Inside The White Lotus behind-the-scenes arguments: ‘I didn’t have many allies’
There was plenty of drama on and off-screen.
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Previous Page Next PageThe White Lotus season three has brought us plenty of drama on and off-screen, with stars revealing tensions were brewing backstage.
Mike White’s black comedy has returned for a third instalment, this time filmed in Thailand, starring Aimee Lou Wood, Jason Isaacs, Walton Goggins, Parker Posey and Patrick Schwarzenegger.
Discourse around The White Lotus has been focused on nude scenes and viewers being horrified over a disturbing incest storyline, even threatening to boycott.
Nonetheless, the series has managed to score an impressive 89% Rotten Tomatoes rating, with HBO saying each episode has hit a viewing high.
The eight-part drama follows the dynamics of a new group of elite holidaymakers with their own sets of issues – friends reuniting after life pulled them apart, age-gap couples keeping secrets, and one wealthy patriarch failing to escape financial problems at home, while his wife battles with her daughter wanting to move to a monastery in Thailand, and their sons become involved in a ‘sickening’ incest plot.
There were fears actors would drop out over the incest scene (Picture: HBO) ‘I didn’t have that many allies in there’It was recently revealed that The White Lotus’ composer Cristobal Tapia de Veer quit due to creative differences.
He claimed conversations with producers could be ‘hysterical’, and that the creative team repeatedly requested music that was less experimental than what he wanted to produce.
Recalling differences over the infamous theme tune from season one, he claimed Mike wanted ‘something you would listen to in Ibiza, in some clubby place with a chill, sexy vibe’.
‘I just stuck to what I was doing,’ he told The New York Times.
Emmy-award winning composer Cristobal Tapia de Veer has quit The White Lotus (Picture: Amy Sussman/Getty Images)‘And when I was giving versions, it was still the same thing: There were still crazy people and screaming and stuff like that. From there, it became this weird relationship of, How do I pass all this weird music into the show?’
He added to the publication: ‘There was a French movie, La Cage Aux Folles. You know how there’s Albin, which is like the star, and there’s Renato, who is the producer who is always taking care that Albin doesn’t lose his mind about something, because Albin is the diva and Renato is the guy who is trying to make everything work. To me, the show felt very much like that.’
He went on to share a conversation that happened after backlash from viewers over the change of theme tune for the third season.
He said: ‘People are furious about the change of the theme, and I thought that was interesting.
‘I texted the producer and I told him that it would be great to, at some point, give them the longer version with the ooh-loo-loo-loos, because people will explode if they realize that it was going there anyway. He thought it was a good idea. But then Mike cut that — he wasn’t happy about that.
‘I mean, at that point, we already had our last fight forever, I think. So he was just saying no to anything. So I just uploaded that to my YouTube.’
Speaking of the ‘tension’ and being ‘so stressed out’ after complaints over the music, and saying that he didn’t feel like he had ‘that many allies in there’, Cristobal added: ‘I was watching the Emmys, and it’s like, there’s one thing I’m pretty proud of and that is I feel like I never gave up.
‘Maybe I was being unprofessional, and for sure Mike feels that I was always unprofessional to him because I didn’t give him what he wanted. But what I gave him did this, you know — did those Emmys, people going crazy.’
The White Lotus is available to watch on Sky Atlantic and NOW.
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