One thing you’ll notice at the Four Seasons Resort in Koh Samui is the monkeys. You can look up and see them sitting in or traipsing across the 800 coconut trees on the sprawling property overlooking the Gulf of Thailand or appearing in sculptures and statues around the resort. However, any animal you see in the third season of Max’s “The White Lotus,” which used the Four Seasons as its titular hotel property, is much more than decorative, explained production designer Cristina Onori. “There is a clear contrast between the environment of Thailand, where nature is constantly present, and the environments the American characters come from, where nature is confined to very controlled spaces,” she told IndieWire.
With the Mike White-created series venturing from Italy to Thailand (aka the Land of Smiles) for Season 3, Emmy winner Onori had more than a few challenges. Here, she tells IndieWire what she faced and how she worked through it all.
The following interview has been edited for clarity and conciseness.
IndieWire: Going from Italy in Season 2 to Thailand in Season 3, what were some unique challenges you faced in the production designs, given they’re such different places?
Cristina Onori: It was certainly a challenge to design within such a rich culture like that of Thailand, especially in striving to embrace its beautiful and intricate symbolic and aesthetic language. Coming from Season 2 in Italy, a place already deeply rooted in my cultural memory where designing felt more immediate and fluid, I definitely had a lot of research to do.
It was important to me to study Thai culture and design before building it in the production, and I was very focused on remaining respectful and avoiding cliches while investigating and analyzing Thailand. Much of my methodology was to start with deep intellectual research in books and visual guides, and then moving on to exploring Thailand firsthand in the physical world. My own experience as an outsider allowed me to collaborate with the Thai team in a way that helped us find a shared approach, ultimately creating a design that truly resonated with Thailand as a whole.
What was your first impression of the Four Seasons Koh Samui?
The Four Seasons in Koh Samui is, of course, such a stunning location with so much promise. Not only is it a beautiful hotel to stay in, but it is also a wonderful baseline to build from for our show, molding and adding elements to emphasize Thai culture within our story.
The lush hillside was a perfect jumping-off point for my design — it is such a prime location because it’s so secluded, which allowed me to highlight the privilege of the characters who have the opportunity to stay there. The luxurious pieces of the hotel contribute to that feeling of wealth and status. Living at the Four Seasons while filming was a privilege in itself and feeling the intimacy of the location while almost sequestering ourselves there was a breathtaking experience. Additionally, the fact that nature is so woven into the architecture of the hotel allowed me to accentuate the importance of nature in the story. The crystal-clear sea and the abundant greenery were characters of their own in this season of “The White Lotus.”
In fact, all the locations we shot in served as baselines that we expanded and modified. Because the Four Seasons didn’t provide certain visual elements essential for our show, we had to expand and link additional hotels, even on different islands. Anantara Bo Phut in Samui served as our main exterior entrance and reception area, Anantara Mai Khao in Phuket as the spa, and Rosewood Phuket as the dinner restaurant. Not only were the hotels adapted to fit the same aesthetics, but we also built new structures to expand the world of the story.
For example, all the bedroom spaces were reconstructed and enlarged on a soundstage in Bangkok, where we had more space to play. With Mike, we came up with specific colors for the furniture and textiles that could relate to the different groups of characters. Reconstructing sets in the studio allowed for greater creative and technical freedom while staying true to what was filmed on location. Additionally, we built new sets inside the resorts themselves, often repurposing spaces for different uses to fit the story. For instance, we constructed the guard’s booth at the hotel entrance to fit the script.
What did you add to the bungalows/rooms to tie into the themes of the season or the characters?
Throughout this season, the luxurious decor, artwork, and architecture lure the audience and the characters into this world of exclusive opportunity and entitlement, exposing their shallow desires and dysfunctional relationships. The selected artworks reveal hardships and cracks in the facades that these characters put up to hide themselves from one another. Their relationships become clearer through the art that follows them throughout the hotel.
The Buddhist frescoes represent human archetypes, similar to Greek myths in classical Western culture. These images represent the life of Buddha, conveying the country’s history and mythology while evoking universal human experiences. While visiting so many stunning temples with Mike, we had the privilege of seeing these ancient Buddhist murals. We felt it could be interesting for “The White Lotus” to link each character to a specific section of those murals, creating a visual and narrative connection between the painted story and the character’s journey.
