‘We already had our last fight': White Lotus composer quits in frustration at show's creator

The Guardian

03-04-2025

The composer of the theme for The White Lotus has quit the dark comedy-drama over creative differences with its creator, Mike White.
According to Cristóbal Tapia de Veer, White never liked his Emmy-winning title music, preferring a chilled-out Ibiza-style track. He said conversations with producers could become 'hysterical'.
'I just stuck to what I was doing,' the musician told the New York Times. 'There were … crazy people and screaming and stuff like that. From there, it became this weird relationship of: how do I pass all this weird music into the show?'
De Veer's work has been acclaimed by fans and critics – his music for The White Lotus has won three Emmys, including outstanding theme for season one, and the season-two version became a club hit that was remixed by Tiësto.
'There's one thing I'm pretty proud of and that is I feel like I never gave up,' De Veer said. 'Maybe I was being unprofessional, and for sure Mike feels that I was always unprofessional to him because I didn't give him what he wanted. But what I gave him did this, you know – did those Emmys, people going crazy.'
De Veer's music for the third season proved more divisive, with some fans expressing disquiet that the vocal ululation of the previous versions had been omitted. In the resulting furore, he was contacted by journalists worldwide who wanted comment on the new theme. He said it had been edited to fit the credits sequence and that no one on the show realised 'how attached people were to the ooh-loo-loo-loos'.
De Veer claimed that he attempted to persuade the show's producers to calm the furore by releasing the full version of the theme. He said White refused.
'I texted the producer and I told him that it would be great to, at some point, give them the longer version with the ooh-loo-loo-loos, because people will explode if they realise that it was going there anyway. He thought it was a good idea. But then Mike cut that – he wasn't happy about that.
'At that point, we already had our last fight for ever, I think. So he was just saying no to anything. So I just uploaded that to my YouTube.'
This is not the first controversy to hit this season of The White Lotus. Duke University – the logo of which features on the T-shirt of Jason Isaacs' character, Timothy Ratliff – recently complained about its usage, particularly in scenes where Ratliff contemplated suicide.
Frank Tramble, Duke's vice-president for communications, marketing and public affairs, told Bloomberg: 'The White Lotus not only uses our brand without permission, but in our view uses it on imagery that is troubling, does not reflect our values or who we are, and simply goes too far.'
Representatives of The White Lotus have been contacted for comment.