How can you cast these four women and not put them together?
Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos: Paul Citone/Variety via Getty Images, Kayla Oaddams/WireImage, Ralph Bavaro/Bravo via Getty Images, Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images
The fun of White Lotus casting season is not just in hearing all the actors who are in the mix; it’s also in trying to figure out which names will be paired off with each other. Plot details for the HBO anthology series are typically shrouded in mystery, but that only makes the game more enjoyable. It’s like building a fantasy-football roster, but for actors you know from old cable shows.
With cast announcements for the Thailand-set third season flying, here are my predictions for which new faces will be grouped together. As part of my process, I’m going to make two assumptions. The first is that Deadline was on the money when they reported that season three would feature “a patriarch, a female corporate executive, an actress, a couple of mothers, including a country club wife, a misfit and a yogi.” The second is that actors who were announced together are more likely to share a plotline. Let’s check in!
Parker Posey, Carrie Coon, Michelle Monaghan, and Leslie Bibb
Four well-heeled white women in their 40s and 50s? I know what that means: a moms’ yoga retreat. I’m thinking Posey is the instructor with shades of her Search Party role. Coon is the corporate executive, an audience surrogate who gets less sympathetic with each episode. Bibb is the actress, of course. Monaghan’s vibe can go in a bunch of different directions, but I could see her as the country-club wife.
Jason Isaacs
Isaacs was announced alongside three of the ladies above, which might mean he’ll be paired off with one of them. I can easily envision him as Bibb’s older, richer husband, and can you imagine if he and Posey were husband-and-wife yoga teachers? Comedy gold! Also, did you know Isaacs and Monaghan were in a movie together just last year? Still, if Coon’s role is the biggest — which it might be, considering she was announced separately from Isaacs and the other women — it makes sense for her to have the plus-one.
Natasha Rothwell
Here is the question: Is Rothwell’s Belinda still working at the White Lotus, or is she returning as a guest? My hunch is it’s the latter. Perhaps, as a few fans have speculated, the late lamented Tanya left Belinda some money in her will, and now the woman who once dreamed of launching her own wellness center has signed up for the fancy yoga retreat. This former hospitality employee might feel ill at ease among the elite clientele, thus making her our misfit.
Dom Hetrakul and Tayme Thapthimthong
These Thai actors in the announced cast are probably both playing White Lotus employees. Hetrakul has the longer filmography, including a few American productions (and was the voice of Christian Bale’s Batman in the Thai dub), which leads me to believe he’ll be our POV character among the staff. As for Thapthimthong, the Thai website BK informs us that he finished as the runner-up on Academy Fantasia, an American Idol–style singing competition, so his character may hide secrete musical ambitions.
Lek Patravadi
Per BK, Patravadi is something like the Youn Yuh-jung of Thailand: “film royalty” who broke out in the 1970s, left acting to focus on behind-the-scenes work, then returned to the screen in her grandma era. There are rumblings that season three will focus on spirituality, so a role as a religious guru seems a possibility.
Christian Freidel and Miloš Biković
Friedel is a German actor most recently seen as a Nazi in The Zone of Interest. Biković is a Serbian Russian actor I’ve never heard of before who apparently has pretty rough politics. If I know Mike White, they’re either playing a gay couple or a pair of disgusting sex tourists, and since I can’t imagine Biković playing a gay man, sex tourists it is.
Morgana O’Reilly and Shalini Peiris
O’Reilly is a New Zealander who works a lot in Australian TV, often playing a mum, so let’s slot her in as another mom on the yoga retreat. Same with Peiris, a British Sri Lankan actress with an impressive educational CV, and roles in both the British stage and Zack Snyder’s Justice League.
Walton Goggins, Sam Nivola, and Sarah Catherine Hook
Like the first two seasons, this edition of The White Lotus will also be a multigenerational saga. Goggins feels like the pick to be the patriarch, but of the four young people who were in the same release, who’s playing his children? My money’s on Nivola, who after White Noise and Maestro is getting a real sideline in sons, and Hook, who is from Alabama, just like Walton Goggins. The family could be attached to one of the yoga moms, but Goggins is a big enough name to anchor a plotline, so I think it’s more likely these three are their own group with Goggins’s aggressive male energy rubbing up against the divine feminine of the yogis.
Aimee Lou Wood and Patrick Schwarzenegger
I’d originally thought that Nivola and Schwarzenegger might be playing brothers, due to their similar family backgrounds. But now I think Schwarzenegger is more likely to be paired up with Wood, who’s closer in age. Since she’s British and he’s American, I see them as a couple of backpackers who got together during their travels and whose stay at a luxury resort sparks all sorts of class-based discomfort.