The White Lotus has become one of the biggest hits on HBO. While the ensemble cast changes every year along with the locale, audiences have hungrily tuned in year after year for all of the mystery, sex, class disparity and murder that each story has provided. Three seasons of the award-winning series have served fans with all kinds of wildness, and it’s fun that the whole television experience can be tied back to a special two week trip that creator Mike White took with Season 1 and star Jennifer Coolidge.
Season 4 of the show is now in the works, with the action set to move to southern France, but White reflected on White Lotus’ origins during a recent guest appearance on The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon. The host asked about the initial inspiration for the hit premium cable dramedy, and the filmmaker recalled how it came together via observing one of his close friends. Said White.
Jennifer Coolidge and I, we're friends. And we went on this safari and it was like two weeks and we slept in the same bed even. I spent like two full weeks with her. I mean, it was awesome. She’s so fun. She's the funniest person. Getting through life is a bit hard, you know what I mean? There's a lot in the purse. There's a lot of stuff in her purse.
To be perfectly honest, I’m not sure if he’s referring to a metaphorical stuffed purse (potentially suggesting a very busy mind), or a literal purse (suggesting she is the kind of person who makes a whole drama out of finding something she needs from her bag). Regardless, he paints an amusing and understandable picture – especially when thinking about her character, the emotionally unstable Tanya McQuoid from The White Lotus’ first two seasons.
Beyond the metaphorical/literal purse, Mike White was just fascinated to watch her spin certain thoughts. While unleashing his own Jennifer Coolidge impression, he recalled their opportunity to see a pride of lions:
She also veers a little on paranoid. So, like, we'd go out and she'd be like, ‘Wow, look at those pack of lions.’ And then she'd be like, ‘Do you see how they're looking at us? I know that look. We got to get out of here! I'm not kidding, we got to get out of here.’... Whatever I've done in my life, and I'm here watching her freak out about these lions, I was, like, ‘I've done something right.’ She’s an original character.
We never actually got to see Tanya McQuoid on safari, with Season 1 taking place in Hawaii and Season 2 set in Sicily, but it’s not difficult in the slightest to imagine the character behaving the exact same way.
Witnessing his friend in vacation mode, Mike White found inspiration to craft a character specifically for her, and it was from that initial thought that we got the White Lotus. He concluded,
She's amazing, and just to give her a really meaty part that she could really sink her teeth into [was the goal].
Sadly, Tanya McQuoid is no more, as she died during a botched assassination in Season 2, but the show lives on. Casting this month has revealed that The White Lotus Season 4 will be stacked with talent, as the ensemble is set to include Helena Bonham Carter, Steve Coogan, Ari Graynor, Chris Messina, and Sandra Bernhard. While we (not so) patiently wait for new episodes, the previous three runs are all available to stream with a HBO Max subscription.
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