When The White Lotus star Natasha Rothwell arrived in Hawaii, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, to act in a class satire set at a luxury resort, she wasn’t sure how the show would be received—or about the future at large. “When we did Season 1, there was no promise of a Season 2,” she points out. In fact, creator Mike White had planned Lotus as a miniseries. “There was, frankly, no promise of a tomorrow. We didn’t know what was gonna happen in the world.”
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Four years, two seasons, nearly 10 million viewers, and more than a few earth-shaking geopolitical crises later, Rothwell has returned to Mike White’s hit series for its long-gestating third installment, set in Thailand. Her gentle spa manager, Belinda—the rare Lotus character you’d actually want as a friend—had a heartbreaking Season 1 arc. Love-bombed by Jennnifer Coolidge’s Tanya into believing that the needy heiress was committed to funding the spa of her dreams, she was ultimately abandoned in favor of a man with more nefarious intentions for Tanya’s millions.
Read More: Behind the Scenes of The White Lotus’ Bigger, Wilder, Darker Third Season
Now, Belinda is traveling across the oceans to immerse herself in the Thai resort’s wellness program. But, as Rothwell tells TIME, the excursion promises to be equally important for Belinda’s personal development. On a video call earlier this month, she talked about exploring new sides of her fan-favorite character, bonding with castmates half a world away from home, and what to make of a jarring moment early in Belinda’s Season 3 story.
TIME: It’s been a few years, in the show’s timeline, since viewers got our last glimpse of Belinda, and we get a sense in the new episodes that her life post-Tanya has been challenging. Did Mike fill in that story for you, or was it more of a collaboration?
Rothwell: From the moment I read the scripts, I did my work as an actor, really thought through what has transpired inside of Belinda and how, consequently, she has affected the world around her in the last three years. Mike and I had very detailed and in-depth conversations about that. I think that is the beauty of the show—that those peeks inside of the characters, their inner life and their backstory, poke through the narrative in subtle and interesting ways.
Coming out of the little-T trauma of having been lied to—or, in [Belinda’s] eyes, betrayed—by Tanya can make you gun-shy to trust and dream again. She has spent the time [since] we’ve seen her on screen trying to figure out how to trust herself and invest in herself, and also opening herself up to dreaming again. When your dreams are dashed in such an intense way, it takes a lot to do that again. This trip to Thailand is an investment in her job, but it’s also allowing her to invest in herself. We’ll see that the fruits of those labors open up over the course of this season.
The character really opens up as well. In Season 1, we mostly got to know Belinda in the context of her work and her ambitions. But in Thailand, early on, we get a glimpse of a potential love interest.
So much of Belinda’s worldview in Season 1 was internal—[there was] so much she wasn’t allowed to express, given the work environment. This kind of work trip treads that line of professional and personal. We get to see Belinda outside of a uniform and exploring the world as a fully formed, three-dimensional character who has all those feelings: curiosity, interest, flirtation. As an actor, it’s such a delight to allow those internal conversations she was having in Season 1 express themselves in this particular season through story. We see her as a mother, we see her—as a single woman and a person of color and a plus-size woman—abroad. We see Belinda bloom, and I think that’s a consequence of being abroad. [Travel] does that for me. When I travel abroad, I get to see versions of myself that I wouldn’t have met if I stayed home.
Another way in which Belinda’s story expands this season is that we finally get to meet her son, Zion, who was just a voice coming through her phone in Season 1. What was it like getting to flesh out that relationship with Nicholas Duvernay, who plays Zion?
Zion is a real conduit into Belinda’s inner world, because he is so much of her world. She’s been living her life for him in a lot of ways, and now she’s starting to live for herself. It’s a beautiful relationship. On the day when I met Nicholas, we had dinner on the beach at the hotel where we were staying. He’s obviously much younger than I am, and I didn’t want to take too much of his time because I knew he was getting acclimated on this big TV set. But we must‘ve talked for two, three hours. We just got along. It was a really cool kind of connection.
From the time Zion was introduced in Season 1, on the phone, having Belinda be a single mom [with] this adult child she’s continuing to raise reminded me of the time in my life—and, I think, in most people’s lives—when you transition your relationship with your parent. You’re both adults. You start to see them; they’re no longer on a pedestal, they make human choices and mistakes. There’s a grace that’s given. During my college years, coming home during breaks and seeing my parents, [I’d realize]: Oh, they’re real people. I can have a conversation with them that… is more like telling them about my life and hearing about their lives, who they are, what they think.
White Lotus shoots, which your Season 1 castmate Murray Bartlett once described as “TV summer camp,” seem to lend themselves to the kind of bonding experience you had with Nicholas. Was that as much the case this time as during lockdown?
God, yeah. You’re in a different country, you’re [almost] all expats in that country, and outside of being this sort of cultural island in the middle of an island, we were drawn to each other. Also, the time difference really does help, because when [the country] you’re from is shut down [overnight], their whole social media cycle shuts down. You can check your phone, but nothing’s going to change for the next 13 hours. So it forces you to be present. That really allowed us to enjoy each other. And the beauty of the casting is in the chemistry. It’s this weird alchemy.
I sensed an interesting tension within your performance during the first couple of episodes of Season 3. Belinda is obviously thrilled to be in Thailand, learning about novel wellness practices and getting a taste of the luxury guests enjoy. But she also seems skittish. A lizard crosses her path, and she flips out. Based on what we know about how intuitive Belinda is, how much should viewers read into ominous moments like that one?
If you’re put in a place of unfamiliarity, you’re obviously going to have those guards up until you can ease into it. So I don’t think audiences can sleuth too much [based on] the first couple of episodes. As a character study, for me, Belinda doing something scared is the very definition of bravery. It’s not doing it once you’re [no longer] scared. From the jump, when we see Belinda on the junk boat [traveling to the resort at] the top of the [season premiere], she’s taking this deep breath, she’s looking out, she doesn’t know what’s ahead, but she’s doing it anyway. That comes with fear. So there’s an interesting kind of double entendre in her reaction to the environment. There’s that natural fear of the unknown—it’s grounded in a real response to change. And, this being a Mike White joint, there’s a lot of unknown that can happen.
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