The White Lotus (TV Program)

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    Did a TV Show Hurt You? ‘Fix-Its’ Offer Justice

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    This article includes spoilers for “Daredevil: Born Again,” “Severance,” “The Last of Us” and “The White Lotus.”As a longtime player of the Last of Us video game series, Sam Gaitan knew the death was coming. Still, the brutal murder of Joel in a recent episode of the HBO adaptation hit her hard. It was already midnight when she went on Tumblr to read fan reactions. Then, in a fit of inspiration, she started writing.“I was a wreck, and I needed to get those strong emotions out,” Gaitan, a tattooist and artist, said in a recent phone interview. By 5 a.m., she had written 3,761 words featuring Joel and Red, an original character Gaitan had previously created, and an alternative scenario that spares Joel from his onscreen fate.Writing under the alias oh_persephone, she posted the story on AO3, an online repository for fan fiction and other fan-created art, and crashed until her dogs woke her up the next morning.“It probably wasn’t the most coherent thing I’ve written,” she said, laughing. “But I figured other people could use it as much as I did.”In this alternative plot to “The Last of Us,” Joel, the beloved male lead played by Pedro Pascal, avoids being detained and murdered by a rival group.He is saved by Red, an invented heroine who convinces the gunmen that Joel is already dead and sends them off.“Joel’s eyes were on her, watching, a breath away from being up and ready to fight if needed,” oh_persephone writes. “They were both tightly wound coils, waiting to explode.”

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      Walton Goggins on the Song in His ‘White Lotus’ Character’s Head

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      The actor, also seen in “The Righteous Gemstones” and the new movie “The Uninvited,” on dirt biking, his father’s clothing advice and the music that makes him think of Rick Hatchett.These days it seems as if Walton Goggins is everywhere.He’s Rick Hatchett, consumed with avenging his father’s murder, in “The White Lotus.” Baby Billy Freeman, shilling in the name of God, in “The Righteous Gemstones.” The nose-less bounty hunter, known as the Ghoul, in “Fallout.”But Goggins didn’t initially make the cut for “The Uninvited,” a film written and directed by his wife, Nadia Conners, about an older woman who shows up at the home of an actress and her agent husband just as their big Hollywood party has started.Conners originally envisioned “The Uninvited” as a play and staged readings in Los Angeles, New York and London. “I wasn’t invited to be Sammy in any of them,” Goggins said of the husband character.Then Conners turned her script into a screenplay. “I texted her from the plane when I finished it — crying emojis, crying emojis, crying emojis,” Goggins recalled. “And I said, you’ve really cracked this for yourself.” The role was his.In a video call from Los Angeles, Goggins — who lives in New York in the Hudson Valley — talked about shaking off the work day, never washing raw denim and joyriding with his son, Augustus. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.Drinking Wine by the FireplaceThis fireplace is a hundred years old and the centerpiece of this living room that has hosted Edna St. Vincent Millay, Walt Disney, Babe Ruth and even members of the House of Windsor. I end every night in the same spot, sitting on the same stool, with a bottle of wine created by Arianna Occhipinti that we found when we were vacationing in Sicily.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘White Lotus’ Star Aimee Lou Wood Criticizes SNL for ‘Mean’ Sketch

