Transcript of Ep. 1: Same Spirits, New Forms with David Bernad and Michelle Monaghan

Yeah, we've been all over. We've been to Mexico. We've been to Costa Rica. But we can go wherever, really, because Rick barely works. I used to be a yoga teacher. Oh, wow. Yeah, that's cool. But we've been traveling so much. We were going to go back to Bali, but then one day he woke up and he was like, We're going to Thailand. Yeah. And once he gets an idea in his head, you can't argue with him. Isn't that right, babe?

Hello, and welcome to the White Lotus official podcast, companion to Season 3. I'm Chia Talentino.

And I'm Josh Behrmann.

We will be your co-host throughout this journey in Thailand. We'll be recapping and breaking down the episodes, discussing some of the larger big picture themes. We'll be speaking with the cast and the crew.

A few words before we get started, this is the companion podcast, which means we'll be discussing the latest episode of the White Lotus. So make sure you watch it before you listen or you will be spoiled.

If you haven't had a chance yet, I strongly recommend you check out the lookback episodes of this podcast in which host Ross Katz, dives deep into the first two seasons of White Lotus and speaks with everyone from Mike White to Jennifer Coolidge. You can find those episodes on this very podcast feed.

A little bit about your hosts, we're both journalists and authors and have both worked in film and television as well. I'm Josh. I write for magazines, I write narrative non-conviction stories, and I have worked in film and TV because many of my stories have been optioned for the movie business. That's how I know Mike White and Dave Burnet, the creator and producers of the show.

Are you holding back your greatest tidbit about this season, specifically, which is?

I visited the set, so I was on set while they were shooting parts of the show, and I might actually be in an episode. I don't know yet.

Well, I'm Gia. I write for The New Yorker. I'm one of those toxic people that believes, But if I went to the White Lotus, I would just have an amazing time and be happy. It's funny enough, though, I have been to all three shooting locations. I mean, not in connection to specifically the filming of the White Lotus, but I have been more or less a vacationer in all three places. I'm an asshole just like the rest of them/us.

Or you have a deep insight into the whole scope of the show. It's true. We'll be joined later in the episode by White Lotus ERP, Dave Bernad and Michelle Monahan, who plays Jacquelyn.

Before we get into the recap of the episode, I have a burning question. Who did you have the most immediate identification with on this season?

Well, I have two answers. I'll give both the answers. Neither of them are perfect, obviously. My first instinct actually was the Walton Gaugin's character. Hell, yeah, brother. I feel like that. I feel like the leather I think the military burnout phase could be in my future. I can see it.

Rick, the lady in the airport thought you were my dad, okay? You should get a gentleman's facial.

No. And with a mysterious dark past. He's in paradise but miserable. I've had that phase of life could be coming back around in the future. At the other end, I think probably Lachland, Sam Nivola's character, the younger brother in the family, not that particular family, but being the odd man out in a family, right? And feeling like you're trying to figure out who you are and trying to define yourself against your family. My family did not go on vacation. That was like opposed to our ethos. And we certainly wouldn't have been to the White Lotus, but I could see being that kid and trying to figure out your way and being confused by your own family. And then winding up 40 years later as Walton God.

You never leave. I'm a Chelsea through and through.

I think the Cosmos brought us together so that we could get to the root of your issues. No, I'm going to help you get your joy back.

Yeah? Yeah.

Good luck with that. You're nice. Even if it kills me. Every season of this show, I've identified with the person that gets brought there but definitely can't pay for it.

You know what I mean? Although I will say when I have been to, respectively, Hawaii or I never have a bad time on vacation. I believe I have a strong moral belief in one should never have a bad time in a beautiful place. I don't think I ever have. But again, that's toxic denial on my part. But Chelsea just clueless happy party girl along for the ride, just trying to get people to get drunk with her. I guess I'm aging out of that phase of my life. But the part where she's at the bar and meets another girl that's there for no reason, basically, and it's just like, Should we get pissed? I was like, the number of times.

That was where you identified that.

The part where I most identified with her, obviously, is when she gets poured the taster of wine and she's like, I'm sorry to complain, but it's actually not very much. She poured me and she doesn't know that a normal thing that rich people do. That was when I was like, Oh, she's me, I'm her.

All right, great. Well, I'm sure everybody else is going to be having a rotating identification through all the characters over the course of the season. Now, let's get into the first episode.

Okay, so this episode is called Same Spirits, New Forms, like all the White Lotus episodes. It's written and directed by Mike White. Like all the season openers, we get a shot of paradise. We get a monkey sitting on a tree branch overlooking this gorgeous twilet paradise pastel sky Thailand scene. We're meeting a ton of people. The first two we get are Zion and Emrita. Emrita is teaching Zion to meditate in this beautiful pagoda, and this beautiful scene is broken up by the Sound of fire. He leaves the pavilion, he jumps into a pond, trying to stay clear of the gunfire, and then he sees the body, the traditional body in this season floating in the water.

