Au revoir, Thailand, bonjour, France! The Emmy-winning anthology series The White Lotus is swapping spirituality for cinema, and jumping on the Frollywood trend. For its upcoming season, the HBO show is finding inspiration on the Côte d’Azur, and in Paris. Creator Mike White’s social satire about entitled vacationers behaving badly at posh hotels—and the staffers who serve them—will enjoy the glitz and glamour ofthe French Riviera during a fictional version of the Cannes Film Festival, whose real 79th edition kicks off this week. (It runs from May 12 to 23.)
White Lotus executive producer David Bernard said that setting the show in France was a no-brainer after one particular restaurant encounter in Cannes. “We went to dinner, and we had a really specific experience with a waiter and a maître d’, and it was the stereotype,” he recalled at the Cannesseries TV showcase in April. “It was a very funny moment. And I think that it suddenly unlocked… the dynamics of the show.” So look for humor in a French-American culture clash. Variety reports that a scene depicting “a star fighting with a receptionist to have room service delivered after hours” has already been shot. (A losing battle, for those familiar with the most dreaded of French phrases: C’est pas possible.)
“Season 4 is about fame,” White recently told Entertainment Tonight about the plot, which involves a rivalry between two films in competition at France’s famed festival. The corrosive effects of celebrity will provide the drama. “Who are the people that can grab the world’s attention, who are the plus-one in a relationship, who’s the person that has that power—and how that shapes a dynamic,” Bernard teased. Movie stars and their entourages will navigate the vicissitudes of participating in the cinema spectacle.
Here’s everything else we know about The White Lotus’s highly anticipated French season.
Bienvenue à la plage
Production is already underway for the series, which is expected to film for about seven months, and has a budget of about $120 million (not factoring in the country’s generous tax break). St. Tropez’s sumptuous hilltop resort Airelles Saint-Tropez, Château de la Messardière will stand in for “The White Lotus du Cap,” and the Art Deco Hôtel Martinez on Cannes’ palm-lined Croisette is “The White Lotus Cannes.” (Like many French people, Hôtel Martinez general manager Michel Cottray wasn’t familiar with the show before his five-star property got the nod. He’s since binged all three seasons and predicts the latest installment will be “gigantic,” according to Ireland’s The Herald.) When The White Lotus arrives in Paris, reservations will be handled at the iconic Mandarin Oriental Lutetia on the Left Bank’s 6th arrondissement in St. Germain-des-Prés.
Who Are the Actors Checking In?
The series, known for its surprising murders, has already suffered one untimely departure. Just days into filming, British actor Helena Bonham Carter left the show. “It just went in a different direction,” fellow castmate Steve Coogan told Deadline at the BAFTA TV Awards. “Sometimes you find that something isn’t working the way you want it to in terms of… the character and the dynamic of the whole story. So that was just a mutual decision.” The role has been recast and rewritten for White’s longtime collaborator, Laura Dern. (Dern, who co-created the HBO series Enlightened with White, and starred in his film Year of the Dog, had an uncredited voice cameo as Michael Imperioli’s estranged wife in The White Lotus Season 2.) The Oscar winner will play a faded star looking for career reinvention.
Sandra Bernhard, Kumail Nanjiani, Rosie Perez, Chris Messina, Max Greenfield, Heather Graham, Ben Kingsley, Ari Graynor, and Max Minghela are among the other well-known names in the ensemble. Other cast members include Chloe Bennet, Charlie Hall, Jarrad Paul, Alexander Ludwig, AJ Michalka, Marissa Long, Caleb Jonte Edwards, and Pekka Strang.
Arguably the biggest French actor cast is Vincent Cassel (La Haine, Black Swan). The performer perhaps best known in the U.S. for Ocean’s Twelve and Ocean’s Thirteen is set to play the White Lotus hotel manager—and will surely be more imposing than Season 3’s timid Thailand boss, Fabian (Christian Friedel). Nadia Tereszkiewicz, who was named Best Female Revelation (the equivalent of “most promising actress”) at the 2023 César Awards for her role in Forever Young, and whocan now be seen in Arnaud Desplechin’s Two Pianos, grew up in Cannes. Her southern roots will come in handy, as White has said that he wants to use the French actors’ experiences to inform their characters. Laura Smet, who appeared with her mother, the late Nathalie Baye, in Call My Agent! (Dix pour cent) backed out of an upcoming French project to join the ensemble. Corentin Fila (Escort Boys, La Maison), who earned a César nomination for his role in André Techiné’s Being 17, and newcomer Dylan Ennis, who’s thought to be playing a local, have also been cast.
Cannes Come to Life
This isn’t the first time a movie (Mr. Bean’s Holiday) or TV show (Call My Agent!) has filmed at the festival. Despite having a reputation for aloofness, the French offered carte blanche to land The White Lotus, after being passed over for Season 2. Canneseries Artistic Director Albin Lewi told Variety that “all the doors were opened,” even when it came to cutting through the country’s infamous red tape. The production will capture the festival’s frenzied mix of celebrities, paparazzi, and crowds throughout the fortnight, and red-carpet arrivals at the Palais des Festivals by some of the cast will be shot during the event’s second week. Once the festival is over, the show will reimagine it using the Palais and other locations.
The White Lotus in Paris
As most Parisians head out of town for the summer, the show will go north to the French capital in June to make way for the tourist season. Scenes will be filmed at the Lutetia and in Paris’s film studios, with production set to wrap in October.
Lisa Liebman is an entertainment and culture writer whose work has appeared in Vanity Fair, Vulture, The Cut, and W magazine.
