The new season of The White Lotus has arrived and it’s already as gripping, scandalous and downright weird as ever.

In its third incarnation, the award-winning anthology series is introducing us to a new group of wealthy holiday-goers in a sun-drenched luxury resort in Thailand.

And with the new episodes already dominating the public conversation, we thought we’d bring you up to speed with exactly how The White Lotus season three was made…

First of all, how did the team end up settling on Thailand as a location?

“The first season kind of highlighted money, and then the second season is sex, and I think the third season, it would be a satirical and funny look at death and eastern religion and spirituality,” creator Mike White said around the time of the season two finale.

“And it feels like it could be a rich tapestry to do another round of White Lotus.”

According to House And Garden, a lucrative deal with the Tourism Authority of Thailand (including a hefty tax rebate that saved the production millions of dollars) also helped sway the decision, particularly as a few other countries were in the running.

What’s more Mike and other members of the team have repeatedly said this was the most expansive – and, indeed, expensive – season of The White Lotus yet.

Initially, Japan was a frontrunner for The White Lotus season three 

A behind-the-scenes piece published by Time claimed that it was actually the US broadcaster HBO that talked Mike White out of pursuing a series set in Japan, due to the country’s strict restrictions and “red tape” around filming.

Eventually, the idea for almost all of season three’s plot came to Mike White during a ‘fever dream’ after he was hospitalised with severe bronchitis

“They put me on a nebulizer,” he recalled to Time. “I didn’t sleep for like two nights, and by the next morning I was like, ‘I think I have the plot’. The season is pretty much what happened that night”

He added to The Guardian: “By morning, I’m like, I just came up with the storyline! It was wild. I felt like I’d done crack.”

The White Lotus resort depicted on screen is actually four different locations

While most of the hotel action was filmed in the Four Seasons in Koh Samui, the Rosewood, Phuket was used for scenes set at dinner, as the Four Seasons’ restaurant was too dark on an evening, according to People.

The Anantara in Phuket was also used for spa scenes, while the Anantara Mai Khao served as the reception area in the fictional White Lotus.

And as for that welcome moment where the White Lotus staff greet guests? That wasn’t filmed at any hotel, and was, in fact, just “an isolated spit in the sea” to the north of Phuket.

Filming in Thailand came with its own unique challenges – namely the heat

Read any interview with a member of the cast of The White Lotus season three, and they’ll tell you that the heat was near unbearable – not least because no air con could be used on set as it was too noisy.

A report in The Guardian mentioned one crew member’s Crocs melting in the sun, while Time spoke of actors being “blasted by hair dryers to remove sweat patches from their clothes” in between takes.

“We’re doing intimate scenes, and you stink,” Jason Isaacs told the latter outlet. “By the end of each day, we’re just caked in sweat and makeup. You can peel your clothes off with a trowel. It melts your fillings. It would be churlish to complain, there are terrible things going on in the world, but we’ve all had enough.”

It wasn’t just the soaring temperatures that proved problematic on set, though

Cast member Michelle Monoghan told Good Housekeeping that with the heat came mosquitoes, that made things especially “rough” behind the scenes.

Meanwhile, a report in TheWrap claimed that everything from “lions roaring and cicadas chirping” to “elephants roaring” caused issues for the sound team, while other problems were presented by “berries, tree frogs, cicadas and boats”.

“That’s the magic of Thailand, though, all those elements,” executive produce Dave Barnad added. “That’s why we went there to shoot.”

Mike White has his own slightly triggering history with Thailand

As well as his background in acting and screenwriting, the Emmy winner is a reality TV nut who has competed on both Survivor and The Amazing Race, the US edition of Race Across The World (and, to be clear, these weren’t the celebrity editions or anything, either).

When he and his dad were booted out of the latter, they found themselves forced to spend time at the “elimination station” in Koh Samui, so when it came to scouting locations, Mike initially wanted to avoid there.

It seems he’s glad he changed his mind, though, telling Time: “I would’ve hated to have gone through the rest of my life having some bad association with Thailand.”

Dave added to People: “The hotel was just so perfect. It called our name, and I think it’s fair to say that Mike has avenged his Koh Samui demons after shooting there.”

When it came to the cast, everyone had to audition – including even the most seasoned of pros

Jason recalled to The Guardian: “I went, ‘Tape? With Mike?’ And they go, ‘No, with a casting director.’ ‘Really? OK.’