I found this to be quite terrifying, actually. Yeah, I know. I was really caught up in this opener, which is different from the others, obviously. It was way steep in the water and trying to figure out where to go, and my mom's out there, and I was really on edge. I'm like, squamish in movies or TV that produce anxiety, so this really got me.

Yeah, totally. Well, I also think it's like the previous deaths were more or less accidental, right? And this one is, you hear a gunfighter, you're like, Okay, I mean, someone is shooting to kill.

You know at the beginning because- That someone set out to kill somebody.

Something has happened. With more violent intention that was previously there. I love that.

Then we flash back to one week earlier, and everybody's arriving, and you have the usual socioeconomic and personality dynamics in the choreography of what's happening on the boat.

We also get two hotel employees, Mouk and Guy, talk, which I didn't know until about 30 seconds ago.

This is Lisa from- This is Lisa from Blackpick.

I had no idea. Yeah.

But then you can't when she's so, plays this buttoned up demure character in this that it's hard to realize that there's this international global superstar in there.

Yeah, I know. It's funny. It's different from the idol where Jenny was playing still an idol. But here Lisa is playing this health mentor because this hotel has this extreme wellness meditation focus. Guy Tuck is a security guard. He's very clearly in love with her who wouldn't be. She seems to be keeping him a little bit more at the distance. We can't really tell whether she's just being demure or if she's No, you're my friend. Please leave me alone.

Yeah, there's a pretty in pink dynamic going on here.

I love their vibe. There's that one scene where later in the episode where they're flirting and she is talking to the bodyguards of the hotel's owner, and he's being protective. I found them to have really wonderful, very sincere chemistry. Do you know what I mean?

Yeah, totally. Of course, I'm wondering, are they going to wind up together? What's going to happen? Is it going to be pretty in Is she going to go away? I want them to wind up together.

I do, too. I feel like maybe they will. I don't know. Then we have our recurring character. Yeah.

Then we have Belinda.

I'm here the whole three months. Yes.

You sure know how to treat a burnt-out bitch. It was very nice to see her again on screen. We see that she's in Thailand and she's there studying, and she's greeted by Porinchai, the the masseuse at this White Lotus.

Belinda is the one that you most want to have, the triumphant walk away with huge bags of and yet somehow, even seeing how excited she is and how she's like, I really have a good feeling. You're like, Oh, no, Belinda.

I know. Having just rewatched season one, I was struck again how emotionally damaging her encounter with Tanya was and how she's left She's been recovering for the last few years, and here she is. She's finally getting her chance.

She's finally getting her chance to trust again.

Then there's going to be a gunfight.

Then there's the Ratliffs, the family of five, an upper-class family from North Carolina, clearly extremely invested in tradition. What did you think about the accent work here?

Well, there was a little bit of like, they step off the boat and open their mouths. I thought it was coming on strong, but you say it's spot on.

I grew up in Texas. I went to school at the University of Virginia. This exact family is as familiar to me as the back of my hand. I was legitimately, this is as the kids say, but I was literally screaming How was your flight?

We flew over the North Pole.

Jason Isaacs in Parker Posey play, Timothy and Victoria Ratliff. Victoria, the mom, just seems to really be on a steady drip of lorazepam. But that part at dinner where she's like, Scratch my arm. Mom.

Mom.

You were asleep. Scratch my arm. Okay. It feels so good.

There are three impeccably named adult children are Saxon, played by Patrick Schwarzenegger, Piper, played by Sarah Katherine Hook. Piper, incredible name today. She would be Hadley, but this girl, this age is Piper. And Loughlin, played by Sam Novola. They normally vacation in the Caribbean They are in Thailand because Piper is a senior at Chapel Hill. She's writing a thesis on Buddhism, and Parker Posey's character also went to Chapel Hill. Loughlin is deciding whether to go to Duke or Chapel Hill. The oldest son went to Duke, as did the dad. This is a classic house divided. Victoria assures the very funny staff member named Pam who's assigned to them. There's a part where she's like, How good for you? How good for you? Or whatever.

Yeah, How wonderful for you.

But she assures them they're a totally normal family, which, yeah, why not?

We are a normal family. I like them. They have to assure our strangers.

Yeah. Not only normal, but also the best, clearly. They're invested in that idea. The men are upset about their not being Wi-Fi privileges in the villa.

What's the Wi-Fi?

We don't actually have Wi-Fi in the villas.

Okay. I think it's a great idea. The only people I want to see are right here anyway.

Honey, I'm sick of these phones. It's not realistic. We will be keeping the phones, Pam.

Okay.

But it probably would have been better for the father if he had just locked up that phone because at some point of the episode, he gets the nightmare call from a journalist being like, Hi, we're trying to close this story in two days, and we need to know, can you give me a call back as soon as possible? Nightmare call. That it sounds like he deserves it every way.

