After Hawaii and Italy, Thailand is the playing field for the third season of TV dramatist Mike White's acclaimed series on Max.
In interviews, he has explained that if the first season is about money, the second about sex – then the third depicts rich people's search for spirituality.
Harry Potter
Jason Isaacs believes that the key to the series' great success is that it is so universally applicable. That everyone around the world can identify with a series that, at its core, is about rich and more or less unpleasant Americans.
I was in the Harry Potter films and they're honestly about English boarding schools and that world, but everywhere on earth I've been, people think it's about them and their culture, says Isaacs
He played Lucius Malfoy in the Harry Potter films, in "The White Lotus" he is a financier who sees his life crumbling apart while he is at a spa in Thailand.
But when reality has in many ways surpassed fiction lately, one might wonder if the satire in "The White Lotus" is not too pale.
Jason Isaacs does not agree.
The satire is not tied to what's in the newspapers right now, he thinks.
Trump
But a current person still appears in the story. A wedge is driven between the three childhood friends Kate (Leslie Bibb), Laurie (Carrie Coon), and Jaclyn (Michelle Monaghan) when one of them refuses to answer whether she voted for Donald Trump.
The girls are on location in Thailand to rekindle their youthful friendship, but it's not that easy.
Mike White is not just interested in politics. There are so many aspects of the girls' lives and how they've grown apart. The question is whether old friendships can withstand someone changing, explains Carrie Coon.
It has not yet been revealed whether there will be another season of "The White Lotus". Mike White usually wants new actors each time, with a few exceptions.
Leslie Bibb dare not hope that she will get to come back.
You can't really get in with him to get to come back, she says and laughs.
But it's probably everyone's secret dream to be asked again. A series like this you only get to be a part of once in a lifetime. We're somehow TV's astronauts. Only the others who have been in this series know what it's like to do it, she says.
"The White Lotus" premiered on HBO during the pandemic, summer 2021, with, among others, Murray Bartlett, Connie Britton, Alexandra Daddario, Sydney Sweeney, and Jennifer Coolidge in the roles. The series took place on Hawaii.
The second season with Coolidge, Michael Imperioli, Theo James, Aubrey Plaza, and Meghann Fahy came in the fall of 2022 and took place in Italy.
Jon Gries and Natasha Rothwell return from the first season, and Jason Isaacs, Walton Goggins, Leslie Bibb, Michelle Monaghan, and Parker Posey are the most well-known names in the third season, which premieres on Max on February 17.