“I don’t want to get too big for my boots, but I walked through Times Square and my face was on like five different billboards.”

Aimee Lou Wood tried out in an American accent before settling on her regular timbre

She told Elle: “They said, ‘Can Aimee do one [audition] in an American accent and one in her own?’. Because the character was originally American, but obviously Mike loves people being very close to their characters. He likes to cast people who share some of the essential qualities of that character.

“I could do the American accent and I’ve done a play in an American accent for a whole eight months. Mike just wanted me to be from Manchester. He just didn’t see why she needed to be American and why we needed to add that extra layer of distance between me and her. So he was like, ‘Let’s just make her from Manchester’. And I was like, ‘Great’. And it worked. “

She added: “I also don’t look very American. I always think my teeth just give me away as someone from England. I don’t think I suit an American accent, but I can do it.”

Auditioning proved to be an especially daunting process for one member of the cast

Lalisa Manobal – better known to Blackpink fans as Lisa – makes her acting debut in The White Lotus season three.

“I wanted to switch to a new chapter for my life,” she told TheWrap. ’The White Lotus opportunity came in, and [I] was like, ‘Why not just give it a try?’ I’m a big fan of The White Lotus already — I have to try, even if I don’t get it.”

But it was “not easy”, she insisted.

She recalled: “I sent over my video tape and I got a callback, and then I went to see Mike White and did another audition in front of him, and I got a call that I that I got the role.”

In fact, Mike White was not familiar with Lisa or her work with Blackpink before casting her in the show

Dave admitted there were initially concerns whether Lisa’s involvement could be a distraction, or if there’d be “a certain expectation from her in terms of being an international pop star”.

However, he added that Lisa “could not be more down to earth as a human” and that “her approach to it was as professional and as dedicated as everyone else was”.

Patrick Schwarzenegger turned on the charm in a big way for his audition

One of the more established of the younger cast members, Patrick said his brother-in-law Chris Pratt warned him that casting directors make snap decisions, so he “kind of took a swing”.

He recalled to Vanity Fair: “I knew this character was going to be this kind of douchey, flirty finance guy that was a despicable human – but also someone that you wanted to root for, and thought was funny in a weird way. 

“And so the first couple seconds of the audition tape, I just was like, for lack of a better word, eye-fucking, or kind of checking out the camera, and then approaching it as if the camera was a girl. And they thought that was really funny and weird and cool.”

Unlike past casts, the season three gang had a lot to live up to, which proved daunting for one of them in particular

Both Patrick Schwarzenegger and Aimee Lou Wood admitted that they second-guessed whether they even wanted to be part of The White Lotus because of how how a bar seasons one and two set.

“I kept going, ‘I don’t think it’s right’, and I put it off for ages, I was so scared,” she admitted to Elle. “And then I saw the [script] and I was like, ’oh no, she’s me, I have to do the tape, I actually have to do it.”

That said, Patrick did say yes to the part without even reading the script

“I couldn’t read the scripts until after I was part of it, but at that point, if you’re a fan of the show and you know what Mike has done, you’re signing up for anything and everything,” he told Interview magazine.

Patrick added: “It didn’t even cross my mind to want to read the script first. And then when I started to read it, I was like, ‘Oh, shit’.”

The death of Jennifer Coolidge’s character in season two set off a chain of events that led to Belinda’s return

Dave told TheWrap that Tanya’s demise “naturally led us back to Belinda”, when they were putting together the events of season three.

“As a viewer, you want to know what happened to Belinda after season one,” he claimed. “It’s really emotional and rewarding to get to pick up with her and go on a new journey with her and and see her in a new setting.”

One unusual thing about working on The White Lotus is that the cast live in the hotel they’re filming at for the duration of the production

In total, Aimee claimed she spent seven months living in her hotel in Thailand.

“That extra month, it really makes a difference,” the Daily Mail quotes her as saying. “I was like, ‘Oh… another month… ok…’. It did feel like The Truman Show, social experiment vibes, a lot of the time.”

Or, as Jason told The Guardian: “It’s a kind of crucible, a five-star gilded cage. There’s no question that sometimes it is absolutely fabulous, and sometimes it’s Lord of the Flies.”

Mike White had an unusual technique for keeping things amicable between the cast

TheWrap’s report from set revealed that “a handful of the cast and crew” could be seen sporting a Whoop bracelet to measure their fitness, which quickly took a competitive turn.

