It was a sweltering 35 degrees Celsius in Bangkok, but Natasha Rothwell was committed to the bit. With a portable fan in hand and a glam team behind her to blot sweat and tidy up her pleated lamé dress, she goes onstage to promote The White Lotus even as some of her co-stars — and even their writer and director Mike White — have skipped the interviews after a hellish walk from the dock to the “green carpet”. She even tries her hand at some Thai words to the delight of the fans, most of whom were there for BLACKPINK’s Lisa who debuts her acting chops in the third season of the hit HBO series (now streaming on Max). Yet Rothwell stayed, graciously waving, entertaining the crowd, not unlike her hospitable character Belinda, a determined therapist who has stuck with the hotel despite being bamboozled by a client (who ended up dying a gruesome death anyway so I guess karma?).
Rothwell is not the lone character to make a comeback. She follows the footsteps of Jennifer Coolidge’s Tanya, who returned in Season 2 from the Hawaii premiere. Her Belinda comes back this season with a fresh start — and a looming threat. Tanya’s scheming husband, Greg, who’s figured in all three seasons by now, is revealed to have retired in Thailand with his new girlfriend.
Belinda swears she recognizes him. He insists she’s confused him for another person. But it all comes back to her in episode 4, when she finds out Tanya has died and her husband, who is a suspect, is at large. The episode ends with Greg stalking Belinda’s Instagram. Perhaps it was her that her son sees floating on the lotus pond after a series of gunshots in the season premiere. Or maybe not.
When she’s not in danger of being killed by a suspicious white man, Belinda is the most joyful character to watch in the series. With her comedic skills on semi stretch, she brings a lightness to otherwise tense scenes, whether it’s reacting comically to bizarre noises or to gallivanting lizards. But when it’s time to put a serious face on, as a dotting mother or a zen therapist, Rothwell does it with equal gusto.
“Any comedian worth their salt has really great dramatic chops,” she tells Rolling Stone Philippines in an exclusive interview. “Comedy is about commitment and really great comedians are so committed and they take their work so seriously that it becomes funny. The humor comes from the ridiculousness of that.”
Before The White Lotus, Rothwell started her television career in Issa Rae’s Insecure as Kelli, a sharp witted character who stole the show from the get-go. (Remember when she got tased off at a fictionalized Beychella?) When that wrapped up along with the first season of The White Lotus, she then went on to write and star in her own show called How To Die Alone, a sincere and feel-good show about an airport employee’s brush with a near-death experience that leads her to rethink her life.
A lot has changed since she first starred in the first season of The White Lotus. For one, the show now has a cult following, with dedicated online sleuths trying to outrun White’s incisive writing with their own theories of who kills who. “It was a different world when I did season 1,” Rothwell recalls. “Now, when people say ‘The White Lotus,’ there’s an echo. It’s a big franchise. It’s larger than life.” But she says this hasn’t affected her approach to the character. Not even the online discourse that follows every episode? I ask.
“Prior to The White Lotus, I was on Insecure, which had a huge fandom. I brought what I learned from Insecure to this experience: I’m very protective of the art that I create, and I really don’t want to have outside voices influencing decisions that I make,” she says citing Insecure producers Prentice Penny and Rae’s decision to insulate the writer’s room from any external noise, especially clamor from fans online.
White too has done the same with The White Lotus, she says. “I think Mike is so sacred about the work that he’s creating [that] it’s given him permission to just honor his gut and instincts and not really having to check in with the culture on what they think should and shouldn’t happen.”
This, she adds, makes reading the script suspenseful even for the actors themselves. “That’s the beauty of his writing; you don’t know where it’s going to go.” Take for example, the moment she finds out that Greg is back. “I was very gagged, honey! Reading the script, I was gasping every single episode. And as I was watching episodes one through six, you would think I’d never read a page.”
Off camera, the 44-year old actor is just as fun and jovial. Her fellow cast members upon learning she — an “OG,” as they call her — is returning, came to her for advice on how to maneuver White’s eccentric directing, which often entailed shooting a scene a myriad of ways, only stopping when he’s certain he’s got it the way he likes.
“I was kind of in awe of the cast as some of them are really heavy hitters at the top of their game. I would be lying if I didn’t say I was nervous to meet them.” So imagine her relief when they told her they too were nervous to meet her. Right then and there, Rothwell went full mentor mode. “I felt, ‘Okay, how can I be of service to them?’” I would often tell them, ‘Don’t get in your head.’”
In a press conference alongside Parker Posey — in, thankfully, a cooler room, which allowed her to let her hair down literally, ditching her green carpet braids for bangs — the two reminisce about their time shooting around Phuket and Ko Samui. The island scenery. The meditation. And, of course, the massages. “After about my 10th massage, I said, ‘This is why I’m here,’” Posey jokes before telling everyone about the time they got a particularly life-changing treatment that had Rothwell in tears.
“I remember Natasha [saying], ‘This is something we’re all going to share for the rest of our lives.’” Rothwell chimes in, “Yeah. As the same as season 1, we’re still all on a text chain.”
After the interview, Rothwell wonders if she’s getting questions from the press. Some members of the media mumble they’ve been told to save it for the one-on-ones. That’s unfortunate, she says. Nonetheless, she offers a finger heart as we exit. Where’d you learn that from, I ask, imagining Lisa teaching her some cutesy aegyo gestures between takes. “Oh this? My interns taught me.”
The White Lotus is now streaming on Max.
