IT WAS LAST YEAR’S MOST OUTRAGEOUS AND HILARIOUS TV DRAMA. AS THE WHITE LOTUS RETURNS FOR MORE, WE GO ON SET IN ITALY TO MEET A WHOLE NEW ARRAY OF DYSFUNCTIONAL CHARACTERS. READY TO UNPACK?

WORDS BETH WEBB

ILLUSTRATION MATT DARTFORD

Born to be wild — Tanya (Jennifer Coolidge) and Greg (Jon Gries) hit the open roads of Sicily.

A hotel manager squats determinedly over an open suitcase. It’s the finale of The White Lotus’ first season, and Murray Bartlett’s harried head of staff, Armond, is orchestrating a gleeful act of revenge against a hotel guest. “It’s something that you would have never imagined yourself doing,” Bartlett later told Empire. Indeed.

Armond, the suitcase, and its steadily cooling contents all came from the sharp, dark mind of writer/director Mike White. HBO reached out to him in 2020, while on the lookout for a single-location show that could be shot during the pandemic; White, who had been sitting on an idea about money and a couple on their honeymoon, saw an opportunity to shake off his lockdown funk. “I was just so tired of being in my house and felt, ‘Well, this will keep me from becoming too depressed,’” he says.

It helped us, too. The show’s six acerbic, wickedly funny episodes explored wealth, colonisation and cruelty through the guests and employees of the opulent White Lotus resort in Hawaii: an eclectic group of characters including Bartlett’s former addict Armond, Connie Britton as the head of a Goop-type lifestyle brand, and Jennifer Coolidge’s moneyed, fragile Tanya. There were graphic sex acts, a full-frontal Steve Zahn, a killing, a misguided mugging, and dialogue so dry and bleakly hilarious that it made you question your own moral judgement. There was simply nothing else on the small screen like it — an outrageous, groundbreaking comedy that each week left us reeling.

The show grew by word of mouth over 2021’s terrible summer, garnering ecstatic reviews and reinvigorating Coolidge and Bartlett’s careers — their performances won two of the five Emmys awarded to the first season. HBO announced that it had ordered a second outing the day before the season finale aired. “Did I think the show was going to be this huge success? I really didn’t,” says Coolidge, long-time friend of White, who wrote the part with her in mind. “When I like things a lot, they’re not what other people pick. I didn’t think we had a chance in hell.”

The whole experience has somewhat bewildered White too, a self-proclaimed outsider whose sensibilities had suddenly shepherded him into the epicentre of a hugely popular show. Now, he is faced with a new challenge, 25 years into a career that has seen him write and act in films from lo-fi oddball character study Chuck & Buck to Richard Linklater’s beloved musical-comedy School Of Rock.