
‘White Lotus' villain Jon Gries likens Greg to Robert Durst and the Tinder Swindler
When Season 3 of 'The White Lotus' premiered last month, the shock was palpable when returning character Belinda recognized a familiar face at the resort in Thailand: Greg Hunt, the wily suitor of the late Tanya McQuoid.
As the season has unfolded, Greg (played by Jon Gries) has emerged as an antagonist, particularly after Belinda dove into the investigation surrounding Tanya's death and realized Greg, who now goes by Gary, evaded questioning by authorities.
On a show famous for reinventing itself, the same has been asked of actor Jon Gries, who says that playing the ever-shifting character has been a welcome challenge and, like 'White Lotus' itself, full of twists.
'In the beginning, I totally played him for a guy who was, you know, on his last legs,' the actor said in a recent interview with CNN, referencing Greg's very apparent ill health in the first season of 'White Lotus,' which premiered to rave reviews in summer 2021. He added: 'When you play a character, you want to find his empathetic side, and you want to understand where they came from, and what got them to where they are.'
But when Gries was contacted by creator Mike White about appearing in Season 2, he realized he would have to adjust his framing of Greg, despite having previously imagined a 'comprehensive history' for him on his own.
'(White) said, 'I'm writing it right now, and I'm writing you, and I just need to know here and now: If you're in, I'll continue writing. If not, I'll stop,'' Gries recalled.
Of course, he said yes to coming back to the series, which eventually required him to live in Italy for a few months for filming.
During production, White revealed to Gries that Greg is 'very sinister.' That became rather irrefutable by the season's climax, which saw Tanya's demise orchestrated by her now-husband.
Come Season 3, Gries had to rewrite Greg's backstory again, this time drawing from some unlikely sources for inspiration, like HBO docuseries 'The Jinx,' about late convicted killer Robert Durst, and the case involving the man who came to be known as the Tinder Swindler.
Gries said he was struck by Durst's 'kind of seemingly even keel personality,' which served as a model for where Greg was headed, someone 'who doesn't really show a great deal of emotion, doesn't seem to get too angry, just gets a little bit irritated and is dangerous.'
'There's a bridled rage underneath. And those kind of people I find – at least with respect to Gary, Greg, Gary – fascinating,' he said.
And yet, while searching for an empathetic way back to portraying his character, Gries kept wondering if there was anything still redeeming about Greg.
An important 'wake up moment' came during a decisive conversation he had with White just before filming in Thailand, in which the show's creator said of Greg, in no uncertain terms: 'He's a psychopath.'
'And that was it. It was like, 'back to the drawing board.' And it really did help me,' Gries said.
The penultimate episode of the series will air on Sunday, an evening that thanks to 'Lotus' and other shows has again become a night of appointment viewing amid a general move away from binge watching. Gries said he appreciates the shift.
'We're a society that in a weird way doesn't understand the beauty of waiting. The beauty of the space between the notes,' he shared. 'If I binged ('White Lotus') I'd feel like I just ate too many chocolates. It just wouldn't be the same. You need to process this.'
'The White Lotus' airs Sundays at 9 p.m. EDT on HBO, with the episode available to stream on Max. HBO and Max, like CNN, are owned by the same parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery.

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The finale is, well, the finale, while Episode 6 is a flashback that covers how Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey) became so estranged from each other between the events of Season 1 and Season 2. More from Variety 'The Last of Us' Guest Star Joe Pantoliano on Filming That Heartbreaking Final Scene and Forgetting Pedro Pascal Pedro Pascal Says 'F-- the People That Try to Make You Scared' When Asked About U.S. Political Chaos: 'Fight Back. Don't Let Them Win' 'Eddington' Review: Joaquin Phoenix and Pedro Pascal Square Off in Ari Aster's Brazenly Provocative Western Thriller, Set During the Pandemic the Film Says Made America Lose Its Mind Ultimately, it was Pascal who kind of made the decision for Druckmann. Since Episode 6 constitutes his final full episode of the series, the actor requested that Druckmann direct it. 'It just made sense,' Druckmann says. 'I'm excited about doing an episode that had no action, which is almost the inverse of what I did last time. 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My life would have fucking mattered, but you took that from me!' Joel, sobbing now, is resigned to the consequences of his choices, but he doesn't regret them. 'If somehow I had a second chance at that moment, I would do it all over again,' he says. 'Because I love you. In a way you can't understand.' There's a long silence. 'I don't think I can forgive you for this,' Ellie says. 'But I would like to try.' For anyone who has played 'The Last of Us Part II,' the timing of this breathtaking scene between Joel and Ellie is shocking, since it comes at the very end of the game, after far more has transpired for all of the characters. Druckmann explained to Variety why he, Mazin and Gross chose to move that scene so far up for the show. He also discussed what guided their thinking about the new scenes between Joel and Ellie on her birthdays, his emotional reaction to seeing locations from the game created in real life — and what happened when O'Hara disagreed with his direction for the scene in which Gail slaps Joel. We wanted this episode for Ellie to find out definitively that Joel lied. In the game, we did in a very different way, where she traveled all the way back to the hospital and found documentation. It felt like we would be stretching the reality of the world and how dangerous it is on the show compared to the game. But also, looking at documents and exploring that space, I don't know if that makes as compelling of a drama for a TV show. The engine for the show is a little different than the engine for an interactive experience. So that ultimately led to the whole Eugene sequence. Because we were spending more time in Jackson than we were in the game, we came up with way more ideas than what ended up in the show. But each one of those was vetted through this lens of the arc we wanted, where they start out in this much better place. They know there's a lie, but they're trying to move past it, and then this thing just weighs on them and their relationship. Each step you feel like it's pushing them apart. That was the most important thing that we needed out every sequence, to drill that home. It started with conversation in the game, which was, Joel is oblivious, and mistakes Ellie's friendship with Jesse for something more. I believe that's something Halley wrote — it's so long ago now, I forget. We really wanted to keep that here, and then take it a step further. He finds out [Ellie is gay] in the game when she kisses Dina on the dance floor. Here, it felt like there's an opportunity to show more of Ellie's evolution of becoming a teenager in Jackson, and for that misunderstanding to create more of a rift between them. But also show evolution, forgiveness, movement — you could feel how much Joel is trying. He gets things wrong. It's the first time he's [parenting] a teenager at this age, but he's trying to accommodate all the things that Ellie wants. She wants to move to the garage, and even though he doesn't want her to, he gives it to her. She gets this tattoo, and she does drugs, and it infuriates him. And then he's looking at her tattoo, and he says, This looks better than the one I've done on the guitar. He's trying. She wants to go on patrols, and eventually he yields on that. Almost everything she wants, he gives it to her, and it's never enough, because ultimately their friction is not about any one of those things. Well, I'm not sure when it was written. You'd have to ask Eddie Vedder that. However, it did come out to the public in 2013, and it is anachronistic in that it should not exist in our timeline. Initially, when we were making this episode, there would have been a different song. As we were exploring it, just felt like we were prioritizing the wrong thing, this timeline of events and when things would be available. Clearly, we're not in the same timeline as our universe, so we have some leeway. And that song felt so important. Because it was in the game, because it has so much association, not only for fans, but even for myself, we changed course. The thing that we thought we cared about, we ultimately didn't care about, and the emotional truth of the song was more important than the timeline truth of the world that we live in. No. When we were making the game, I knew that scene should exist. I didn't know where it goes. That was true for all the flashbacks. Even pretty late in production of the game, we were moving those flashbacks around. 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