As journalists, we know the subject should not answer that call. If we can't reach you, it's better for you.

I'm actually He's astonished he called that guy back. Yes, right. He wouldn't have called. In real life, he's not called.

If he knew what it was about or even had any inclination.

There is this immediate psychosexual thing where there's three bedrooms and they're trying to decide where they're going to distribute the two kids. Saxon tells Piper, he can't stay with you because you have full-grown genitals now.

There's this gender breakdown also in the family where the women went to Chapel Hill.

And there's clearly a gendered thing. It's like, are you going to fall in line with the alphas?

Because of the profoundly disturbing end of the episode where you think that Saxon is about to just watch porn, jerk off in front of his little brother to show him what you're supposed to do with the penis.

I honestly thought he was going to do that, and I'm just very glad he didn't have to… Witness that? I'm not a squamish person, but I probably would rather not see… Incest. See the incest get… I'd rather see it get paced out teaspoon by teaspoon as it is going to, presumably throughout the season rather than get it all at once in episode one.

Next, we have Jacquelyn, Laurie, and Kate.

To Thailand, to monkeys, to self-care, and a week of new memories. Yes.

They're three tight girlfriends all the way through basically their young adult life, and they've stayed friends, and now they're getting their long-awaited vacation together. This also is a really great complex of characters that is so much as laid out in just their first real introduction. Of course, by the way, what could go wrong when three long-time girlfriends go on vacation? Oh, yeah.

I I could go on this for an hour. There is objectively unequal distribution of power and ability and money, really, and the ability to move in the world where it's… I mean, Carrie Coon is gorgeous, but they're trying to… She is styled and she moves. She's supposed to be the Daudy one. She's supposed to be the Daudy one, which is crazy because it's Carrie Coon. But she's very clearly positioned that way. The other two look like the movie stars that they are the entire time, are styled as such, have gotten, as they admit, impeccable work at their prestige, unnamed doctors or whatever. But the dynamic between women that are trying so hard to not admit that there is tension and competitiveness in any way is one of the funniest things to watch, if not necessarily to experience in the world. Can't wait to see what happens.

I know. I'm like, How is it going to go down and how does the tape play for it? Also, you can see, I feel like you can roll the tape back even and see that, Oh, in high school, the distribution of power and social currency was present then, too, right? Oh, yeah.

The moment that I found most painful about the dynamic between the three women is when they are trying to complain about their lives. Jacquelyn is saying she can't have a bad day in public anymore, and Kate is saying, She doesn't know if someone really likes me. For me, I think I'm cool, but what if they just want a board seat or whatever? They're just reassuring each other back and forth like, We're so lucky. We're so lucky. If there's anything worse than people being huge assholes, it's people being huge assholes while insisting they are so lucky and so grateful. That is an echelon of pure madness and cringe that I hope this season pushes into so hard because it makes me want to die. Lastly, we've got Chelsea and Rick, who I love immediately. Chelsea is played by Amy Lou Wood. Rick is played by the iconic Walthon Gaugens, giving so much Walthon Gaugens.

Yeah, you need to sort your shit out. You've got issues.

I've got issues? Mm-hmm.

You're the one who's crazy.

She's a former yoga teacher, just along for the ride, trying to get him to relax, being like, Should we get fucked up? Should we try some Tentric? Would you like that? And he's just so angry the whole time. Finally, he gets sick of her, kicks her to the bar. In one of the last scenes of the episode, she befriends another girlfriend, another beautiful girlfriend of an older man, and and they decide to get drunk together. They talk about all the bald white men that are in Thailand, and we pan around to the respective bald white men. Then to this specific one who is...

Greg, Tanya's husband.

The employee of Black Lives Matter.

Yes, Exactly.

Bureau of Land Management. Yeah. He's here. Did we find out exactly what the shady thing going on? Was he trying to kill her for her insurance money?

Well, they're married, so he would inherit the money, presumably. I don't know if it's ever explicitly revealed.

That they had a profit sharing agreement with the gays?

Yes.

But we are assuming that he's- That's my assumption.

Maybe we will find out otherwise here.

He's been living in Thailand for a year. We learned that from Chloe, the girlfriend.

The beautiful girlfriend. Thailand is the type of place to disappear with your money, which, by the way, I'm wondering what you make of Walton's quest. He's here for some reason. He was arrested. He can't go to Australia. Yeah. He's got enough money to be there.

What is his past? I have no idea, do you?

I don't know either. Well, you should know this is your guy. I know. Look within yourself. Imagining myself as him, I can see a lot of scenarios where I would wind up there. I have no idea. I have a hunch that's probably going to be wrong that there's some business past.

I know you have a theory about the White Lotus. The metathesis? Yeah. What is your meta thesis about White Lotus?

