@Courtesy of HBO MAX
The third season of The White Lotus, an American satirical comedy-drama anthology television series created, written, and directed by Mike White, premiered on HBO on February 16, 2025.
The season was greenlit on November 18, 2022, and was filmed in Bangkok, Phuket, and Ko Samui from February to August 2024.
The season consists of eight episodes and follows the lives of the staff and wealthy guests at a wellness resort in Thailand.
The season features an ensemble cast of Leslie Bibb, Carrie Coon, Walton Goggins, Sarah Catherine Hook, Jason Isaacs, Lalisa Manobal, Michelle Monaghan, Sam Nivola, Lek Patravadi, Parker Posey, Natasha Rothwell, Patrick Schwarzenegger, Tayme Thapthimthong, Aimee Lou Wood, and Jon Gries.
@Courtesy of HBO MAX
Press Conference with Creator Mike White and Actors Carrie Coon, Leslie Bibb, Natasha Rothwell and Michelle Monaghan
Q: In season one, you explored class and culture. In season two, you explored sex and gender politics. What themes were you eager to explore in this season, and how did Thailand as a setting help you facilitate those explorations in the writing process?
Mike White: We had to try to focus on something new. The idea was, it’d be cool to do something about religion, God, spirituality. Thailand is a Buddhist country, I had my self-help Buddhist years. I’m still having them. There are a lot of Buddhist concepts that I thought would be interesting to explore, give the show new places to go with different stories, and Thailand seemed like the perfect backdrop.
Q: What did you specifically put into the character this season?
Natasha Rothwell: I remember telling Mike a story about when I went to Ireland and I was on some hill with fog and some castle, and there was not a black person to be seen. Then this black family emerged from the mist. I just walked towards them and we hugged without speaking, then we pulled away. I learned that they were taking their kids abroad and letting them learn from the world.
Thailand is a very homogenous country, not a lot of black people. There was a black guest who was staying at the same hotel that we were shooting at and again, walked up to her and gave her a hug. I might have a problem with hugging strangers…It emphasized the importance of black travel and seeing black people in spaces. That moment for Belinda, it’s an opportunity for her to see what’s possible, that’s why representation and visibility is so important, it allows you to imagine yourself in situations that you may not ordinarily find yourself in.
Q: Thailand in the series seems a place where someone can hide and escape, assume a new identity if they want to. Can you talk about that interplay between spirituality and the wild partying?
Mike White: It has been something that keeps coming up in the show. People want to be their ideal self, the animal creatures that they can be. Then there’s this ancient force that keeps pulling them back. Thailand is a very complex country with so much going on. It really does have all the temples and this spiritual dimension. But then it also is Bangkok and the wild nights, so it felt like that would be a great canvas to explore those themes. We wanted to do that in a way that felt honest, authentic in some way and capture what the vibe really is.
@Courtesy of HBO MAX
Q: Your friendship feels very relatable to anyone who’s tried to maintain ties with childhood friends whose lives, politics, religious beliefs, family choices, career choices diverge over time. How much of what defines these characters’ bond has devolved into artifice, and why does this vacation expose these fractures?
Carrie Coon: My husband Tracy Letts has a quote in one of his plays where he says: “New friends are better than old friends.” I parted ways with mine when I was around 7 or 8 because I don’t have these female friendships from youth. My female friendship journey has started much later in life. A lot of it has devolved into artifice. That can happen in your marriage if you’re not seeing each other enough. We were joking that if these women had walked into the villa and said: “Listen, this is what’s going on with me right now” and started off in this honest and authentic way, then it would have been a very different vacation. But that’s not what happened. Everyone’s pretending. I’m afraid everyone can relate to pretending to be living an extraordinary life, whereas everyone’s actually feeling left out.
Leslie Bibb: It requires a great deal of vulnerability, which is very hard to do. We were the first ones to shoot, we got to Thailand first. We shot all of our villa scenes. We all agreed on our back story. That was like our diving board with which we jumped off into the swimming pool of The White Lotus. Who you were when you were growing up and who you’ve become can be very different people. My character, Kate, feels she is most seen when she’s with these women, but yet she’s also too scared to say: “Will you still love me if you know who I am right now? Can we still love each other if we have some differing views?
Michelle Monaghan: It’s a testament to these unrealistic expectations that we have for each other, the way we’ve been socially conditioned to constantly judge ourselves, to be competitive with ourselves and one another. You see these women come together, really putting their best feet forward, then this slow boil starts to happen and you see these women trying to defend their life’s choices. Trying to be perceived as having this perfect life when they’re just going through their own lives and their own vulnerabilities.
Q: What about being in Thailand? Was it your first time?