“It became this competitive thing [about] who can stay in shape the best and who can get the most sleep,” Dave claimed. “Mike would read out the scores every morning and judge us — I think that was helpful.”

Patrick also told The Guardian: “Mike is always asking me how many grams of protein I’ve had today. And what’s my heart rate variability, and how many hours of sleep did I get.

“He’s like the only other person who, if I have a 6am call time and I go to the gym at 4.45 or 5, he’s already there.”

The Ratliff family grew particularly close away from the cameras…

“Right away when we all got booked, we started doing Zooms together,” Patrick told Vanity Fair. “We would just be talking and creating this backstory of the family. And then when we got actually out to set, we did everything together.

“We got breakfast together, lunch together; we would be in the villa together. We’d watch movies, we’d do all these things together. And week three, Mike was like, ‘Hey, you want to go out for dinner tonight?’ And I was like, ‘Oh, I’m actually getting dinner with my family’. And he was like, ‘What the fuck’s wrong with you guys? You don’t need to hang out every single day!’.”

…although Jason Isaacs did seemingly get into a couple of barnies behind the scenes, too

“There are tensions and difficulties, I don’t know if they spilled from on screen to off-screen, or if it would have happened anyway,” he told The Guardian, recalling “alliances that formed and broke”, “romances that formed and broke”, “friendships that formed and broke” among the cast.

He admitted: “I can’t pretend I wasn’t involved in some off-screen drama. Dave has seen it before, twice, and so has Mike. I can’t speak for them, but I imagine they think it feeds into the on-screen drama, and they might well be right.”

During production, Mike White works on scripts until the bitter end – and it’s a surprisingly collaborative process

“I don’t want to be somebody who’s niggly about every word,” he told The Guardian, adding that he prefers characters to feel “lived in” and “natural”.

Jason also told Time: “It’s an odd paradox that he both wrote it all so precisely and is also prepared to throw it all away and give it over to the actors and just stir the pot.”

He did draw the line at Patrick Schwarzenegger trying to make his ‘douche’ character more likeable, though

Patrick told Interview magazine that on one of his first days of filming, he arrived at a scene late on in the series, and decided he would play the scene “as though my character is changing, and he’s going to have this come-to-Jesus moment”.

“We did the first take, and Mike comes to me and says, ‘What the fuck was that?’,” he revealed. “He’s very direct, but in a funny way.”

Mike went on to remind the former star of The Staircase that while the show itself runs for months, the character arrived at the White Lotus hotel less than a week ago within the story.

“You don’t need to have a huge change in your life in six days,” Mike apparently pointed out. “You’re on a vacation. The audience can see that maybe there’s some changes coming, but I don’t want you to have a big change’.”

If you’re wondering… yes, that hotel stay is free, but the cast do still have to pay their way in other areas

“The one thing they don’t tell you when you check into The White Lotus is how expensive it is to check out of The White Lotus,” Walter Goggins told Stephen Colbert last year.

He explained: “They pay for your room, but you pay for your incidentals. After the first six weeks, I swear this is a true story, not just for me but for everybody, I go to pay my bill and I started laughing. He handed me the bill and I was like, ‘ha ha, yeah right’. You’re telling me that Thai-spiced cashews cost that much money?”

This year’s new theme music has already proved to be very divisive – and its inspiration came from some surprising sources

In 2023, composer Cristobal Tapia de Veer told Variety: “I hear interesting things in TikTok or YouTube sometimes. I think that the best song I heard in the last few years that I can remember is people harmonising to a cat on TikTok.

“There’s a cat, and somebody put some piano and then some girls started harmonising, and then there’s all these versions harmonising this cat, it’s super moving and so spontaneous and fresh that this is grabbing a lot more my attention than super-produced pop music.

“I’m a fan of pop music, but it feels like it’s been a while that I feel like something has surprised me. So I’ve been looking a lot into these eight-second bits of music that people [are] putting together and harmonising a cat or stupid, silliest things.

“To me, it’s like a gold mine, it’s just moving to me. It feels like you are actually in contact with a person.”

And since you’ve made it this far, yes, if you’re wondering, that is Patrick Schwarzenegger’s real bum in episode one

“No stand-in,” he told Esquire. “Once I read the script, I knew what was coming, but before that, I didn’t.”

The White Lotus continues on Mondays on Now and Sky in the UK.