Courtesy of HBO
‘The White Lotus’ Producers Wrote 6 Fake Endings to Season 3 in Case Spoilers Leaked
The White Lotus producers had to get creative going into season 3, and executive producer David Bernad revealed they wrote six fake endings in case spoilers leaked.
“We have fake endings to the scripts,” David told People in an interview published on Friday, April 4. “So we wrote up — we have six different endings — and we kind of distributed fake endings to people just in case someone leaked anything, and then we could say there’s different fake endings.”
David added that it was “a locked down set” when they filmed the final scene of the season, which they intentionally did to avoid people leaking spoilers. “So no one really has access to what we were shooting and there would be no non-White Lotus participants ever seeing what we’re doing,” he explained.
Going into season 3, David said that there were three major secrets they wanted to keep ahead of the premiere. While one secret is how the season ends, the others were Jon Gries’ return as Greg/Gary and Sam Rockwell’s episode arc.
David said that the cast and crew went to “great lengths” in order to keep the secrets a surprise until viewers sat down to watch the show.
“Jon was really committed to keeping the secret,” he said of the actor, who is the only person to appear in all three seasons of the HBO show. “And when we were traveling and entered Thailand, he, one time, rode with the equipment in a bus, instead of flying the 45 minutes or whatever it was. I think he drove like, 12 hours from Phuket to Bangkok.”
Despite the lengths they went to in order to keep Jon’s return a secret, David revealed that they had a close call about his casting being leaked.
“We were shooting at the Four Seasons, a scene with Jon Gries, and there was people looking and filming from a room,” he shared. “They didn’t know that what they were filming was sensitive, and I was really scared they were going to post it. So I had the hotel manager go and bring them over to the set and I kind of schmoozed them and got them on my side.”
David said he “casually” suggested the hotel guests delete the video, and he also invited them to “hang on set” in order to impress them.
“[We] were like, ‘We got to make them part of the experience,’ so that I could get them to delete all the footage they had,” David said. “They unknowingly didn’t realize they were filming something that was very sensitive.”
While it’s still not known who dies in the finale and who the killer is, the White Lotus cast has teased that fans will be shocked by the season’s conclusion.
“It is shocking — absolutely, mouth-agape shocking,” Jon, 67, told The Hollywood Reporter about the finale. Meanwhile, Lalisa “Lisa” Manobal – who portrays Mook on season 3 – added, “You’re not ready for it.”
While the cast thinks viewers will be caught off guard by the ending, creator Mike White admitted he knows the finale will have its critics. “I’m always going to get people who are mad,” he told THR. “I remember last season, halfway through, they were like, ‘They don’t know what to do with Jennifer Coolidge,’ and I’m like, ‘Just shut the f–k up.’ And then they were mad that she died!”
Fans will get all of their answers about the finale when it airs on HBO on Sunday, April 6, at 9 p.m. ET.
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