Trib Total Media TV writer Rob Owen offers a viewing tip for the coming week.
About halfway through the third season of HBO’s “The White Lotus” (9 p.m. Sunday) and the race to steal the most scenes in the show is on among Parker Posey’s Victoria Ratliff and her specific Southern accent; the Ratliff brothers (Patrick Schwarzenegger, Sam Nivola), who may be on the verge of incest, and the backbiting trio of friends played by Leslie Bibb, Carrie Coon and Michelle Monaghan.
It’s a tight race, but there’s a relatability to childhood friends-turned-successful adults Laurie (Carrie Coon, “The Gilded Age”), Jaclyn (Michelle Monaghan) and Kate (Leslie Bibb) that gives them the edge.
Now adults with insecurities galore, the trio are at their catty best (re: worst) when two split off and start discussing the absent third member of their friend group.
In a virtual press conference before the season premiered, Coon said the lack of honesty among the friends is what gets in their way most.
“We were joking that if these women had walked into the villa and said, ‘Listen, this is what’s going on with me right now,’ and started off in this honest and authentic way, then it would have been a very different vacation,” Coon said. “But that’s not what happened. Everyone’s pretending. I’m afraid everyone can relate to pretending to be living an extraordinary life, whereas everyone’s actually feeling left out.”
Monaghan said the relationship among the “White Lotus” female friends is a testament to the “unrealistic expectations that we have for each other and the way that we’ve been socially conditioned to constantly judge ourselves, to be competitive with ourselves and one another, and always looking at each other and ourselves and saying, ‘Am I enough? Can I be doing it better? Is the grass always greener?’ ”
“This slow boil starts to happen and you start to see that slow reveal and that unraveling of women trying to defend their life’s choices,” Monaghan continued, “and really try to be perceived as having this perfect life when really they’re just going through their own lives and their own vulnerabilities.”
Bibb compared it to how people post their curated lives on Instagram, showing only the good stuff, nothing negative.
“We’re all swiping and everybody’s life always looks so much dreamier on a phone than in real life when it’s really happening,” Bibb said.
Monaghan also pointed to the “ever-shifting power dynamic” among the three friends, which varies depending on which two are talking when the third is not there.
“One’s the peacekeeper, one’s the victim, one’s the perpetrator,” she said. “That’s something that feels familiar.”
As for the conversation in the March 2 episode where Kate revealed she voted for Trump, Bibb said that was a reference to the 2016 election because the script for this season was written in 2022, but the shock on the faces of Laurie and Jaclyn points to the idea that “who you were when you were growing up and who you’ve become can be very different people.”
“For Kate, she’s so scared to say any of her beliefs, whether it be political or whether or not she likes the color pink,” Bibb said. “Her need to have the approval of these two women — and deeper than that, the respect of these two women — is so important to her. It’s hard for her to really lean into one side. … She is this great connector and this vacation is so important to her that these friendships feel that they’re not sure if, truly, the friendship will survive it. Or in true ‘White Lotus’ fashion, if we will survive it.”
And then there’s the way all of these roiling internal thoughts and feelings get expressed in their performances, often through non-verbal facial expressions, which Monaghan credits to “White Lotus” writer/director Mike White, who began his career as an actor (he also competed on reality show “Survivor” in 2018).
“It’s very unusual for a director to be able to take that kind of time and lean into that and really want reactions and for you to sit with something and ponder it, and how that informs your character, your character’s response,” Monaghan said. “That’s like gold for actors. That’s all we want to do. We want to say great words but we want to lean into the non-verbal moments because that’s life. It was just great to be able to have a showrunner and a creator — (who is) an actor first and foremost — that actually really respects that part of the process.”