Well, I have a thesis about season one, which now relates to season three, and so I feel semi vindicated so far. But I feel like season one is despite the surface level dealing in ideas of wealth and privilege and so on, that it actually was this Buddhist parable. It's about how basically everybody is wrestling with their own internal suffering, and they're all unhappy. Even Shane, the rich guy who's like, We're in the wrong suite. We need the pineapple suite. And you think he's the villain, but it's just that he's on vacation and he also can't be happy. Upstairs or downstairs, everybody is having this internal suffering, and they don't know where to find meaning or happiness. That's what everybody's looking for, and they don't even realize it. Then over the course of that season, the only people who get off the wheel are Armand, because he dies with a smile on his face.

You could call him that.

Sure. Yeah. I mean, he starts quoting Tennison about death is the end of life and all this stuff. You see him let go, basically, of himself. Then, Quinn, the son communes with nature. The guy's addicted to his phone and porn, and he communes with nature and sees a whale and then gets on the boat and all of a sudden just escapes. That's the only way out, basically, is to dive into the ocean, right?

But sorry, your theory is that the real thematic subtext is that desire is the thing that causes suffering.

Yeah. I mean, well, that's the nature of Buddhism, right? The four noble truths. The first one is all life is suffering, and the second one is suffering is caused by needs or attachments or desires. That is, I feel, what season one is actually about, underneath everything.

But season two is, too. My argument is that all plots are about this. That desire is what gives something stakes in the thing that instigates the plot.

Everybody has to have needs.

The needs are what puts the spikes in the plot. But right, it's interesting because now we are in the home of this ideology. Yes.

Now we're in a place where it's like the whole country is like this blank canvas for people's spiritual seeking, and it's a Buddhist country.

That seems to be the difference that the hotel is configured around awareness and spirituality and gratitude really overtly. It was interesting. The part of the Buddhist writing that Piper is listening to on audiobook is about identity being a prison, that we build a prison, we step into it, we lock it. Identity is a prison.

No one is spared this prison.

Rich man, poor man, success or failure.

We build the prison, lock ourselves inside, then throw away the key.

The guy says, Identities of Prison. I think that's what the show is about. Okay, that's the-Yeah. That is the headline.

We're supposed to take it as that.

Yeah. And then, he says, No one is spared, rich, poor, whatever. I think that that is why I feel like that's what is happening in season one, too. And in that respect, I think in general, Mike is very sympathetic to all the characters. There are no real villains. Nobody is a bad person. He's rich.

But this time, there's someone with a gun. You know what I mean?

Yes, right. Well, yes, exactly. This time it's going to be on purpose. Somebody's going to be killed on purpose, or perhaps. But even so, I think that whatever motivations, whatever happens that leads people to that place, I feel like the show and Mike is fundamentally sympathetic to that because it's all born out of whatever vulnerability and human frailties that people have that lead them to question themselves, to worry about who they are and what is meaningful. Even in this episode of the family and the three women, at a certain point, they catalog what they have. They all catalog what they have. So you know something's going to get lost, right? And then we're going to see what happens.

Your kids are gorgeous. You're beautiful homes. You're totally winning life. Well, look at you.

Now you found the man of your dreams.

Oh, my God. Who would have ever thought? Right?

I think there's also something funny happening in the writing, too, which is being aware of something is not morally additive necessarily. There's this strange weight placed on being self-aware or just being aware of suffering, of privilege or whatever. That's seen as somehow redemptive when in fact, it's not. You can be completely aware and still be doing the same horrible shit. In fact, it can be self-justifying. Exactly, yeah. I feel that there is something funny going on in the writing where previously, the characters were often not self-aware. They were taking their experiences for granted, the ability to be at these gorgeous places and They're more aware and self-conscious here, perhaps because they've chosen to go to a place that's wellness and awareness-focused. I think that that will be this growing tension and joke in the writing where everyone is so aware of their blessings, and it makes them actually so much worse. Now, we have the pleasure of talking to Michelle Monaghan, who plays Jacquelyn Lemon, famous TV star on the show.

So excited to be here, you guys. Oh, my gosh. Just being here with the three of us? I'm in heaven. I would sleep in a tree.

Michelle, your character comes with a backstory that is supposed to be immediately legible to the viewer and is. You're a big star. The owner of the hotel is dying to meet you. I wanted to ask you, what are the pleasures as a movie star of playing a movie star? What does that allow you to get to do?

Well, I'll tell you what, I don't know if there were any pleasures in reading that I was going to be playing someone that was famous that's a television star. In fact, if anything, it felt like it hit a little too close to home. It felt a little confronting because I was like, Wait, how do I play something that on paper appears so close to me in terms of the job? The initial fear of reading that that was my career, I was like, Oh, gosh, this feels a little meta. But after I got beyond the idea that she was this actress, which, of course, I could relate to very much, it was really just getting to discover all of the complexities of her, which are obviously well beyond who I am or anything like that.

Tell us, as you read through all the scripts, what were those nuances that emerged for you, that deepened the part for you and showed you the specificity of who Jacquelyn was going to be, and specifically, that was not you, right?

