‘What a Gift’: The White Lotus Cast Reflects on The Making of Season 3

Ahead of the third season finale, The White Lotus cast chats exclusively with Vogue Philippines about how building their characters required energy work, monitor lizards and snakes, their most fulfilling days on set, and how working with Mike White felt like a masterclass in storytelling.

In Mike White’s The White Lotus, every pleasure is a vice and every long stare is a warm gun. This season, he has his badly behaving guests feeling their way around for some form of transcendence, whether it’s in pill bottles, empty desk drawers, monasteries, or in each other. 

“Mike makes you think, ‘Who really are you?’” Patrick Schwarzenegger said, just as the cast gathered at the Four Seasons hotel in Bangkok for the season premiere. In building these characters who are meant to read as despicable and borderline inhumane, each with their own set of entertainingly twisted, carnal desires, the actors share that it was less about playing up the absurd and more about connecting to a deeper sense of self. On set, the conversations mostly revolved around what life is about, what is ego, and what is death. 

“There are so many aspects of the human condition that you bring out there,” Jason Isaacs explained, recounting his experience between particularly difficult scenes as Timothy Ratliff, who in the past few episodes has been navigating rooms and situations with his eyes unfocused and glazed over, mind flitting between one violent scenario to another. “You feel like you’re exposing yourself [because] you’re exposing a full human.” 

In typical White Lotus fashion, this week’s episode is saving the revelations for the season finale, where the characters’ impulses will likely come to a head explosively and all at once. To tease what happens, Isaacs only shrugged, “No one wants to watch rich people have a lovely holiday.”

With the final episode airing next week, Vogue Philippines sits down with Natasha Rothwell, Parker Posey, Jason Isaacs, Patrick Schwarzenegger, and Sam Nivola to talk about energy work, monitor lizards and snakes, their most fulfilling days on set, and how working with Mike White felt like a masterclass in storytelling. 

Vogue Philippines: Did you each have a personal ritual that helped you meditate on your characters? 

Natasha Rothwell: Yeah, I think for me, I’m someone who really recharges when I’m alone, and the cast can confirm. They’ll be like, ‘Where’s Natasha?’ I’m always sort of like by myself trying to gather my thoughts, and I always say that I’m like neurospicy, you know, and I have a bit of ADHD. So focus is something that is really intentional for me, especially on a day that I’m working; it’s me by myself, you know, just making sure that my lines are good so I can forget them on stage and be with the other actor. It’s a lot of solitude, for me, and quiet. 

Parker Posey: I’m the same way. You know, it kind of starts the second you read something and it starts to resonate. And you start to commit, and then it’s like, the actor is creating the words and the story and the dimension of the character, and what they want to bring to it. So I was a lot like Natasha, and I would go out and have excursions, but I need a lot of focus, too, [and] breathing, staying grounded. 

I play a mom in this. I have a family, and there are five [of us] total. And so it was very tight-knit, like a little kingdom, right? And there are all these different projections and dynamics between the family. So, that stuff is like energy work. Having the time to process what is being created ‘alive’ in the moment, and like what to use and how to navigate and how to take shape and how to balance everything is a big part of the work. 

NR: Yeah. The prep. And hydrating. It’s hot! [Laughs] We just have to make sure we were always, like, replenishing fluids because it was a lot of sweating, but yeah. 

I heard so much from the cast today, as well, that making the show was almost like a masterclass in storytelling. What did you take away from making this show, in terms of your craft?

Patrick Schwarzenegger: [The White Lotus] was one of my first experiences working with a director that was also the writer and the creator and the director, and also came from an acting background, which was a very unique experience for me. It was just wild to watch Mike interact with not only me but the other actors, and how he had such a clear point of view and perspective and just way of communicating what he was looking for with each individual. Besides that, I learned tons about acting [through] the overall experience and soaking in the time spent with other actors and learning from them. 

Jason Isaacs: I think Mike [White], as a writer-director, has this incredibly light touch with the actors. The skill is how to get the best out of everyone in every department. And he does this thing of showering everyone with effusive praise all the time and [with] compliments, and then gently, almost like he’s not even sure of his own ideas, half-suggests something. He’s already walking away, just throws it over his shoulder, very, very lightly, offering up suggestions, which are all absolute nuggets. They’re brilliant. But he gives ownership. He almost generously allows the actors to feel like, really, they’re steering the ship. And what he’s doing is very lightly touching the bows of it to keep it on the course that he set. 

And so, I directed a bit, and when I’ve written things that have been shot as well, I think things I’ve written are gospel and should be delivered exactly how I imagine them. But I learned from him to have a very, very light touch on it, and then you get the best out of everybody there. 

NR: [I gained] so much, not just as an actor, [but] as a writer and as a director. I would come down to set on days I wasn’t shooting and, you know, in the very nature of The White Lotus, some of the storylines don’t really intersect unless it’s like a dinner scene, or a lunch scene, or breakfast scene. So it was a lot of opportunity for me to go down and watch Mike work. And the way that he moves through takes and like, gives direction, plays with the words on the page—his eye is just exquisite. And so, I’m just a nerd like that. Like, I’m very much like, I would be there very frequently on set, just watching him move and taking notes and learning. 

And, in terms of the acting, too, I had the benefit of experiencing season one. And to me, this just felt like graduate school. Because the school got bigger, you know? [Laughs] It’s just like season one, Mike jokingly referred to it as basically doing a show over Zoom. Because it was comparatively so small. You know, it was very contained. And everything here felt elevated and bigger. And so it just, I think it required me to reach as an actress and really dive deeper. And yeah, Mike is just such a good sort of steward of the ship. And he was really great at leading us and helping all of us, I think, grow into the roles and into this franchise. 

PP: Yeah, [Mike’s] an actor as well. He related to the actors, and you felt like you were playing with the director, and so he’d take on your story and your character and then give it back to you, or have some ideas after a few weeks, or how to land certain scenes. And so it was really creative and collaborative with a lot of dynamic people. This was like a big machine. It was a Thai production and an American production, and you know, it’s built. [When it’s like that], you’re off to the races. It was very athletic and very demanding. It was [a lot about] how to get yourself back and how to take care of yourself. There was a lot of self-care. 

So it was very much like a dialogue between everyone? 

NR: Yeah! And Mike is just one of the most collaborative directors I’ve ever worked with. And he’s also so sure. When he knows he’s got it, he moves on. And at the same time, if you still feel like you didn’t get it, you could ask for more takes or ask, ‘Oh, can I try this?’ He wants this to be as good an experience for us as much as it is for him. And I think he’s in the trenches with us. He’s holding, essentially, like six different movies in his head. He calls each of the stories a different film. And he’s holding all of that in his head. So, he’s giving you a note because he’s thinking about another storyline that [it] could feed into thematically. He’s holding all of that. I think it’s just really great to work with a director that can do that. 

PP: To have a writer-director bring a bunch of actors and people from different parts of the world is really remarkable, and it’s really special. He created a real experience for us as people and actors in the show. What it is to be in The White Lotus and play these kinds of people has become a mythology that I think people really enjoy. And so that was exciting because things don’t hit in a way that they used to hit anymore, and I’m glad it’s like with these characters and with these people. And, you know, it’s character-based, and it’s story-based, and it’s people that we recognize. And, it’s funny. Like, Natasha has a scene with a lizard. And Walton [Goggins, who plays Rick], like, in real life, saw a monitor lizard eat a frog one night, and he has some scenes with snakes. The actors were going around like, ‘Are you scared of snakes?’ And he’s like, ‘Terrified, terrified!’ He’s meeting his greatest fear. Something about Mike White giving these experiences to people, [who are essentially] overcoming their fears…

NR: What a gift.

PP: Yeah, what a gift. 

What was it like to work on these high-tension, challenging scenes? Did you take anything away from the experience? 

JI: Well, I mean, there were physical challenges we all faced in that it was insanely hot and quite hard to breathe, very often in small spaces. 

PS: There weren’t snowballs there. [Laughs]

JI: No, there were no snowballs. The thing is, you know, [Mike] is such a master at playing and allowing everybody everywhere to do their things. There were some very difficult scenes for me. There were, emotionally, some very, very difficult scenes, but he gives you so many colors. It’s like playing the xylophone; there were so many aspects of the human condition that you bring out there, that you feel like you’re exposing yourself. But you’re exposing a full human. And I guess you feel safer doing it on a Mike White set than anywhere else because he’ll catch you if you fall. You know, you’re trying all kinds of wild things anyway, all the time. And so it’s almost like the difficulty of it is disguised in the process of the daily chaos. 

As an actor, what you want is difficulties and weird, complicated, human situations. But when they’re really well-written, that’s the five-course banquet. There’s the stuff we’re desperate to do. So if you get really angry or really upset, or you do some very challenging physical things, that’s a great day at the office. And we get to do some of those things that [for] other people in real life would be really embarrassing or very upsetting. That’s a fun day for us. 

What did exposing a “full human” mean to you in the context of your characters? 

PS: That’s something that we talked a lot about. I think that it was kind of this seesaw of going back and forth [with] Mike about wanting to create, at least for my character, someone that was so despicable and gross and just totally out there without a filter, yet also someone that you found humanizing. And there are moments that you actually liked him and laughed at him and laughed at him, and all these different aspects about the character. But I think that’s what makes Mike’s writing so good, that they’re these characters that are so despicable and inhumane, yet they’re human. They have flaws and they’re fun and interesting to watch. 

The White Lotus has a lot of these overarching themes that everybody can relate to, but are there any lessons you took away for yourselves, personally? 

Sam Nivola: I think the show, on the whole, is telling us that everyone is f*cked up, and everyone is struggling in life. Even if you have all the money in the world, and you’re on some crazy opulent vacation, you still have your demons to deal with. And I think that’s an important thing to note when you’re talking to anyone. It’s just, you know, pain is relative and everyone is going through something. 

But also, on a sort of less deep note, just the absurdity of life. Everything is funny; even the darkest things are funny, and laughing about those things makes life a lot easier. 

This interview is lightly edited for clarity and brevity. The White Lotus Season 3 can now be streamed on Max and is available on HBO.