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      The actress in HBO’s “The White Lotus,” said she had received thousands of messages of support after “Saturday Night Live” mocked her smile.Aimee Lou Wood, a star of HBO’s “The White Lotus,” has criticized “Saturday Night Live” for a sketch that mocked her smile, calling it “mean and unfunny.”Ms. Wood, a British actress, posted on Instagram on Sunday objecting to the sketch, in which the S.N.L. cast member Sarah Sherman impersonates Ms. Wood’s character while wearing large prosthetic teeth.“I am not thin skinned,” Ms. Wood, 31, wrote in one of a series of posts on her Instagram stories, adding that she loves being joked about when “it’s clever and in good spirits.” But “the joke was about fluoride. I have big gap teeth not bad teeth,” she wrote.In a subsequent post, Ms. Wood said she had received “apologies” from S.N.L. but did not elaborate. Representatives for Ms. Wood and NBC, which broadcasts S.N.L., did not immediately respond to requests for comment.The sketch, titled “The White POTUS,” imagined the show’s characters replaced by President Trump and members of his cabinet. Ms. Wood, who is from Manchester, England, also criticized Ms. Sherman’s impersonation of her Mancunian accent.After her initial posts, Ms. Wood said that she had since received thousands of messages of support. She shared what appeared to be one such message, which said: “It was a sharp and funny skit until it suddenly took a screeching turn into 1970’s misogyny.”The third season of “The White Lotus,” which concluded this month and was the series’s most popular yet, follows wealthy guests and staff members at a wellness resort in Thailand. Among the guests is Chelsea, played by Ms. Wood, a young romantic British woman who is dating an enigmatic older American.Ms. Wood has been celebrated for her natural smile, especially at a time when many celebrities are opting for veneers to achieve “perfect” teeth. But in a recent interview with GQ magazine, she said that the news media’s focus on her appearance in coverage of the most recent season of “The White Lotus” had made her feel uncomfortable, even if the attention was intended to be positive.“It makes me really happy that it’s symbolizing rebellion and freedom, but there’s a limit,” she told the magazine. “The whole conversation is just about my teeth, and it makes me a bit sad because I’m not getting to talk about my work.”“I don’t know if it was a man would we be talking about it this much?” she added. More

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      Why Wasn’t Anyone Traumatized in the ‘White Lotus’ Finale?

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      After a violent climax to the third season of the hit HBO show, everyone seems A-OK. Was it a Hollywood ending, or a natural trauma response?This article contains spoilers for the finale of the third season of “The White Lotus.” Unless you’re an employee or a guest at a White Lotus resort, in which case it appears that it is impossible for your day to be truly spoiled.“The White Lotus” is a show about vacation. It deals with the dos and don’ts of vacationing: Do go out to party! (Do not engage in incestuous relations while partying.) Do sample the local cuisine! (Unless the fruit is poisonous, in which case please do not give it to your family.)And it is a show about murders.And apparently, based on Sunday’s season finale, no one is traumatized by them. Hours after a mass shooting takes place at the pristine White Lotus resort in Thailand, characters who have just witnessed intense tragedy hop on a boat and seem to sail happily into the sunset, or simply show up for work as if nothing happened.“Only in Hollywood,” Tracey Musarra Marchese, a professor at Syracuse University who specializes in trauma, said with a chuckle.But some of the characters’ reactions, which raised questions about their plausibility and prompted admiration for one character’s athletic sprint, might be completely normal in the face of trauma, experts say.“Sometimes what happens is in the moment because your system — physically, mentally, emotionally — you’ve been so overwhelmed that you might dissociate,” Marchese said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Walton Goggins Knows ‘The White Lotus’ Had to End This Way

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      “I realized that there was really no other conclusion,” the actor said in an interview on Monday about the season finale.This interview includes spoilers for the season finale of “The White Lotus.”A man with a name like Rick Hatchett was unlikely to die in his bed.He didn’t. In the Season 3 finale of “The White Lotus,” Rick, played by Walton Goggins, gunned down Jim Hollinger (Scott Glenn), whom Rick had long believed to be his father’s killer. (A posthumous twist: He was actually Rick’s father.) Then Rick was shot, in the back, by the gentle but ambitious security guard Gaitok (Tayme Thapthimthong). Most tragic: Rick’s sunshiny girlfriend, Chelsea (Aimee Lou Wood), was mortally wounded in the crossfire. With her dying in his arms, Rick fell into the hotel’s lily pond. In that moment, Goggins believes, Rick finds peace.“For me, it was being released from pain,” he said.On the morning after the finale, Goggins, a celebrated character actor currently also starring in “The Righteous Gemstones” and “Fallout,” discussed fate, love and why the story would have turned out differently if he and Rick could have somehow had a few beers together. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.Did you feel that this ending was inevitable? Was Rick always meant to die?Yeah, I do believe that. I didn’t see it coming when I read the scripts. But after I read them and absorbed them, I realized that there was really no other conclusion. It couldn’t have ended any other way.In the previous episode, he stopped himself from killing Jim. In the finale, he can’t resist. Why?His life has been defined by this single event [Jim’s murder of his father, which turns out to be a false story his mother told]. He has allowed this event to become his life story. Who is he without this villain in his life? Because without it, he would have to take responsibility for the decisions that he’s made and for not moving past it. Being face-to-face with his tormentor allowed him to express this deep feeling — all he needed in that moment was for this person to bear witness to his pain. That surprised Rick as much as anyone else. Reading it the first time, I thought that he was going to pull the trigger. When he didn’t, I was in tears about that and overjoyed for this revelation and this moment of peace.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘The White Lotus’: Jason Isaacs on His Character’s Fate in the Finale

