You'll have to wait for more of The White Lotus, creator Mike White is competing on Survivor first
When The White Lotus wrapped up its third season in April, its creator Mike White gave an interview in which he talked about the pressure to start pre-production for a fourth season.
'We were supposed to start scouting in April, and I was like, 'You guys, I haven't been home in three years',' he told The Hollywood Reporter.
Maybe White doesn't like to be home, because the writer and director has just joined the 50th season of Survivor as a contestant, which is sure to pack him off to some locale far from Los Angeles.
It might seem like a surprising and rogue move, but it's actually classic White. He competed on the show's 37th season, and was runner-up, and with his dad Mel was twice on The Amazing Race, in 2009 and 2011. The man loves reality TV.
Survivor host Jeff Probst announced White's casting on CBS Mornings, revealing, 'Mike, after he finished playing, said, 'I want to play again'.
'When The White Lotus hit, and I thought, 'Well, he'll never play again'. But he kept texting and saying, 'Look, I'm serious. If you ever do anything where you have returning players, I want to play again'. So, we're happy to have Mike.'
As you can glean from his spiky, uncomfortable and comedy-forward shows and movies, White is not a conventional Hollywood type. Who else could've gone from a writers room to a Survivor set, and come in second place?
When he joined Survivor in 2018, he already had a successful career with credits on Dawson's Creek, Freaks and Geeks, created Enlightened and wrote the screenplays for School of Rock, Beatriz at Dinner, and a raft of other comedies.
In 2021, he recalled to The New Yorker when he joined The Amazing Race for the first time. 'I remember I was at a party at Courteney Cox's house – I'm not really good friends with her, but I was there. And I was just about to go on Amazing Race, and Jennifer Aniston was there, and I was so proud and excited.
'I was like, 'I'm going on Amazing Race with my dad'. I could see Jennifer Aniston's eyes being like, 'Why the f—k'. That's not anything that anyone aspire to, to be a reality contestant.'
On that season of Amazing Race, the 18th, White and dad Mel finished sixth when they were eliminated on a leg in Thailand. White said one of his initial hesitations about shooting the third season of The White Lotus there was because of those elimination memories from Amazing Race.
The pair returned two years later but was eliminated on the third leg and finished in 10th.
Like White, Mel was also a writer but his involvement in the performing arts was different. He was a prominent clergyman in the Evangelical movement and had written and ghost-written projects for the likes of conservative firebrands Pat Robertson, Billy Graham and Jerry Falwell.
In 1993, Mel came out publicly as gay and published a memoir, Stranger at the Gate: To Be Gay and Christian in America, but was essentially cut off by his former friends in the church.
Because of his family history, White grew up attending Christian churches and camps, but turned to eastern philosophies, which he put to use in The White Lotus, during a stressful period while showrunning his series, Cracking Up in the mid-2000s.
A devoted Survivor fan – '(It's) the only show I really devotedly watch' – White looks to the drama of Survivor to fuel his own TV writing.
He told The New Yorker in 2021, 'Part of my job and my way of life is studying people and analysing motivation and character. I still feel like, even on the most contrived reality show, the people are human, and they're more interesting than some of the most well-scripted drama.
'For me, as a writer of drama, I aspire to do what reality television already does. To create characters that are surprising and dimensional and do weird sh-t and capture your attention.'
With another season of Survivor soon-to-be under his belt, White will have plenty of more inspiration for the next season of The White Lotus.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Perth Now
a day ago
- Perth Now
Scott Caan and Elizabeth Debicki join Once Upon A Time In Hollywood sequel
Scott Caan and Elizabeth Debicki have joined the cast of the new 'Once Upon A Time In Hollywood' movie. The pair will join Brad Pitt in David Fincher's follow-up to Quentin Tarantino's 2019 film, which starred Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio. According to The Hollywood Reporter, it is unclear who Caan and Debicki will play in the upcoming movie. The story is said to feature two key female roles, 'one who runs a bar and mud wrestling establishment and one a trophy wife' but it has not been revealed if Debicki will play once of these or an entirely new part. It will be a reunion for Pitt and Caan, who previously worked together on the 'Ocean's' movie series. Brad, 61, will reprise his role as stuntman Cliff Booth, in the upcoming film, which Fincher will direct for Netflix from a Tarantino script. It's said that Tarantino retains the rights to the characters in 'Once Upon A Time In Hollywood', while Sony - which financed and released the movie - retains the film itself, which is why the upcoming project is not seen as a sequel or prequel despite using the Booth character. It's unclear if Leonardo DiCaprio will return as Western TV star Rick Dalton. Tarantino won't be at the helm, which means the film won't count as his 10th and final film. The director had had been set to reunite with Pitt - who also appeared in 'Inglourious Basterds in 2009 - for third collaboration on 'The Movie Critic. According to Deadline, Tarantino has "simply changed his mind" after delaying production to rewrite the script. Now, he's expected to go back to the drawing board in a bid to find a firm idea for what will be his final film.
