The Thailand season of “The White Lotus” never ends.
On Tuesday night, the cast of season 3 of the hit HBO series was seated onstage at the DGA theater in NY following a screening of the fifth episode. Parker Posey, Carrie Coon, Leslie Bibb, Sam Rockwell, Walton Goggins, Tayme Thapthimthong, Jason Isaacs, Patrick Schwarzenegger, Sam Nivola, and Sarah Catherine Hook gathered for a Q&A.
The audience was composed of Guild members, mostly actors.
Dressed in a lacy white gown with black trim evoking a Southern gothic look, Parker Posey revealed how showrunner/director Mike White prepared her for the role as Victoria Ratliff, who became famous for drinking, ignoring reality, and spouting memorable lines like “Piper, no!” with an impeccable Southern accent.
“Think Big Edie from Grey Gardens,” Posey recounted White telling her.
The episode that screened concerned the aforementioned Piper confessing she had conned her family into vacationing at the ultra-luxurious Thailand retreat so she can cajole them into letting her join a Buddhist meditation center. Drama queen mom knows best. Parker, a master at drug-woozy drawls, applied Big Edie parenting wisdom knowing one night in deprivation no matter the spiritual reward is too much for the privileged draws the line at poverty: “You go right ahead.”
SAG members were rapt hearing the ensemble’s take on living at the five-star resort in close quarters with one another in preparation for making a TV family. Leslie Bibb — wearing a baby doll dress — said she helped real life partner Sam Rockwell learn the lines of his super-calibrated monologue while they were on safari. That monologue, deeply troubling to Goggins’ Rick, reveals the actors’ shorthand. Rockwell as Frank admitting to living a very double life was one of the shocks of the season.
Hearing that, Jason Isaacs — who played Posey’s self medicating husband in financial peril — had monologue-envy. It’s easier to have lines, but all he does is brood, imagining killing his family and then himself. How did he prepare, he was asked? The actor said he just thought of his own children, who visited the set with their mother, his wife, in Thailand.
Isaacs recalled, “We were planning to go to dinner, and I said, Let’s ask the kids to join us.” His kids’ response? “We’re your kids.”
Sam Nivola called “The White Lotus” acting boot camp. He learned from everybody, he said. His character, Lochlan, stopped the series in an incestuous moment with elder brother Saxon, played by Patrick Schwarzenegger. Meticulous to the end, White insisted the brothers return to the family villa wearing each other’s shorts.
Catching up with young Nivola at the Russian Tea Room after party, where only those with yellow wrist bands were invited, I asked how his parents, actors Alessandro Nivola and Emily Mortimer, reacted to the salacious scene. Sam, just twenty two, was anxious watching with them. “I’m lucky,” he said with diplomacy, “to have grown up in an actor environment.” They took it in.
“The White Lotus” is still in hunt for nominations and awards from SAG, the Critics Choice, and Golden Globes. The episode shown on Tuesday night featured Sam Rockwell’s speech as Frank, and deserves every award it can get.
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