Mike White Envisioned the Ratliffs as “the Brunette Version” of the Family From ‘White Lotus’ Season 1
The White Lotus creator Mike White made a rare appearance at HBO Max’s Nominee Celebration on Sunday to celebrate season three’s 23 Emmy nominations and shed some light on his unique process.
Joined by stars Parker Posey, Jason Isaacs, Natasha Rothwell, Sam Rockwell, casting director Meredith Tucker and a virtual Carrie Coon, White explained that when he’s putting together the group of actors for a new season, “It feels like it works best when it’s sort of like an orchestra, and you want different voices and you want a whole variety. I also feel like that when it comes to casting, it’s fun to have actors who have different processes and different kinds of different vibes. It’s like if you’re a connoisseur of taste, you want a little a taste of this, a little taste of that.”
He pointed to Posey and Isaacs as a prime example of that, as “they are so different in their approach. On the first day, I was like, OK, this is gonna be fun because they bring so many different kinds of methods to how they work. I don’t need to tell them anything, they just do it and it’s fun to just watch the chemistry.”
Posey teased, “I learn my lines front, back, left, right, up and down, and then Jason doesn’t learn his lines at all. So it really was two different ways of working.” Tucker added that they don’t do chemistry reads during the casting process but, when putting together the Ratliff family, did consider physical appearance “to a degree.”
White explained that it is important to him that actors playing family members look alike, and recalled how “the first season, we did this family with Sydney Sweeney and Fred Hechinger and then Steve Zahn and we put them all together for the camera test and I was like, ‘Oh, these people look exactly alike. This looks like a family.’ And then I was like, ‘We’ve got to do this with this Ratliff family.’ I was like, ‘We’ve got to make them look alike, maybe the brunette version of that family.’ I don’t know if they’re as perfectly dwarfy cute blondes like that season, but they’re amazing, I think they do [look related]. You want to buy it.”
The cast also joked that it was such a unique experience working on The White Lotus that when it comes to meeting actors from past seasons, “It’s like being an astronaut,” Coon said. “Like you’ve seen Earth from space and the only other people who’ve seen Earth from space are other astronauts. And so forever, the people who did these seasons will be like, ‘I see you over there.’”
White concluded the conversation on an emotional note, tearfully telling his cast, “Can I just say, because I don’t know if I’ll ever get a chance to say this again with all y’all here — thank you so much for being so amazing. I was thinking about who’s on this panel and how much you brought to this show and how much I learned from each one of you guys. I’m so grateful and I love you all, thank you so much.”
