The White Lotus creator Mike White wasn’t confident about every writing choice he made — starring with a major character death.
Aimee Lou Wood, who played Chelsea in season 3, told Bustle on Tuesday, April 8, that White had his reservations about killing her off, saying, “Mike doubted this choice a lot. He would come up and he would say, ’Am I making the wrong decision? Are people going to hate me too much, killing the personification of hope and romance and optimism?’”
Wood, 31, however, encouraged White, 54, not to change the course of the show.
“I’m saying, ’Mike, it has to be Rick and Chelsea. By giving them that ending, you elevate Chelsea. You give her the status of the mystic that she thinks she is,’” she noted. “If she went to therapy and did some deep inner work, she would probably have made a different choice. But this is what she wanted.”
The actress reflected on how Chelsea’s arc was meant to play out, adding, “Chelsea has got so much s**t that she has not dealt with and healed and processed, and she looks outside for the answers all the time: the Zodiac, the spirituality books, the jargon, the aphorisms, the mantras. She hasn’t looked inside because she’s scared of what she’ll find in there.”
Wood continued: “And so she says, ‘The thing that’s drawing me to Rick is fate.’ No, the thing that’s drawing her to Rick is some unhealed s***.”
The season 3 finale, which wrapped up on Sunday, April 6, surprised Us by killing off Chelsea (Wood) and Rick (Walton Goggins) in Thailand.
“It’s weird,” Wood admitted at a post-finale panel. “Because for about two weeks before we shot it, I felt super weird. It was, like, this odd, ominous thing that was just hanging over us.”
Wood recalled being affected by the realization that her character wouldn’t make it out alive.
“I didn’t expect it to feel like that for such a long time before. Chelsea doesn’t know what’s gonna happen to her, but I know. So it’s this odd thing,” she continued. “[The finale] looked exactly how it felt, which was really strange. Like that whole bit, I was like, ‘Yeah, that’s exactly what it felt like.’”
After the newest season of the hit HBO show received backlash, White addressed viewers who complained about the pacing, saying, “It definitely gets under their skin. There was complaining about how there’s no plot. That part I find weird. It never did. Part of me is just like ‘Bro, this is the vibe. I’m world-building.’”
White said he was confused by fans who didn’t like his writing style three seasons in.
“If you don’t want to go to bed with me, then get out of my bed. I’m edging you! Enjoy the edging,” he quipped. “If you don’t want to be edged, then get out of my bed. Do you know what I mean? Don’t be a bossy bottom.”
White continued: “Get the f*** out of my bed. Don’t come home with me. Don’t get naked in my bed. Get the f*** out of my bed. Obviously, something is going to happen.”
The White Lotus is currently streaming on Max.
