Sorry, Mike: Obscurity ended with “White Lotus”

There is something to be said for benign obscurity.
Just ask Mike White, whose “The White Lotus” (shown here) starts its third season at 9 p.m. ET Sunday (Feb. 16) on HBO and Max. “I’ve never worked with this kind of scrutiny,” he said.
In the old days, life was simple. He wrote and acted in indie films that were often loved by movie buffs and ignored by others.
Then came “White Lotus,” about strangers in a resort. It won 10 Emmys, including three for White – best writer, director and limited series.
HBO promptly decided it wasn’t limited, after all. It could keep coming back – each time with new people in a new resort in a new country.
The first season (six episodes) was in Hawaii. The second (seven), 15 months later, was Sicily. The third (eight), 28 months after the second, is Thailand.
For White, that’s a good place to focus on spirituality. Long ago, while running a TV series, he had what he calls a “nervous breakdown – I had my self-help, Buddhist years.” Now he was filming in a pleasant, Buddhist land.
“Thailand has never been colonized,” actress Natasha Rothwell said, adding: “You feel the lightness, feel the acceptance, feel the peace.”
They were talking at a press conference, joined by other cast members. All of them are new to “White Lotus” … except Rothwell.
She plays Belinda, the spa manager in the original. There were prospects for Belinda to start her own wellness center, until her backing fell through. “Everyone was bummed by the end of the first season,” White said.
So this time she’s back, as a resort guest … hoping for a better fate. In the first two seasons, the only continuing character was Tanya. Jennifer Coolidge, who played her, won two Emmys; Tanya, alas, drowned.
Now comes the new wave of main characters:
— Three longtime friends (played by Carrie Coon, Leslie Bibb and Michelle Monaghan), reuniting for a vacation.
A resort is ideal, Coon said, for people “pretending to have a wonderful life.”
That sort of deception – maybe self-deception – is common, Bibb said. “Everyone’s life seems so ideal on social media.”
Now we dig into that, Monaghan said. We witness “that slow unraveling of women … trying to be perceived as having perfect lives.”
— Two couples. Walton Goggins, 53, plays a guy traveling with his much-younger girlfriend (Aimee Lou Wood, about 29). Tayme Thaphimthong and Lalisa Manobal play Thais who have been friends since childhood.
For Manobal (shown here), 27, this is a sharp detour. As a rapper, singer and member of the Blackpink group, she’s the No. 1 female in K-Pop music; but (videos aside) she was making her acting debut.
“I left Thailand when I was 14, to go to Korea,” she said. With this role, “it was really nice to be home for six months with my family.”
— And a wealthy family from Durham, N.C.
The kids have privileged lives, said Sam Nivola, 21, with some limits: “Dad works a lot, Mom does a lot of drugs.”
So their three kids get rowdy. “I’m already an anxious person about acting in general,” he said. “Then you have to do nudity.”
Patrick Schwarzenegger, 31, who plays his older brother, said he might be uncomfortable watching the show with his parents. Watching “episodes 5 or 6, there will be some times I might take some bathroom breaks.”
(His dad, Arnold Schwarzenegger, can’t be too judgmental. He did a bit of nudity in his bodybuilder days and in “Terminator.”)
Sarah Catherine Hook, 29, easily fit into the role of their sister. In real life, she’s from the South (Alabama) and has an older and younger brother.
Their on-screen parents had to stretch a bit. “I’m not a mother in real life,” Parker Posey said. “I mother my friends.”
Jason Isaacs, who’s English, needed the accent of an upper-crust guy from Durham. It was important top get it right, he said. “I have a friend from the South who’s very unhappy when he hears a generic, Southern-fried accent.”