A slew of actors have booked their tickets to Thailand. HBO has confirmed that Leslie Bibb, Dom Hetrakul, Jason Isaacs, Michelle Monaghan, Tayme Thapthimthong, and Parker Posey will be checking into the White Lotus for season three of the Emmy-winning anthology series from Mike White. They join previously announced returning cast member Natasha Rothwell, who will reprise her role as spa manager Belinda Lindsey for the Thailand-set third season. Production on season three of The White Lotus is set to begin in and around Koh Samui, Phuket, and Bangkok in February.
As per usual, the cast is a mix of well-known faces and lesser-known actors. An indie darling, Posey’s starred in such films as Party Girl, Best in Show, and, most recently, Beau Is Afraid. Bibb is no stranger to franchises, having starred in Iron Man, as is Isaacs, who appeared in the Harry Potter franchise. Monaghan returns to her old HBO stomping rounds after starring in the first season of True Detective. Hetrakul has starred in Bangkok Dangerous, while Thapthimthong is a relative newcomer.
Rumors have been swirling about casting for the third installment, so much so that White’s friend and School of Rock collaborator Jack Black had to shoot down talk that he’d be checking into The White Lotus as well. “I’ll deny because that’s easy to tell the truth,” he recently told Vanity Fair. “I have to throw ice water on that sweet, sweet theory.”
While Black may not be making his way to Thailand, these newly announced names will be booking longer trips than usual: the third season of The White Lotus will be “supersized,” as White recently told Entertainment Weekly. White promised that the show’s next chapter will be “longer, bigger, [and] crazier” than the previous two seasons, which took place in Hawaii and Italy, respectively. “I don’t know what people will think, but I am super excited, so at least for my own barometer, that’s a good thing…I’m super excited about the content of the season.” At the Wonka premiere, Rothwell told Vanity Fair that the show made her “gasp out loud a minimum of five times, and this was just me reading the scripts.”
The Emmy-nominated second season of The White Lotus focused on sexual power dynamics and starred Aubrey Plaza, Meghann Fahy, and Theo James, among others. It also saw the demise of Emmy winner Jennifer Coolidge’s fan-favorite character, Tanya McQuoid-Hunt, at the hands of some “evil gays.” After the season two finale, White told Vanity Fair that he was interested in exploring “something that’s a little more celestial” for the third season. “We are going to scout in Asia and look at countries there,” he told Vanity Fair. “My instinct is that maybe it has something to do with spirituality. Eastern versus Western religion, or Western people in an Eastern culture.”
So, will Posey and Bibb play feuding yoga moms on a retreat searching for inner peace? We’ll likely have to wait until 2025 to see.
Chris Murphy
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