“The White Lotus” Season 3 boasts an emblematic performance from Parker Posey as Victoria Ratliff, a lorazepam-dependent housewife from North Carolina who is convinced dying would be a better fate than living a less-than-luxurious life — a mentality the actress notes is rooted in pain.
“There are different ideas about Victoria and where she comes from [and] how much money she has — I think she comes from the wealth in the family and was quite spoiled, had everything at her fingertips,” Parker told TheWrap, adding that she carries some trauma after her father’s death. “But there’s a lot of pain under there, there’s a lot of eccentricities and neediness — she’s like a woman-child.”
That neediness is, of course, what worries Victoria’s husband, Timothy (Jason Isaacs), as he spirals over a white collar crime that is in the process of being uncovered during their vacation. While Posey notes Timothy is concerned about who’s going to take care of her, “Victoria is always taken care of,” saying “I think she’s like a cat and she’ll just land on her feet.”
If one thing is true about Victoria, it’s that she “thrives” in the drama and “upheaval” she brings to familial situations, according to Posey, which she relished playing.
“How they make something so small so big and dramatic when it doesn’t have to be, and [the] emphasis on feeling,” Posey said, adding that Victoria creates “her own distorted reality” of her children. “It’s a narcissistic family. They’re all these projections, in a way. It’s like theater … which I love to do.”
Victoria’s antics weren’t the only reason Posey was excited to embrace the role, admitting she “couldn’t wait to bust out a Southern accent.”
“The Southern accent is so funny,” Posey said. “Whenever I travel and people ask, about a Southern accent — that’s kind of the go to in America … we had a good time with that.”
Filming “The White Lotus” takes Posey back to being a teenager, when she first caught the acting bug after seeing adaptations of Agatha Christie novels like “Evil Under the Sun” and “Murder on the Orient Express.” “The characters carried this intrigue and this mystery … you couldn’t really trust them,” she recalled.
Posey also noted her excitement to be part of a show that has been so embraced by viewers over the past two seasons, saying “it’s meme-able — people bring it into their home.” “I think people really enjoy it in a different way these days, because we’re in such a different time than [how viewers] enjoyed shows in the past.”
With Season 3 marking the biggest production the show yet, compared to its COVID-restricted first installment in Maui and its slightly larger-scale Italian-set Season 2, Posey said she “really felt for Mike [White] … because the third show season needs to pack a punch.” She added that filming Season 3 felt like an “extreme sport,” adding that she was “pacing” herself for the “long haul.”
“When I got there, it was paradise — It was so beautiful. It kind of takes your breath away, and then you get really humbled by it,” Posey said of shooting in Thailand, adding that she would pick up heart-shaped rocks on the beach. “I found the experience to be really healing and life-changing and really meaningful.”
“The White Lotus” airs Sundays on HBO and Max.