Additionally, I focused on adding dimension to the hotel rooms by using natural materials, like local teak wood, in the wooden panels that stand in each of the hotel rooms, inspired by northern Thai architecture, as well as rosewood furniture and mango wooden frames and screens. All these elements were designed and created specifically for the show in collaboration with Letizia Santucci, the set decorator.
The common rooms for each hotel room were all redesigned using Thai craftsmanship reinterpreted in a modern way by new artists. And much of the furniture was specifically designed and built for this specific project. For example, the bar in one of the common rooms, an important element for the narrative, was brought to life by reinterpreting traditional Thai design in a modern form, both in terms of materials and stylistic elements. In the bedrooms, benches were built and positioned at the foot of the beds, and additional antique furniture pieces and objects were added both as references to spirituality and to Thai architecture.
I loved the restaurant where the characters eat breakfast and dinner. What did you do with that space, which looked great in the episodes I’ve seen?
The breakfast restaurant and the dinner restaurant were filmed in completely different locations, one in the Four Seasons Koh Samui and one at the Rosewood in Phuket, so the challenge was to make them look like they belong in the same hotel. Because the breakfast restaurant was on the top of a hill and the dinner restaurant was next to the sea, we connected them through plants and greenery to make sure the two restaurants followed a path down that hill. Additionally, we tied them together with the same decor, using similar colors and textures to remind the audience that this is one resort.
The dinner restaurant is on more of a flat outdoor space, so we wanted to create volume and new paths to enrich the location and make it more of a feast for the eyes. For example, we added a pond with lotus flowers to the restaurant, as well as a large stage flanked with fire pits and statues to serve the performances and the script. On the walls, we added a metal/neon artwork sign as a reference to Thai shadow puppetry — we reinterpreted the forms to incorporate a darker presence, a demon, in this modern restaurant scene. The dinner restaurant was also a night shoot, so we used lighting rigs to shape the pathways and emphasize the entrances and exits of the characters.
In all, it was extremely important to make it a unique experience while also recognizable. We couldn’t lose what defines “The White Lotus” look/style, but we also got to reinvent pieces of it.
Animals like birds, monitor lizards, snakes, and monkeys are seen throughout. Did you lean into any of those animals in your production design?
Taking inspiration from ancient traditions, plants and animals became symbols and motifs this season — each group of characters in the story is represented by particular animals. In this way, the animals you see throughout the season are not just decorative. Part of the story draws strength from the fact that these characters are immersed in nature and in such close proximity to animals for what feels like the first time, which provokes various emotions in them—fear, unease, and suffocation, to name a few. The animals in the design bring out a deeper resonance in the parts of the story that call upon the natural world to propel the characters toward conflict and emotion.
What were some things you added to any of the filming spaces that evoked Buddhism or the spiritual theme that Mike White wrote about this season?
While traveling all over Thailand, I was struck by the spirit houses, or san phra phum, that you can find anywhere, from homes to sidewalks to religious sites. The tradition of spirit houses dates back centuries, long before the arrival of Buddhism in Thailand, and is related to animism, the belief that spirits inhabit all elements of the natural world—mountains, trees, rivers, etc. These shrines were added into each villa in the hotel set, as they serve as a home for spirits who guard the land.
Additionally, while visiting so many stunning temples with Mike, we had the privilege of seeing many ancient Buddhist murals. I used this artwork in the hotel lobby and in the bedrooms in each hotel suite. We felt it could be interesting for “The White Lotus” to link each character to a specific section of those murals, creating a visual and narrative connection between the painted story and the character’s journey.
The color orange is also woven through the entire season. This color palette was inspired by Thai monks’ robes in all their different variations, based on monks’ ranking and structure. I wanted to blend past and present into a cohesive aesthetic that spoke to this country’s lush cultural and artistic history, such that this color is not only decorative on the sets we built but also a spiritual element.
Lastly, another particularly fun piece of this process was the creation of a floating movable island with a huge statue of Buddha in the middle of a pond for one of our sets. Because it was so big, we definitely had to put in the work to make it come to life, but it all came together to communicate a beautiful theme of spirituality and the importance of balance — it almost became a symbol of my own experience working on this season. I felt at peace knowing that all the work we did would create a place that was both new and exciting while remaining unmistakably “White Lotus.”
“The White Lotus” airs Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on Max.
