Every season of The White Lotus has its thing: a moment that takes off and becomes its own monster until long after the end credits roll on the finale. Season one was the suitcase poop scene, an effect so bizarrely groundbreaking that other showrunners wound up publicly musing on how much it must have cost. Season two’s thing was Jennifer Coolidge saying, “These gays, they’re trying to murder me,” which you will see replayed three times a minute whenever you look at anyone’s Instagram stories.
It might be too early to definitively state what season three’s thing is – The White Lotus always goes from a standing start to a nutso finale, and we still have three episodes left for things to really ramp up – but there are already a couple of contenders. For a while, it looked like it might have been Jason Isaacs’ penis, until he forcefully shut down the conversation last week. And that leaves the single most spectacular thing about the season so far: Parker Posey’s accent.
For the newcomers, on The White Lotus Posey plays Victoria Ratliff, a wealthy North Carolina matriarch who is frequently spaced out on lorazepam. Unlike her onscreen husband Jason Isaacs, whose accent frequently veers towards Australia in times of great drama, Posey’s accent is resolute. She groans out all her lines through her downturned mouth, forcing many more syllables out of words than anyone ever thought possible (the verbal origami she deployed transforming the word “society” into the astonishingly drawn-out “sohsoiietay” this week deserves particular attention). It’s incredible. In Parker’s hand, every line becomes an obstacle course.
What’s equally fascinating is watching the reaction to it unfold in real time. At first the accent seemed to confuse viewers, with Twitter users calling it “perplexing” or – worse – attempting to describe it with gifs of Jennifer Coolidge looking baffled. But then Parker went on the offensive.
On the Today show earlier this month, she delivered a masterclass on the funniest words that a wealthy North Carolinian woman can say in south-east Asia, including “tsunami” and “Buddhism”. Last week, while promoting the show, Parker claimed that her accent had received the seal of approval from actual North Carolinians, albeit North Carolinians fancy enough to run into her during Paris fashion week. “There were these people from North Carolina at the hotel,” she said, “and they were like, ‘We just have to say, ‘We’re from North Carolina. We think you’re doing a great job. We love the accent. It’s dead on. You’ve got that part down.’”
And now the accent has transcended all forms of traditional criticism. Parker’s White Lotus co-star Patrick Schwarzenegger went viral for doing his own spot-on impression of her during an interview that was directly followed by the bizarre sight of two women yelling “No! Tsunami! No!” in tortured southern accents while dousing each other with hairspray.
This has been all the encouragement that TikTok needed. The platform is now deluged with rankings of Posey’s line readings, primarily from her Today show appearance, of which “Piper, no” seems to be the clear winner. Influencers have started to do Victoria Ratliff cosplay videos. Clips have surfaced of Parker forcing her interviewers to yell “Piper, no!” at her. The official White Lotus account has even got in on the act, posting supercuts of all the times her character said the word “lorazepam”.
This is where we all live now. The actual plot of The White Lotus – guessing who will be killed by whom and how – has taken a back seat to the verbal contortions of Parker Posey. We now live in a world where the word “understand” has become the four-syllable behemoth “understayund”, where “normal” is now pronounced “norramhul” and where “don’t” has ballooned into the two-word phrase “doh went”.
In truth, this might pass. Virality of this strength often lives hard and dies young. And, as previously mentioned, the show is only just getting going. A fortnight from now every episode of The White Lotus will be such a carnival whirlwind of unending insanity that we might forget the simple pleasures of watching a beloved character actor take the word “guru” and kick seven bells out of it. But I hope not. Parker Posey’s White Lotus accent is a thing of true beauty, and it deserves to be remembered forever. If you don’t get that by now, I can’t help you understayund.