I think that was interesting to me was this idea that she has these lifelong best friends, and she wanted to take them on vacation. I feel like she felt like she owes it to her girlfriends that maybe they're not in that position to be able to do that. I think that at the same time, while she was excited to to foot the bills, to fund this girls trip, that maybe she secretly liked as well to have the upper hand and how she manipulates that a little bit. I think that's something that Mike obviously writes with such nuance and such subtext. But I think that he really wanted us to lean into that ever evolving power dynamic, this idea that one's the perpetrator, one's the peacemaker, one's the victim, and it's constantly shifting. Finding our respective roles in each of those dynamics, how that plays out and that shifts. I think that she, Jacquelyn, likes to appear to be in control, but I think at the same time, she really wants to just be reckless and to lose control I think there's a real duality to her and definitely a duplicity that we start to see, we get to see in her as the show progresses.

That's the beautiful gray area of all the characters, is that they all are a little bit duplicitous. Certainly, this season's theme, which is spirituality and life in death, you really see every character being being confronted with that existential crisis of who am I? What am I doing here? But I think what's really relatable with the three ladies is the way that we explore the way that we've been conditioned as women to compare ourselves to one another, to judge ourselves, this thing that we're always confronted with our own life's choices and questioning our very lives based on other women's failures or successes. I really love that idea of that because even though it's heightened, of course, in White Lotus, I think it's something that we can all relate to as women, specifically. Completely. The grass is always good. We've all seen relationships like that. We've all been in situations like that. It's just very relatable.

Yeah, there's something in there about the three of them have been friends for so long that any decision that any one of them makes, it's personal to the other two. It's somehow a referendum, it's somehow a judgment. Some shadow is cast over the other two no matter what.

Yeah, and I think that's what's so brilliant, what Mike did. I think in my conversations with him, building out the characters and stuff, his inspiration really I think he was a sidekick to a vacation that he went on that he witnessed a lot of this behavior or just these comparisons. He was like, Man, it's rough out there being a woman. No kidding, man. These women are all mirrors to each other. They have this shared history, this shared past. Then, of course, they grow up and they are the lives take very different directions and different paths. They live in different cities. Then you can't help but look at one path and go, God, that looks pretty good. It looks like she just fucking nailed it. She's got everything. She's got it all. That plays out really intensely in this dynamic, in this girls trip, and that question of trying to have it all or like, Oh, no, no. I did this, this toxic positivity and this quest for perfectionism that we have as women.

I'm not an along.

Except you, Jack, you look amazing. You look amazing. You look incredible. You look incredible.

We've been debating what the relationship between the three women was as girls. In high school or junior high, was Jacquelyn the Queen Bee and the other two are vying for her attention? Are they all in an equal playing field? Now, because of her career, she's emerged on top?

Yeah, I think we spoke a lot about that. I think Mike had some interesting inspiration. As soon as he just tells it like it is. But he really wanted the ladies, and I say this is a quote from Mike, to all look like a big blonde blog. He really wanted us like baseline to really feel like we were interchangeable, despite then the nuance that we all developed in mind together. Initially, I would say that probably we all looked the same when we were younger, and then all of a sudden, maybe Jack Jacquelyn was starting to be perceived as this beautiful person, and then that ruffled some feathers. She started to be maybe put on a pedestal from probably a junior high or high and went on to have this success as an actor. For Jacquelyn, I think she's a love-hate relationship with being put on a pedestal. But I suppose the only thing that could be worse than be on the pedestal is not being put on a pedestal. I think that she's very conflicted in the way that she wants attention and what drives her. I'm I'm sure that there was a lot of deep-rooted things that took place for all of them.

I think there were some things in high school that maybe Jacquelyn did that they'll never forgive her for. I think there are some things that maybe then those patterns continued to maybe rear their ugly head. But then I think one of the other things that's interesting that Mike delves into is the way that we remember things.

Well, and this shows up in the first episode when the women watching the mask performance.

You know what this reminds me of? When we did that sketch in school and we were all one person. Jacquelyn, of course, was the face. We hid behind you and I had my hands and some shoes and I was I was on your feet, and I was the arms.

They all have clearly this ingrained memory of having been of Jacquelyn as the star and the face. Then they're like, We were your feet. Jacquelyn was like, I don't remember.

Of course, you're the pretty face.

Jacquelyn was like, What? What are you talking about? It's left an impact on them. Jacquelyn's like, Oh.

I think that's the clue that she was the preeminent one. She doesn't remember this performance.

They're like, What are you talking about? That's not at all how that happened. Then you're looking at the other one like, Are you kidding me? No, it happened this way. Then we're all completely stunned because we don't know what the reality is. I think that was really a great way that Mike was able to infuse that confusion and that you don't know who to even root for at that point. There's like some... Everyone's bringing a little bit of their baggage. The way that Mike uses those conversations, but they're gossiping about one another and one leaves the room and it's so gooey and juicy gossipy. But it's that faux care, right? That faux... That toxic positivity. You're like, Oh, my gosh. I just love her so much.

