Thailand ‘Speaks to The Story and The Characters’

When creator Mike White moved “The White Lotus” to Southeast Asia and the fictional White Lotus wellness resort in Thailand, the third season became its most challenging yet for picture editing and sound, both for the requirements of the locations and a desire to not simply repeat themselves.

In each season, the setting effectively becomes a character in the show.

“We made a conscious effort to have it feel very different and honor what Thailand is and how that location speaks to the story and the characters,” says editor John M. Valerio.

Rerecording mixer Christian Minkler notes that the uniqueness of Thailand (previous seasons were set in Hawaii and Italy) brought with it its own considerations for the soundscape, which included creating a rich world and supporting the narrative.

“The bugs, jungle sounds, were continuous,” he says. “We were able to use the bugs and noises as a design element, but also for [transitional vehicles]. That happens throughout almost every episode. That was incredibly useful for artistic and just for practical mixing for the whole season.”

The more practical element was that, due to the heat, many scenes were shot with noisy air conditioning. “The challenge was [creating] natural ambiences, and then on set, the generators and air conditioning.”

Muay Thai, or Thai boxing, became a storytelling device in the penultimate episode, titled “Killer Instincts.” They had second unit footage of a Muay Thai fight that some of the characters attended, which Valerio says, became a “stylistic runner” for the episode involving confrontations between various characters. This included Rick (Walton Goggins) confronting Jim (Scott Glenn) — the White Lotus owner and the man that Rick believes to have killed his father — and spa manager Belinda (Natasha Rothwell) receiving a proposition from Greg (Jon Gries), who she believes to have been involved in his wife’s Season 2 death.

“Usually with the show, we use the environment as transitional sort of exclamation points to scenes that are evocative of the tone of what we’re seeing,” Valerio says, explaining how the Muay Thai B-roll was intercut to “punctuate and accent every little confrontation that we’re seeing.”

For instance, the fighters warm up as Jim and Rick are sitting down to their conversation. “Then Rick tells Jim, ‘Let’s go out in the den, and let’s talk about some things.’ And then we see the gloves hit. The tension keeps ratcheting up, the fight keeps ratcheting up, the scenes keep ratcheting up. The confrontation is being realized.”

Adds Minkler, “The sound of [the fight] was manufactured, but it enabled us to just do whatever we needed to with the design.”

The season culminates with a 90-minute finale, titled “Amor Fati” (a Latin phrase meaning “love of fate”) that required wrapping up each character’s storyline, edited by Valerio with Scott Turner, working closely with White. To keep the episode to 90 minutes (at one point it was two hours in length), Valerio describes how they had to focus on what was most needed to conclude the characters’ stories, which included cutting a scene between college student Piper (Sarah Catherine Hook) and Belinda’s visiting son, Zion (Nicholas Duvernay).

“They meet up, and she decides she wants to go out and lose her virginity. [But] it felt like Piper’s storyline had already landed in the breakfast conversation,” during which she tearfully tells her parents that she learned some things about herself and chose not to study at a Thailand monastery, says Valerio. “And then it was just sort of looking at every scene, and just chipping away.”