore plays a manager named Valentina.
In Italy, we are more direct.
We just say what we think.
The villa in question is a former monastery, available to rent for a cool 18,000 a week.
Its both opulent and, as an Italian crew member sniffs in passing, not really Italian.
The crowd of people is also not really a crowd.
Thats an actor who appeared on the season ofSurvivoron which White competed.
Thats the friend he met while writing in Sicily who actually does own a villa.
On set, he often seems quietly unflappable, but this massive affair may have him flapped.
As Coolidge performs, the artifice and the emotion ofThe White Lotuscollide.
(Well, I felt very tired on this job, Coolidge tells me after the shoot.
Hopefully because I was making myself vulnerable, but who knows?)
Watching the party scene, I think about White as a proxy for Quentin.
Hes also touring her around, putting her through her paces, making the party about her.
But in writing for her, White is caring for her as an actress and a character.
Whites characters are loathsome, but they are often, in complicated ways, embraced.
Mike disguises his tenderness well, Sharpe tells me.
But its still there.
He believes there is much to be gained from them.
Daphne really does feel bad.
I think you might be sadder about the elephant, White tells Fahy between takes.
It was White who actually experienced this on a safari in Tanzania.
And then you see one male elephant alone, walking in the jungle, and youre like,Aww.
Human men, White points out, especially as they get older, can get very lonely.
They dont make friends as much; they dont know how to rejoin the herd.
Whites worlds are full of lonely men.
Whos happier: the people in the group or the loners with all their freedom?
Is real life the life in the herd?
The White Lotusreturns to HBO in October.
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