Mike White’s White Lotus might have been a gift from the pandemic gods—a social satire that whisked audiences away from their sofas to a luxury resort in Hawaii. But the show’s breakneck production pace—plus strict pandemic precautions—didn’t allow for much leisure when it came to casting.
Shortly after Labor Day 2020, once Hawaii was approved by HBO as the shooting location for the new series, veteran casting director Meredith Tucker (The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel) began her casting search. White had written a few parts with actors in mind—including Tanya McQuoid, an emotionally needy heiress to be played by Jennifer Coolidge—but Tucker only had about a month to fill out the rest of the sprawling ensemble in time for October filming.
While Tucker had previously worked with White on 2017’s Beatriz at Dinner, another project that examines class polarization, this time around the casting director was searching for actors during deep lockdown. This meant she had to rely on homemade audition tapes rather than in-person meetings or group auditions where actors could read alongside one another and establish the kind of onscreen relationships that can make or break a show.
“We didn’t do chemistry reads,” says Tucker, an eye-popping admission given the ensemble’s smash success. In addition to being named one of the year’s best TV series, White Lotus earned a second season and some heavy awards buzz. Adds Tucker, “We really lucked out.”
She looks at the Mossbacher family as an example. White settled on Connie Britton (whom he also previously worked with on Beatriz at Dinner) to play Nicole, the Sheryl Sandberg–like careerwoman and matriarch. For the character’s husband, Mark, White Lotus needed an actor who would believably be coupled with Britton’s alpha female, but who was also sympathetic enough that the audience would still like him, even after he confesses to an affair. Steve Zahn, who played iconic affable ’90s slackers in movies like Reality Bites and You’ve Got Mail, was their choice.
“With a lot of actors, if you found that out, you’d be like, What a jerk!” says Tucker. “And with Steve, you don’t condone what he did, but it’s a bit more understandable because of their dynamic and what he brought to the character.”
For the younger members of the ensemble, Tucker cast Fred Hechinger, whom she previously cast in Eighth Grade, as the family’s socially awkward son, Quinn; Sydney Sweeney as the college-age daughter, Olivia; and Brittany O’Grady as Olivia’s friend, Paula.
“In terms of Paula and Olivia, we needed to imagine that these people would be friends,” says Tucker, explaining that White thought of another way to gel the actors. “He had the women listen to a podcast called Red Scare—because the actress who hosts has a very specific cadence, so the women were able to slightly imitate that. You do that sometimes when you have friends.”
The fast-tracked pandemic casting process, with all of its limitations, seemed like such a gamble that White appeared legitimately surprised to arrive in Hawaii and see that the actors were actually convincing as a family.
“He was slightly shocked how well it turned out,” says Tucker with a laugh.
Arguably the series’ most crucial role to cast was Armond, the White Lotus resort manager who is eventually broken by the entitled guests he serves and goes down in a blaze of drug-induced glory. The part required an actor who could telegraph depth and emotion from behind a hospitality-smile veneer, but who could also flexibly interface with most of the ensemble’s characters, guest and staff.
“When it’s so wide open, it can be even harder than when you’re looking for something very specific,” says Tucker, revealing that White had not written details about Armond’s age or background. What White did know was that Armond would be good at his job, and would be a reality-grounding figure in the show.
With Murray Bartlett—the Australian actor best known for Guiding Light, Looking, and a season four episode of Sex and the City—Armond suddenly came into better focus.
“He read with his mustache and Australian accent, and it just worked really well,” says Tucker, explaining that Bartlett had the polished look of a front-of-house employee and the comic timing to match costars like Coolidge. “The Australian accent gives him a little authority because it’s a foreign accent, but there’s something a bit more approachable than if it were an English accent. And Murray showed some really beautiful moments in his additional audition—where you could see that he wasn’t just this smiling guy. There was much more complexity going on than initially meets the eye.”
White wanted Molly Shannon to play Kitty, an over-involved mother, but Tucker still needed to find Kitty’s entitled son, Shane, and new daughter-in-law, Rachel. Though Shane and Rachel are newlyweds, Tucker did not necessarily have to worry about chemistry when casting Jake Lacy and Alexandra Daddario.
“It’s not a particularly happy marriage from the start,” says Tucker. “Sometimes you really need two actors who make you think, Oh, these people are so in love. But there’s an awkwardness with these two. There’s not a real connection there. So in that kind of thing, we didn’t necessarily need the chemistry.”
White was clear from the beginning that one character would represent the moral center of the show—and that is Belinda, the resort’s spa manager who finds herself hijacked by Coolidge’s character as her vacation plus-one. Tucker and White ended up casting Natasha Rothwell, the Saturday Night Live writer turned Insecure actor. “She is so naturally funny, but there’s such a deep well of empathy towards her,” says Tucker.
Once the actors were cast, there was very much a fingers-crossed feeling amongst the production, explains Murray Bartlett in a separate interview. The White Lotus actors did not meet until they had quarantined in Hawaii, and did not have time to rehearse before filming. Bartlett’s first scene as Armond was a contentious one with Lacy’s Shane, a guest who becomes Armond’s nemesis.
“We did, like, a gazillion takes, and I was like, Oh, am I just not getting what [White] wants? We were having fun, but by the end I was like, I feel like I’m just not getting it,” recalls Bartlett. The actor turned to Lacy between takes to ask what was going on—and Lacy explained that the kitchen-sink approach was White’s way of seeing what an actor was capable of. That kind of workshopping, Bartlett says, is partially how he was able to figure out his character’s dynamic with each of the other characters whom he interfaces with.
“You definitely kind of find your rhythm when you start working together, particularly when you don’t have any rehearsal or table read and are just on the fly. But it was a brilliant group of actors who turned out to be a lovely group of people. So we were all up for the challenge, full of joy, and ready to have a great time. It was exciting, but also like a little scary step off the cliff and being like, Is there a net here to catch us?”
Though pandemic precautions made casting more difficult, Bartlett says that the extraordinary circumstance actually helped fuse the White Lotus cast once they were on set. “We were immediately kind of bonded because it was such a unique situation with the pandemic,” says Bartlett. “We all got pulled out of our COVID pods and taken to Hawaii—to this beautiful place with these great scripts, with this amazing group of people. That was the jumping-off point, you know? So that was kind of a great place to start.”
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