Imminent boarding! The White Lotus, sensation of the summer of 2021, returns for a season 2 this Monday on OCS. The success met by what was initially to be a miniseries, which won 10 awards at the last Emmy Awards ceremony, convinced HBO to extend the stay.
After the luxury hotel in Hawaii, Mike White, the creator of the show to whom we also owe the extraordinary Enlightened, docks for this season 2 in Sicily with a new troupe of vacationers, with the exception of Jennifer Coolidge, who takes over the role of the indescribable Tanya McQuoid. 20 minutes met Mike White, at CanneSeries in October 2021, when HBO had just announced the renewal of The White Lotus.
Were you surprised by the success of the series?
I didn’t think there would be so many audiences and people talking about the show so much. What was fun for me was having a wide range of people debating how they felt about one of my shows… As a screenwriter, I’m not looking to win a popularity contest . See all conversations that have arisen from The White Lotus, even from those who didn’t like the show or the characters, is very rewarding for an artist. That’s kind of the reason why we’re doing this. I want the audience to be energized, not necessarily to run out or adore, but to engage.
How did the idea of making The White Lotus an anthology?
The truth is that we found ourselves in this situation because a lot of series were interrupted because of the Covid. HBO asked me to create an easy-to-produce series that Covid wouldn’t have much of an impact on. This is how the idea of a show in a hotel was born, which we would not leave. The White Lotus was built for that, that was the concept. The idea was to make only one season, but the series had a great success. It didn’t make sense to go back to the same hotel, because all the storylines around the characters are wrapped up. So we’re doing something new, with new characters and new themes. For me, it’s great, I’ve never worked on a series that lasted more than two seasons. I think there is a reason for this. It’s because it’s fun to start from scratch, I like that! You know, I’m more of a sprinter than a marathon runner!
An anthology like The Twilight Zone assumes commonalities, what do you think makes up the DNA of The White Lotus ?
I think the action should stay in a hotel, and it should always be about following people on vacation. I think that The White Lotus is a kind of existential comedy, in the sense that when people are on vacation, it’s a time when you evaluate your own life. Sometimes, during the holidays, being with loved ones helps you realize who you live with and who you really are. The result is a genre of universal comedy and drama.
Season 1 also explored issues of dominance, social classes, and more. Would you like to continue exploring these questions?
The first season focused on the influence of money on our most intimate relationships. Domination really comes from whoever has the money, the power. This power can distort relationships, even within the family or between husband and wife. But obviously, between the employee of a hotel and a vacationer, there is a kind of deepening of all these iterations. For the second season, as we have already done, I think we will approach this aspect from a different angle.
Through your new characters, do you still want to explore what makes society today?
Yes, I think the reason people reacted to the first season was its timeliness. It was very current and we want to start again. It’s difficult because everything is going so fast in our current culture. It’s hard to keep up!
In season 1, we had a honeymoon couple, a family, a lonely woman… Archetypes with which you managed to surprise the viewer…
I’ve always liked stories where you think you know what people are, and you realize they’re not really that. This is also true in life. You cannot reduce someone to a cultural stereotype. It never sticks as well as that. Today, and especially in America, everyone is reduced to their group identity. Many essays and non-fiction are written in this sense. Fiction reminds us that we don’t necessarily fit into boxes, that there is a human element, sometimes at odds, with what we see of each other as being part of a group.
Your characters discuss the woke culture in season 1, what is your personal opinion on this subject, do you think for example that we need black authors in the writing rooms?
That’s a complicated question, or maybe the complicated answer. I consider myself a writer, not a television producer. If I wasn’t writing for TV, I would write a book, a poem or a play. I am an introverted writer who enjoys writing. The idea of outsourcing some of the writing to others undermines my whole purpose. Every time I have worked with a team, it has been very difficult. I can’t. I also think there’s a real selling point, which is that so far those who’ve had the opportunity to tell stories are straight white men. It’s really important that the world opens up so that more different people can tell their stories. But, the point of art is not necessarily to say that black people can only see things from a black point of view, or that a white person can only see things from a white point of view, that a man can only tell the story of a man. This goes against the practice of art, which is to remind ourselves that through imagination and compassion, we can get inside other people’s heads. There are plenty of other aspects of lived experience that have to do with age, money, where you live… If you get too dogmatic, if you take it to the extreme, it put an end to the artistic effort, and we would only write his memoirs. But I also understand why people use this argument to open up the job market and provide more job opportunities for people who historically haven’t been able to find any.
Succession, trillion, White Lotus… There are a lot of shows about the ultra-rich who represent few people on Earth. Why are they so fascinating?
I don’t usually write about rich people. It’s funny that the show I wrote about rich people is the biggest hit of my career! The fact that it’s about rich and attractive people probably got more people in… I think there’s a lot of anxiety and uncertainty in the world right now and that The White Lotus touch on something universal. But the packaging plays the escape card, and that counted during the Covid. People want to see each other when they watch TV, but they also don’t want to be reminded of the bill or the rent they didn’t pay! The White Lotus is entertaining and existential. I’m not going to spend the rest of my career writing about the rich, but it’s funny how it attracts such a large audience.
You have never done a series with more than two seasons, would you like to do a season 3 forThe White Lotus ?
We’ll see how it goes. It would be a dream to be able to continue to go to different parts of the world and do a series again with other characters. Sounds like some kind of ideal for a creator like me… Hopefully HBO still loves this season and people will love it again. I’m not the kind of person who stays at a party if the mood isn’t good.