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      “Storytelling is magic,” Jason Isaacs said. “It’s sleight of hand, it’s delivering a surprise ending that people don’t see coming.”Isaacs, 61, best known for playing villains in “The Patriot,” “Peter Pan” and the Harry Potter films, was speaking via video call a few days before “The White Lotus” Season 3 finale. A keen amateur magician, he had already performed a couple of onscreen card tricks. His work on “The White Lotus” is also a kind of conjuration.He plays Tim Ratliff, a Durham, North Carolina financier. Tim’s blood runs blue, as do the letters on his Duke T-shirt. (Duke is reportedly upset at the association.) Confronted with past malfeasance and facing the loss of all he has inherited and worked for, Tim spends his Thai vacation overdosing on his wife’s benzos and contemplating murder-suicide. That he can make Tim engaging even in the sweaty maelstrom of an entirely internal crisis speaks to his actorly gifts.“I don’t know what acting is, and I don’t know how I do it,” Jason Isaacs said. “It’s an animal instinct.”Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesNot least among them is a way with misdirection. (Spoilers start now.) In Sunday’s season finale, Tim sets out to poison his family with a fatal batch of piña coladas only to change his mind a sip or two in. (Even his youngest son, Lochlan, played by Sam Nivola, who later took a dose via a protein shake, was spared.) Though Tim had spent the whole of the season running from his fate, he ultimately accepted it and trusted that his family would accept it, too. So that’s a nice surprise.Isaacs, of course, knew this from the start. “I read all the scripts,” he said. But watching the finale with his castmates on Sunday, he felt strangely moved. “We were all of us holding each other’s hands and watching and crying our eyes out in a rather embarrassing way,” he said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      10 Books Like ‘The White Lotus’ If You Can’t Wait for Next Season

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      From scathing satires of wealth to murder mysteries set at luxe resorts, these novels are sure to scratch that Mike White itch.Smart, funny and compulsively watchable, HBO’s “The White Lotus” is the rare TV satire that strikes a perfect balance between vicious and empathetic, skewering the superrich while also humanizing their often outlandish foibles. The series, which just wrapped up its third season, follows a formula that’s as familiar as it is addictive: A flock of wealthy, ill-mannered tourists descends on a far-flung luxury resort for one week, dreaming of escape — only to find that the very problems they hoped to flee are swiftly and mercilessly closing in on them, with deadly consequences.Part of the pleasure of the show is how it manages to make these doomed holidays seem so appealing. Lives implode, relationships crumble and people wind up dead, but you still want to be there regardless. If you’re not quite ready to check out of the White Lotus, we’ve got 10 novels that channel the spirit of the show, from ruthless depictions of moneyed vacationers to murder mysteries set at high-end resorts.If you want to open on a dead bodyKismetby Amina AkhtarMuch like the White Lotus in Thailand, Sedona, Ariz., has a reputation for spirituality that attracts all manner of gurus, yogis and so-called wellness aficionados. Their pretensions are witheringly lampooned in this comic thriller about Ronnie, a Pakistani American who tags along to the desert enclave with her friend turned life coach, Marley. It isn’t long before the dark side of paradise reveals itself, in the form of a dead body — the first of many that soon turn up in various states of dismemberment. Akhtar has a keen eye for the hypocrisy of the namaste-espousing elite, and no vampire facial, jar of manuka honey or hot yoga session is spared from her mordantly funny wit.The Hunting Partyby Lucy FoleyFlitting between the past and present, this mystery novel is more than a mere whodunit: Although the story begins with a murder, Foley conceals the identity of the victim, describing the body in vague terms before rewinding to the start of the week. The cast of this locked-room drama comprises nine 30-something friends from Oxford University who have assembled at a remote hunting lodge in the Scottish Highlands for their annual New Year’s Eve party. When a raging blizzard traps the group inside, secrets, lies and betrayals all bubble to the surface, and the question of who will die — and who will do the killing — becomes more and more intriguing.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘The White Lotus’ Season 3 Finale Recap: Bloodshed and Sacrifice

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      Some characters got happy endings, while some decidedly did not. But there were enough twists to keep viewers guessing until the end.The conversations around this “White Lotus” season have been fascinating to follow. Is the pace too slow? Is Mike White shortchanging his Thai characters? Does all the incest stuff go too far? Most important: Has White run out of things to say about fabulously wealthy, terminally dissatisfied white people?Before the season started, I made the decision to watch all six of the episodes HBO provided to critics over a two-day stretch, and by the time I got to the end of Episode 6, this season was really clicking for me. I found all the talk about whether people can ever really leave their worst selves and bad choices behind to be incredibly moving, lending a deeper, more haunting meaning to all of this show’s usual kinky sex and barely contained violence.Then Episode 7 was kind of a bust. It had too many anti-climactic moments and too many blunt conversations. It was the first new episode I had watched in over a month, and it made me wonder: Had I been too forgiving of the season’s lapses? Was I seduced by the binge?For better and for worse, Episode 8 brings all the climaxes Episode 7 dodged. During this 90-minute finale (a lengthy one, but never a dull one), nearly every major character faces a choice about who he or she really wants to be. Several of them make terrible decisions, and some of them are rewarded handsomely for it — so long as you consider money and security a reward.Let’s start with Belinda, our connection to Season 1 of “The White Lotus” — and Season 2, via Tanya and Greg. When we met Belinda in Hawaii, she was being coaxed into starting her own spa business with Tanya. Then Tanya fell for Greg and crushed the dreams that Belinda was just beginning to believe were possible. Something similar happens in the Season 3 finale as Belinda and her son, Zion, pressure Greg into giving them $5 million. Belinda immediately ditches her own plan to open a spa with her Thai lover, Pornchai.It is hard to begrudge Belinda a financial windfall, especially given that she barely knew Tanya. But the way it plays out does not put her in the best light. During the negotiations, Belinda looks very upset with Zion’s casual dismissals of Greg’s shady past, and she seems especially bothered when he quotes a Langston Hughes poem to prove a point. But it turns out this was all a bargaining tactic. The money is what matters to her.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘The White Lotus’: 7 Questions for the Season 3 Finale

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      As this season heads into its supersized conclusion on Sunday night, here are a few questions that need answers.Season 3 of “The White Lotus” has been the show’s longest, with the creator Mike White spending eight episodes instead of six or seven to tell the stories of superrich tourists and their messed-up personal problems. The extra time has allowed White to slow the pace a bit, to match the more meditative vibes of the high-end Thailand resort where this season takes place.But has there been violence? Oh yes. Kinky sex? The kinkiest. Unsolved mysteries? Of course. Everything fans have come to expect from “The White Lotus” has been abundant this season. Episode 1 began with gunshots, and in the weeks since we have seen armed robbery, white-collar crime, multiple violent threats and arguments and — yikes — fraternal incest.As this season heads into its supersized finale on Sunday night — at around 90 minutes, it will be the show’s longest episode to date — here are a few of the questions we hope will get some answers.Will Gaitok get a promotion?This may not seem like the most urgent issue facing the “White Lotus” characters this year, but I think that by the time the season ends, it will turn out to be very important. Granted, one of the biggest complaints about this season — especially as compared with Seasons 1 and 2 — is that White has not integrated the resort’s staff into the action as well as he usually does. But from week to week, the front gate security guard Gaitok (Tayme Thapthimthong) has been moving closer to the heart of the plot. In Episode 7, he realized that a major heist at the resort earlier this season was likely perpetrated by a fellow employee, Valentin (Arnas Fedaravicius), and his two Russian friends.Gaitok has been in trouble with his bosses since the robbery. He has wrestled with self-doubt, wondering if he is too soft to follow his dream and become one of the well-paid bodyguards to the resort’s married owners, Jim (Scott Glenn) and Sritala Hollinger (Patravadi Mejudhon). Busting the Russians could be just what Gaitok’s career needs — and could also win the heart of his love interest, Mook (Lalisa Manobal), a co-worker with ambitions of her own.Is landing a plum job with a sizable salary the key to happiness? This is one of the big questions “The White Lotus” asks every season, and it is also why Gaitok’s story line matters.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More