The White Lotus season four is a year away, but sleuthing fans are convinced they’ve detected a link between a new character and old.
Earlier this week, Helena Bonham Carter suddenly dropped out of the HBO show, despite the fact she had already started filming, due to the fact her character “did not align once on set”.
HBO confirmed the role would be swiftly rewritten, with Oscar-winning Marriage Story star Laura Dern drafted in to replace Carter. Intriguingly, this isn’t the first time Dern will have cropped up in the show.
In season two, which aired in 2022 and was set in Sicily, Dern provided a voice cameo as Abby, the estranged wife of unfaithful Dominic Di Grasso, the Hollywood producer played by Michael Imperioli. Abby was mentioned numerous times throughout the season by her son Albie (Adam DiMarco) and father-in-law Bert (F Murray Abraham).
It’s now being theorised that White used the opportunity to rewrite the character to bring back Abby, a character with a ready-made link to the show.
Lending credence to the fact that season four could mark Abby’s visual debut in the show is the fact that Imperioli’s character was a Hollywood producer in the show, and the new season will be set during the Cannes Film Festival.
“Let's remember that Laura Dern's voice already appeared in The White Lotus as the wife of Michael Imperioli's character. Imperioli's character was a film producer and this season is set at the Cannes festival…could it be the same character?” one person asked on X/Twitter.
Episodes are being filmed on the French Riviera, as well as in St Tropez and Monaco.
Dern is friends with White, having previously starred in his 2007 film Year of the Dog and co-created the series Enlightened, which ran from 2011 to 2013.
Along with Dern, other members of the cast include Steve Coogan, Rosie Perez, Heather Graham, Max Greenfield, Kumail Nanjiani, Vincent Cassel and Chloe Bennet as well as Sandra Bernhard, Frida Gustavsson, Charlie Hall, Jarrad Paul, Ben Schnetzer and Laura Smet.
The Independent’s Adam White wrote this week that “losing an actor like Bonham Carter, who is so richly capable of the kind of cutting camp that White Lotus best traffics in, is a bit of a blow.”
He pointed out that the show has been no stranger to behind-the-scenes drama, adding: “By nature of the show’s premise – which required its stars to live together for months on end in an exotic locale – there were always rumours of behind-the-scenes hook-ups and occasional conflict. Just like a group holiday gone wrong.
“Season two stars Leo Woodall and Meghann Fahy met and fell in love (despite never sharing actual scenes on the show, such is the nature of The White Lotus’s off-camera living arrangements), while tabloids reported that the on-screen feuding between season one’s Murray Bartlett and Jake Lacy occasionally spilled over into reality (which they both denied).
“But it was with the show’s third outing last year that gossipy rumours seemed to become a gnarlier reality, with production for a Thailand-set season plagued by conflict both on and off the set.”
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