Natasha Rothwell: I had spent a year in Tokyo in my 20s, but I’d never been to Thailand, this was my first time there. One of the things I learned when I was there, which was really powerful, was that Thailand has never been colonized. To be shooting and working in a country that isn’t constantly trying to heal from historical trauma, you feel that lightness, that acceptance, that peace. It was really wonderful to be there, to experience a place like that. To be able to shoot in a location that is so rich and full of life, you don’t have to do as much mental gymnastics to be there, It’s an inspiring place. Belinda is so spiritual and so connected to the world in a way that is unique for the other characters on the show. So yeah, it’s gorgeous. It’s like living inside a screensaver. I mean, come on.
Q: What are you the most proud of having executed for this season? And what are you most excited for fans to experience when they watch it?
Mike White: We literally just locked pictures on the finale two days ago. You’re looking at somebody who has just crossed the finish line of the hardest race he’s ever run. It was harder because the show’s longer, there’s more characters. Thailand was a beautiful place to shoot, but it had a lot of challenges. The writers’ strike was in the middle of it. There is a lot going on in my life, too. It takes over two years of your life, I feel proud to be just sitting here, to be through it. There were days I was like, I don’t know, maybe I’ll just die today? So I’m proud that I got through it. I’ve never worked with this kind of scrutiny.
@Courtesy of HBO MAX
Q: From reading the first script, how surprised were you with the direction your characters took? Did you ever have conversations with Mike about where your characters had to go in this story? What was required of them?
Michelle Monaghan: You can never anticipate what’s coming down the pipeline. We ended up getting eight scripts in our inboxes and we got to binge read them. It was one of the most exciting things to discover, this specific storyline is so relatable. I really wanted to see the way in which this dynamic played out.
Carrie Coon: With Mike the writing is excellent. Everything you need is there. It’s funny without being forced. Mike also is not precious about the language. When he’s on set, he’s very good at recognizing the strengths of the actors he’s working with, he’s very quick to throw out new lines. He’s very responsive because he’s also an actor, he speaks the language of actors. However, there’s nothing arbitrary about what he’s doing: when there is something really pivotal in the script, he has a very particular idea about what he needs. He wouldn’t have let you go home unless he and his editors had the thing they needed to make the scenes work.
Leslie Bibb: When I had my first meeting with him on Skype we were talking about Kate, about her perfectionism. In days or scenes where I felt like I didn’t know where my Kate was, I always knew Mike knew that she was there, whatever I was doing. It’s acting. Mike is a really good director and a great writer.
Q: When and how did you find out that your character would be returning? How did you feel in seeing this new chapter of Belinda’s life?
Natasha Rothwell: Mike was in town for the Emmys for season one. He wanted to go out to dinner, I didn’t think anything of it. During dinner he’s like: “I’m already thinking about season three. I might want to bring Belinda back…” And I was just like: “Say less. I’ll be there.”
Q: What was for you the best side of shooting The White Lotus?
Carrie Coon: One of the great pleasures as an actress is whenever I get asked to do anything physical, because so often a woman is just standing in a room, and that’s very boring.
Michelle Monaghan: To be able to let loose with my co-stars on the dance floor was so fun. In addition to the dance scenes and the pool scenes, one of my favorite nights was when I realized we were shooting the dinner scenes: having being a huge fan of season one and season two, and seeing how all the storylines start to intersect, I sincerely felt like a kid in a candy store We all commented to each other how special it was. So the dancing scenes, the eating scenes. It was such an amazing experience. One of the great things about the show is all the non-verbal. It’s very unusual for a director to take that time and lean into that, for you to sit with something and ponder it. That’s like gold for actors, that’s all we want to do. We want to say great words but we want to lean into the non-verbal moments because that’s life. It was great to have a showrunner and a creator, an actor first and foremost that really respects that part of the process. He loves it.
Q: How did you work with Mike on creating your character for this new season?
Natasha Rothwell: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. We just did what we did season one and I credit him so much. I wish more directors were like him. He’s so open in collaborating and he’s very aware he’s not a black woman. Being able to work with him on pages and pitch ideas to help ground the character and make Belinda as authentic as possible, that was a dream. He knows I’m a writer as well, so we got to geek out about it. He is responsible for Belinda, he created such a thoughtful, introspective, caring, nurturing heroine. It’s an honor to get to play her. It’s also been an honor to collaborate in the execution.
Q: There’s this really pivotal scene early on where politics comes up and you very artfully dodge the question of whether or not your character voted for Trump. Did you and/or Mike White draw from any real life exchanges that you might have had on that topic or politics in general?
Leslie Bibb: It’s funny. He wrote this script something like in 2022. So none of this was drawn from anything that was happening. Kate is so scared to say any of her beliefs, whether it be political or whether or not she likes the color pink. Her need to have the approval of these two women is so strong. This vacation is so important to her.
@Courtesy of HBO MAX
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Here’s the trailer of The White Lotus Season 3: