Mike White ‘Hallucinated’ the Plot of ‘The White Lotus’ Season 3
Samantha Bergeson
Mike White wanted “The White Lotus” Season 3 to trip up viewers — literally. The series creator apparently dreamt up the outrageous plotline for the season while location scouting in Thailand. During his trip, White became ill and was on heavy meds…ones that proved to inspire certain arcs for “The White Lotus.”
White told The Hollywood Reporter that he was hesitant to even consider Thailand as the location for the third season after he spent time in the country while as a contestant on reality show “The Amazing Race.” However, the tax incentives proved to be a must for HBO, with executives mandating that “The White Lotus” be filmed there instead.
“Originally, I wanted to shoot in Japan. I was in Thailand when my dad and I got eliminated from ‘The Amazing Race’ — two weeks in an elimination station with all these other bitter reality contestants, I was just like, ‘I don’t ever want to come back here,'” White said. “But HBO was really pushing it because Thailand had good tax incentives. As an artist, your knee-jerk reaction is, ‘I’m not doing that!'”
While back in Thailand to prep for “The White Lotus,” White became ill.
“I got really sick with bronchitis. They put me on a nebulizer. It was like I’d smoked crack — not that I’ve smoked crack,” he said. “For two days, I did not sleep. I was just lying in a hospital bed [in Chiang Mai], trying to think about what the show was, and it came to me.”
As producer David Bernad added, “I saw Mike the next morning, and he told me what he’d hallucinated. That’s basically what we shot.”
White wanted the series to reflect certain cultural themes, too, which he paired with the medically-induced “hallucinations.”
“I’ve dabbled in Buddhism, and Thailand worked for the themes that I was trying to get into,” White said. “The show is about identity and desire — and then there’s another part of me, the mischievous gay part, that’s just like, ‘How do I create something that’s dirty and funny?’ It’s amusing to me when people approach the show in this very literal way, like the show is about incest. I’m glad we found you, but you’re not really the audience.”