We were discussing this. We were talking about it yesterday and I was like, this is deeply familiar to me as a woman. The framework that this when one person leaves the room or when you're on a side chat where it's like, There is a specifically feminized way of laundering the most unkind impulses through the most kind language. Wow.

That's a deep statement right there.

It's just like, I just want her to be happy. You're just saying the meanest shit.

It's so good. I remember reading those lines, and it was so wild. Actually, that scene, I think, was in our audition for the show. I remember we got three scenes, and he asked me to specifically audition for the role of Jacquelyn and Leslie for Kate, and then, of course, Carrie for Laurie. However, he had a really unique way of auditioning. He had me say a lot of Kate and Laurie lines, and then he had them actually say a lot of Jacquelyn and Kate lines. Then he mixed it all up because he wanted us all to share the same qualities again. It was such a unique. When we got the role, I was like, we all got the material, and we were all like, Oh, we're so confused, Mike. We thought Jacquelyn was saying this line. We thought, Oh, we thought this was good Kate's storyline. He was like, No, I just wanted to see you all like this. I was like, Oh, my gosh. There's such a method to his madness. That's incredible. Yeah, his process is so wild. It's so cool.

It's interesting. In this episode is when we're getting to know all the three ladies, I think, Laurie, Carrie Coon says, It's like we're all mirrors.

It's like I'm looking in a mirror. That's right.

I look at you two It's like I'm looking in a mirror.

Well, that's the thing. I feel like it makes that sense. She's talking about in the youth, when you're learning who you are and your friends do mirror you and you discover who you are by the mirroring of social life with your deepest friends. But then as you get older, the mirror means something different. It's like mirror, mirror on the wall, right? It's the trick mirror. Yeah, it's the trick mirror. And so then now the mirror is actually It's really a comparative mirror, and it's telling you something different about yourself by the gaze at your friends, right? And then that's what starts to unfold throughout. And you see all that just in that one or two scenes. It's so well-drawn.

So I think we're close to running out of time, but I have a dumb question, if you will humor me. I love dumb questions.

It's really no dumb question.

Well, we've been debating. This is the key question. It's a key question, really, here. I love it. Extremely curious about what Jacquelyn Lemon's show is.

It's never stated, right?

It hasn't been stated yet, but what are we talking here? There is.

It's really funny. Mike, really, everybody wanted to know what it was.

Is she a lawyer with Alzheimer's?

I assume, right. Is it a Grey's Anatomy vibe? Is it 24?

No, it's so funny. Mike made a conscious choice not to decide what it was. He didn't want me to decide what it was either. Really? Which I was like, wow, yeah. It was a question that I got from all of the I think at one point, we were like, Which show is Jacquelyn on? Because it's obviously everybody recognizes from the show. I was like, Doesn't matter, does it?

It didn't matter. You were able to let it be a blob. You didn't need to know she was... Then you That's right. That's right.

Exactly. I think that helps to being an actress where it's like, I get people that come up to me all the time and you're like, Are you on that? What is I can look them up and down in a split second and I'll be like, made of Honor, right? They'll be like, Yes, yes. I'll be like, Source code.

They're like, Yes, I love that movie.

I think of that action where they can't put their finger on it, what it was.

But you can read them.

But I can read them. It's interesting. Yeah, so that wasn't really imperative. Maybe it'll reveal itself. But I remember finding I asked my towards the end because the cast wouldn't give up on it and he was like, I don't know. It doesn't matter. I was like, You're right. It doesn't matter, dude.

Michelle, thank you so much for talking to us. It was such a pleasure. Yes, this was really fun.

Thank you. Thank you. Thanks to everyone for tuning in. It's a really fun ride. Enjoy the rest of the season.

Josh, what do you think the show that Jacquelyn stars in is? Is it a Grey's Anatomy? Is it a good wife?

I think she is the newly elevated head of a spy agency. Spy. She finds out that there's a subversive element within the agency. She has to root it out by herself.

Yeah, great.

We're going to pitch this. Yeah, exactly. We've developed this. Well, we'll pitch it to Bernad.

Yeah, pitch it to Bernad. Our next guest.

Our next guest is Dave Bernad, the executive producer of White Lotus, and an old pal of mine. I'm looking forward to chatting with him. All right, we're now joined by White Lotus ERP, Dave Bernad. Good to see you.

How's it going? This is a dream, Josh, the I'm interviewed by you.

At long last.

It's taking me 20 years.

Have you guys been friends for 20 years?

Almost. Almost, yeah. That's how I got a free trip to Thailand.

Okay, so let's talk about Thailand. Was it always the plan to come here for season 3?

