Shooting a hit TV show at a luxury resort in Thailand for seven months isn’t as fun as it may sound. For the third installment of his hit HBO anthology series “The White Lotus,” creator Mike White uprooted his ensemble cast from every corner of the world in order to craft yet another sun-drenched and anxiety-inducing murder mystery among the elites of society. Leaving the comfort of her British isles, Aimee Lou Wood joined the troupe, which includes on-screen boyfriend Walton Goggins, Leslie Bibb, Carrie Coon, Michelle Monaghan, Jason Isaacs, Parker Posey, Lisa of Blackpink, and more.
“I will never have an experience like that again,” Wood said in a recent interview with The Guardian. “It was so extreme. So the fun bits were unbelievable, so special. The ocean, the landscape, it was majestic. Mike is a genius. Everyone involved is amazing, it’s just the circumstances are quite extreme.”
Earlier in her interview, Wood pointed to her disbelief in being able to have such an opportunity as part of the reason it was so difficult to adapt to her surroundings.
“I don’t know whether I’d describe it as fun,” she said. “There were fun moments. It was more like … amazing — in the true sense, I was amazed by what was happening. How am I in Thailand? Living in a hotel, that we also film in? It was like a social experiment.”
While other cast members managed to schedule a few trips home during the long shoot, Wood “never had a big chunk of time” to get away, as her character proved integral to the overall plot of the season. Not having a chance to separate from the role, though, made maintaining her own identity a challenge and soon others in the production started to notice.
“One day, I was having my hair done and Miia [Kovero, the hair and makeup artist] was, like, ‘You need to go home. I don’t know who I’m talking to any more, Aimee or Chelsea.’ I’d completely abstracted,” said Wood. “Everyone becomes their character to an extent, but I didn’t even know who I was.”
Wood admitted that once she arrived in Thailand, she “stopped going to therapy,” even though she could have maintained her sessions over Zoom. She pointed to this as a likely reason for why she struggled to “keep the madness at bay” and accept her actual identity rather than the one of the character she was embodying.
“Maybe I can’t do jobs that take me away from home for seven months,” Wood told The Guardian. “And maybe that’s OK. I want to be the girl who can go to Thailand and not go mad, but I’m not that girl.”
“The White Lotus” is now airing on HBO and streaming on Max with new episodes released every Sunday.
