You might think that signing up to star in The White Lotus is a pleasure cruise for actors.
HBO’s hit show, set in a luxury hotel resort, transports actors to different exotic locales around the world – from Hawaii to Italy.
The “sublimely stressful” third season is set in Thailand, and it unites stars ranging from Michelle Monaghan and Carrie Coon to Parker Posey and returning star Natasha Rothwell.
Sex Education star Aimee Lou Wood, who can currently be seen in Netflix series Toxic Town, also stars, playing Chelsea, the younger wife of Walton Goggins’ troubled character, Rick. She’s joined in the show by fellow Brit Jason Isaacs, who plays wealthy businessman Timothy.
Both stars have got candid about their experiences filming the show, pointing out that it wasn’t as enjoyable as the location would have you suspect.
“I don’t know whether I’d describe it as fun,” Wood told The Guardian. “There were fun moments. It was more like … amazing in the true sense. I was amazed by what was happening. How am I in Thailand? Living in a hotel, that we also film in? It was like a social experiment.”
When asked if this was “in a good way”, she responded: “In a way I will never, ever forget. I will never have an experience like that again. It was so extreme. So the fun bits were unbelievable, so special. The ocean, the landscape, it was majestic. Mike [White, the show’s creator, writer and director] is a genius. Everyone involved is amazing. It’s just the circumstances are quite extreme.”
For the show, the cast were expected to reside at the resorts where filming takes place for a full seven months, essentially quarantined in one place with just the show’s cast and crew for company.
Isaac said the experience was “a cross between high school and Lord of the Flies”, telling Sharp: “We never got away from each other!”
He continued: “Sometimes, it was two weeks of night shoots and then you see each other all day every day. In that time, it’s incredibly hot – not fun hot, holiday hot – we’re in costume and makeup, and we’re not meant to get a tan or lie by the pool, and you can only have so many massages.”
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Isaacs said that the intense filming process is intentional and White wants to create “a pressure cooker atmosphere, not just to the story we were telling, but to our own lives”.
Wood said that White’s writing made “everyone always seem on the edge”, and revealed that her friend, the One Day and Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy love interest Leo Woodall routinely checked in having gone through the same experience filming season two.
Isaacs said that “the intensity” led to there being “an offscreen White Lotus as much as an onscreen White Lotus – just with slightly fewer body bags”. In fact, it brought the actor, who has been acting since the 1980s, out of his comfort zone. “It’s not something I’m used to,” the Harry Potter actor said, adding: “Normally, you go home.”
Wood revealed that some of her co-stars were able to “go home a few times because their schedule allowed it”, but suggested her character was so integral to the plot that she “never had a big chunk of time” to leave.
Her filming schedule led to the show’s hair and makeup artist Miia Kovero urging her to go home as she was unsure whether she was “talking to Aimee or Chelsea”.
“I’d completely abstracted. Everyone becomes their character to an extent, but I didn’t even know who I was.”
Wood said she was so relieved when she got home to London that she saw a piece of rubbish on the floor and thought: “Oh my God, that’s the most beautiful bit of litter I’ve ever seen. I’m a person. I’m real.”
The White Lotus airs Sundays in the US on HBO and Mondays in the UK on Sky Atlantic and NOW.