No. At the very beginning, if I had to bet money, we were going to end up in Japan. I think Mike and I have always had just a deep appreciation and love of Japanese culture and Japan in general. And when we set out to... We were going to go scout Japan, and HBO said to us, Can you just check out one other country? When you boil down the list of Southeast Asian countries that have a rebate and have a crew base and are film friendly Only in the weather worked for our dates, it was really only Thailand. We said, Okay, let's scout Thailand first. We'll appease HBO, and then we'll go on to Japan. A fun fact is Mike, who was twice on The Amazing Race, had been eliminated twice in both times the elimination station was in Kosamui. Mike always had this aversion to Thailand. I would never, ever have thought we'd end up in Thailand when we started.

We were talking about this, and you were saying that you were originally drawn to Japan, to place the story there juxtaposes the culture as differently. The culture of Japan is so specific that you have to embed the characters and how they're relating the Japanese culture, whereas Thailand is a more neutral territory for visitors to come, and they don't have to navigate the local culture in the same way.

Yeah, we started off in Bangkok, and then we went from Bangkok to Phuket to Krabby, and then up to Chiang Mai. I think we just discovered just how incredibly beautiful the culture is in Thailand and Buddhism and also the warmth of the people can't be understated. I think the real turning point for us was we were in Chiang Mai, and Mike had bronchitis and he ended up in the hospital. We were supposed to fly to Shanghai. We ended up staying a couple of extra days there in Chiang Mai. We put Mike on this nebulizer, which I guess is a really strong steroid.

What's that? I never heard of a nebulizer.

You never had to do one for your baby?

No.

It's like this little inhaler mask thing.

Oh, wow. Yeah. He ended up hallucinating, and he hallucinated the season. He got out of the hospital. He came in the van. I was there and he goes, I had the most vivid dreams last night. I was on this steroid and I couldn't sleep. He told me what he dreamt, and that is what we shot. It is almost exactly that.

It came to him as a vision.

Josh, should we do recreational nebulizers?

Yes, seriously.

This is the breakthrough we might need.

I have vivid dreams already. Do I need to be writing them down?

Yes, you should. I remember him telling me just how incredibly well he was treated by the nurses and how much they cared about him. He just fell in love with Thailand. And when we left Thailand to fly to Japan, I was like, Oh, yeah, we're going to end up shooting in Thailand. And we got to Japan, and I think, to your point, the interest of the show is never to look down or make fun of local culture. I think Japanese culture is so specific and it's so beautiful. I think to do a show set in Japan, you're going to end up getting into things we didn't want to get into, where Thailand is really about Buddhism, and Buddhism itself permeates everywhere in our experience, and I think that just felt like a more ripe place to investigate Eastern versus Western philosophies. Yeah.

Will every season and its themes end up connecting to the setting in a particular way? Could you talk more about how this season's themes came to coalesce around Thailand?

Yeah, I think since I've known Mike, and I've known Mike 20 years, too, he's always been interested in Buddhism, something that's come up a lot. He's read a lot. I think for us, once we got there, the Buddhist ideals and Buddhist storytelling was something that was already in his head. As we traveled around, you realized how if you're going to do something in Thailand, that's going to be a subject matter you're going to have to tackle. I think thematically, he was already in. Then before Mike starts writing, he goes and lives. He lived in Sicily for three or four months. He lived in Thailand for three or four months. He went around and investigated different cities and local culture. He met a lot of really interesting people. I think through those travels, he pulled out some of the thematic ideas. He met a couple funny characters. He had a little adventure, and I think that led to some of the stories in the show.

It's interesting that Thailand was the second thought because the defining thing about visiting Thailand is the Buddhist culture. Was the Buddhism there when you were also thinking about Japan, or did it really come to the surface in this dream? By the way, Jay wants to know exactly what was in the nebulizer.

Mike's going to have to answer that. But I would say we were very ignorant about Thailand, and that's what's so exciting about the show. In Thailand, they call it soft power. Soft power is this idea of them trying to figure out how to export Thai culture, because really what Americans know about Thailand is probably from the hangover. It's this idea of it's a party country of sex tourism, which that's not what Thailand is, obviously. For us, we were ignorant. In the second you man, the second you get in there and you really immerse yourself, you realize just how beautiful Thailand is. It just really coalesced in a natural way. Similar to Sicily, I would have bet money we were going to shoot in France. We were in Sicily and we were at a hotel, and there's all these heads everywhere. We asked the guy, What are these heads? He told us a story about this more soldier who came and fell in love with a local Sicilian woman. The woman found out that he had a lover back home, and she chopped his head off. That's what those heads represent, is this story about jealousy and infidelity and the history and culture of Sicily.

Once we heard that story, I think that opened up what Mike wanted to write in a similar way to us traveling around Thailand opened up this idea of doing a season about Buddhism and the beauty of Thailand.

Well, and as Josh has been talking about with his private theory about the show, I mean, the entire show has, in a way, been about desire being the thing that drives people to suffer Okay. Here you really get it full force.