The Age
a day ago
- The Age
All US television is Trumpy now, even when it's not
In the original SATC era we wanted to join the wealthy and aspirational foursome for a drink, but now the zeitgeist has turned. The television shows that feel most relevant to the moment, and which are the most engaging, are all about the suffering and the immorality of the super-rich. It feels more comfortable, now, to reassure ourselves that while billionaires and tech-bro oligarchs appear to be running the world, they're living lives of miserable inauthenticity. It started with Succession, a brilliant and darkly funny exposition of the ways in which inherited wealth can corrupt family relationships. The creator of Succession, Jesse Armstrong, has just released a movie, Mountainhead, about a foursome of tech billionaires who hole up in a mountain mansion in Utah as the world seems to be ending. More recently we have Your Friends & Neighbours, starring Mad Men's Jon Hamm, a square-jawed hero of all-American good looks but with just enough despair in his face to hint at inner spiritual desolation. Hamm plays Coop, a one-percenter hedge fund manager enraged by his divorce (his wife left him for his good friend), who loses his job after a low-level sexual indiscretion at work. In order to maintain his lifestyle (which includes $4500 skin treatments for his daughter and $30,000 tables at charity galas), he resorts to stealing from his friends and neighbours. These people, who live in a fictional, highly manicured wealth conclave outside New York City, are so obscenely rich that they have $200,000 watches and rolls of cash lying around in drawers. Hamm does what he has to do – he becomes a cat burglar with a cynical philosophy. Loading Coop is just a man trying to get by, and if that doesn't involve selling his Maserati, or getting a new (albeit less well paid) job, then it is a testament to the show's good writing that we are still with him, even when we question his attachment to a lifestyle he purports to disdain. Another new American show, Sirens, stars Julianne Moore as the beautiful philanthropist wife of a billionaire hedge-fund manager, who is summering in her uber-mansion (it has a turret) on an unnamed east-coast big-money island similar to Nantucket or Martha's Vineyard. She has a creepy, co-dependent relationship with her young personal assistant, who comes from poverty and dysfunction but who is loved in a way her wealthy boss never will be. Of course, these shows have a buck each way – they seek to satirise the super-rich and expose the underlying emptiness of their lives, while allowing us the vicarious experience of living in their luxury for an hour or so. The Hollywood Reporter calls it 'affluence porn'. We get access to the calfskin-lined interior of the private jet. We get to enjoy the week-long wedding festivities in Tuscany and gawp at the marvellous outfits, all while judging the protagonists for their materialism. In AJLT the materialism is not there to be judged; it is an integral part of the fun. Perhaps AJLT feels off because the writing is bad, and the plot lines so tired that dogs must be enlisted to prop up the action. Or maybe it is because in the second Trump administration the US political environment has become so oppressive and so inescapable that no story feels true unless it references it, however obliquely.
Sydney Morning Herald
a day ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
All US television is Trumpy now, even when it's not
In the original SATC era we wanted to join the wealthy and aspirational foursome for a drink, but now the zeitgeist has turned. The television shows that feel most relevant to the moment, and which are the most engaging, are all about the suffering and the immorality of the super-rich. It feels more comfortable, now, to reassure ourselves that while billionaires and tech-bro oligarchs appear to be running the world, they're living lives of miserable inauthenticity. It started with Succession, a brilliant and darkly funny exposition of the ways in which inherited wealth can corrupt family relationships. The creator of Succession, Jesse Armstrong, has just released a movie, Mountainhead, about a foursome of tech billionaires who hole up in a mountain mansion in Utah as the world seems to be ending. More recently we have Your Friends & Neighbours, starring Mad Men's Jon Hamm, a square-jawed hero of all-American good looks but with just enough despair in his face to hint at inner spiritual desolation. Hamm plays Coop, a one-percenter hedge fund manager enraged by his divorce (his wife left him for his good friend), who loses his job after a low-level sexual indiscretion at work. In order to maintain his lifestyle (which includes $4500 skin treatments for his daughter and $30,000 tables at charity galas), he resorts to stealing from his friends and neighbours. These people, who live in a fictional, highly manicured wealth conclave outside New York City, are so obscenely rich that they have $200,000 watches and rolls of cash lying around in drawers. Hamm does what he has to do – he becomes a cat burglar with a cynical philosophy. Loading Coop is just a man trying to get by, and if that doesn't involve selling his Maserati, or getting a new (albeit less well paid) job, then it is a testament to the show's good writing that we are still with him, even when we question his attachment to a lifestyle he purports to disdain. Another new American show, Sirens, stars Julianne Moore as the beautiful philanthropist wife of a billionaire hedge-fund manager, who is summering in her uber-mansion (it has a turret) on an unnamed east-coast big-money island similar to Nantucket or Martha's Vineyard. She has a creepy, co-dependent relationship with her young personal assistant, who comes from poverty and dysfunction but who is loved in a way her wealthy boss never will be. Of course, these shows have a buck each way – they seek to satirise the super-rich and expose the underlying emptiness of their lives, while allowing us the vicarious experience of living in their luxury for an hour or so. The Hollywood Reporter calls it 'affluence porn'. We get access to the calfskin-lined interior of the private jet. We get to enjoy the week-long wedding festivities in Tuscany and gawp at the marvellous outfits, all while judging the protagonists for their materialism. In AJLT the materialism is not there to be judged; it is an integral part of the fun. Perhaps AJLT feels off because the writing is bad, and the plot lines so tired that dogs must be enlisted to prop up the action. Or maybe it is because in the second Trump administration the US political environment has become so oppressive and so inescapable that no story feels true unless it references it, however obliquely.