I know. I feel very vindicated now. You know my whole thesis about season one is Buddhist parable. Then as season three is unfolding, it's like, Aha, here it is now on the surface.

Okay, I think people knew coming into this season that Natasha Rothwell was going to come back. We were going to get Belinda. But it comes as a shock in the first episode when Greg is one of the many white-balled men sitting at the White Lotus. He made it to three. At what point did you all know that Greg was going to be, or Gary, perhaps I should say, at what point did you all know he was going to be in this season?

I think right away. Again, if you had told me that John Grice would still be in the show season 3 when we were shooting season 1. I would never have believed you. But John's amazing, he's an amazing actor, amazing human being. I think Mike immediately had this idea of how to keep Jennifer Coolidge's story going in a way that would surprise audiences. For Mike, the Tanya storyline has evolved as a through line, and he had this brilliant idea of how to keep that storyline in the show. Once we knew Natasha was in, Mike had the brilliant idea of bringing Greg back and seeing what happens when those two cross.

I've got a question. The White Lotus is one of the best shows to play the Sex in the City, Who are you on the show game? I've been discussing it with Josh ad nauseam. Well, first, can you guess which character Josh identifies with the most on this season? Yes. Okay, who is it?

It's Walton Gaugans.

Of course. Can you guess who Dave identifies with the most?

Oh, that's a good question. Probably also Walton Gaugans.

Is that the correct answer? I wonder.

Well, it's funny because if you spend enough time with Mike, you're going to end up as a character in one of his movies or shows because he's always paying attention and he's really good at picking up on funny moments. You don't even realize he's paying attention. There's a lot of me, I think, in the show. That or I'm a narcissist and I'm just projecting. You're distributed amongst. There is definitely one line in there that I told him as an anecdote. When we were in Bangkok, I had gone out for drinks with someone, and she told me that the women in Bangkok call these bald men LBHs, losers Back Home. So I went back and told Mike the next day, which I was really excited when that ended up in the script.

You'll notice a lot of bald white guys in Thailand Yeah. The locals call them LBH's Losers Back Home.

I have a question for you about how the show is very unusual in that the pilot does give you, obviously, a hint of something bad happens. The first one, it's fairly mild. In number two, well, probably foul play. And then in this one, now, you know there's gunfire, there's intentional violence coming. And so it's like ratcheting up what the stakes are going to likely be from the cold open, basically. But then season one is very simple, ultimately. The whole action is motivated by they got the wrong hotel room. And then in season two, there is a murder plot and stuff that happens. So in season three, is this plot-wise going to be more complicated? Where is this headed?

It's interesting. When we were making the show, HBO picked the show up very quickly in July of 2020 and said, Can you get a show shot this year? That can be out in '21. Mike and I had sold and thought about multiple versions of a travel show that examined upstairs, downstairs life and the resort culture and entrepreneurialism. Mike started writing really quickly, and then the idea of the murder plot was something that came later. That was never the idea of the show. It was always these really specific characters interacting with each other and examining more existential ideas. This idea of a plotty show was never something that we set out to make. Even when we were cutting season one, I remember we got this note about the end of the pilot returning to the dead body to remind people that there's a dead body. I remember talking with Mike about it, and he was like, I don't think people are really going to care about that. They're going to forget that the dead body exists. That's not really the focus of the show. Obviously, For some people, that's a big part of the show, and they're hooked into that.

Season one is really just like, as you said, a lot of people sitting around a table talking. Part of that was because we had to shoot that in a bubble. We couldn't leave the hotel, and that was partly why the show was so contained. Season 2 is really a bedroom farce. I think Mike, who's brilliant at plotting and brilliant at writing soap, and I mean that as a compliment, he's like, How do I escalate this to make this a really fun bedroom farce? I think after the success of season 2, he's like, How do I make this even bigger? That's what led us to... That and the nebulizer is what led us to season 3. It's also funny. Even season 2, when we started shooting, we were still in the throes of COVID, so we were slightly contained. This is the first time we made the show with nothing holding us back. This was a massive production. We were in so many sick cities or something and constantly moving and so many hotels. I think he wanted us to challenge us to go bigger.

Getting a vision through a nebulizer after- Bronchitis. It sounds like a plot on White Lotus. I know. Dave, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us.

No, of course. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you guys for doing this.

It has been so fun.

Yeah, it has been so fun. Thanks to our guests, Michelle Monahan and David Bernad. To all of you guys listening, we'll see you next time. The White Lotus podcast is a production of HBO and Campside Media. This episode was hosted by Gia Tolentino and Josh Behrmann. Natalia Winckelman is the managing producer. Our associate producers are Allison Haynie, Anthony Pachillo, and Alia Papes. At Campside Media, our executive producer is Josh Dean. Sound design and mix by Bart Warshaw at Cacoon Audio. For the HBO podcast team, our executive producer is Michael Gluckstadt, senior producer Allison Cohen-Sarocatch, and producer Kenya Reyes..