One thing you will notice at Four Season resort in Koh Samui is the monkeys. You can look up and watch them sit in or cross the 800 coconut tree on the spreading property overlooking Thailand’s bay or appear in sculptures and statues around the resort. But all the animals you see during the third season of MaxS “The white lotus“Who used the four seasons as its titular hotel property, is much more than decorative, explained production designer Cristina Onori. “There is a clear contrast between Thailand’s environment, where nature is constantly present, and the environments from which the American characters come, where nature is limited to very controlled spaces,” she told IndieWire.
With the Mike White-created series that ventured from Italy to Thailand (alias The Land of Smiles) for Season 3, Emmy winner Onori had more than any challenges. Here she tells IndieWire what she met and how she worked through everything.
The following interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Indiewire: When he goes from Italy in season 2 to Thailand in season 3, what were some unique challenges you met in the production designs, given that they are so different places?
Cristina Honori: It was really a challenge to design in such a rich culture as Thailand, especially by striving to embrace its beautiful and intricate symbolic and aesthetic languages. Coming from Season 2 in Italy, a place that is already deeply rooted in my cultural memory where the design felt more immediate and fluid, I definitely had a lot of research to do.
It was important for me to study Thai culture and design before I built it in production, and I was very focused on remaining respectful and avoiding clichés when I examined and analyzed Thailand. Much of my method was to start with deep intellectual research in books and visual guides and then proceed to explore Thailand from the first place in the physical world. My own experience as an outsider allowed me to collaborate with the Thai team in a way that helped us find a shared strategy and finally create a design that really reasoned with Thailand as a whole.
What was your first impression of Four Seasons Koh Samui?
The four seasons in Koh Samui are of course such a fantastic place with so much promise. It is not only a beautiful hotel to stay in, but it is also a wonderful baseline to build from for our show, shaping and adding elements to emphasize Thai culture in our story.
The lush slope was a perfect jumping point for my design-it is such an excellent location because it is so secluded, which allowed me to highlight the privilege of the characters who have the opportunity to stay there. The luxurious pieces of the hotel contribute to that feeling of wealth and status. Living at the four seasons during filming was a privilege in itself and felt the intimacy of the place while we almost sequence it was a breathtaking experience. The fact that nature is so woven into the hotel’s architecture also allowed me to accentuate the importance of nature in the story. The crystal clear sea and abundant greenery were their own characters during this season of “The White Lotus.”
In fact, all places we shot at served as baselines that we expanded and modified. Since the four seasons did not provide some visual elements that are necessary for our show, we had to expand and connect additional hotels, even on different islands. Anantara Bo Phut in Samui served as our main external entrance and reception area, Anantara Mai Khao in Phuket as Spa and Rosewood Phuket as a dinner restaurant. The hotels were not only adapted to suit the same aesthetics, but we also built new structures to expand the world of history.
For example, all bedroom spaces were reconstructed and enlarged at a sound scene in Bangkok, where we had more space to play. With Mike we came with specific colors for furniture and textiles that could relate to the different groups of characters. Reconstructive sets in the studio enabled greater creative and technical freedom while remaining faith in what was filmed on site. In addition, we built new sets in the resorts themselves, often recycled spaces for different uses to suit the story. For example, we designed the protection of the protection at the hotel’s entrance to fit the script.
What do you add to in bungalows/rooms to tie in the season’s themes or the characters?
Throughout this season, the luxurious interior, artwork and architecture attract the audience and the characters to this world of exclusive opportunity and right, and reveal their shallow desires and dysfunctional relationships. The selected works of art reveal difficulties and cracks in the facades that these characters set to hide from each other. Their relationships become clearer through the art that follows them throughout the hotel.
Buddhist frescoes represent human archetypes, similar to Greek myths in classical Western culture. These images represent Buddha’s life and convey the history and mythology of the country while providing universal human experiences. When we visited so many fantastic temples with Mike, we had the privilege of seeing these ancient Buddhist murals. We felt it might be interesting for “The White Lotus” to link each character to a specific part of these murals, which created a visual and narrative link between the painted story and the character’s journey.
In addition, I focused on adding dimension to the hotel rooms by using natural materials, such as local teak wood, in the wooden panels that are in each of the hotel rooms, inspired by northern Thai architecture, as well as palisands and mango trams and screens. All these elements were designed and created specifically for the show in collaboration with Letizia Santucci, the set decorator.
The common rooms for each hotel room were all reworked with Thai craft that was reinterpreted in a modern way by new artists. And much of the furniture was designed and built specifically for this specific project. For example, the bar in one of the common rooms, an important element for the story, was brought to life by interpreting traditional Thai design in a modern form, both in terms of materials and stylistic elements. In the bedrooms, benches were built and placed at the foot of the beds, and additional antique furniture and objects were added both as references to spirituality and Thai architecture.
I loved the restaurant where the characters have breakfast and dinner. What did you do with that space, which looked good in the sections I’ve seen?
The breakfast restaurant and dinner restaurant were filmed in completely different places, one in Four Seasons Koh Samui and one at Rosewood in Phuket, so the challenge was to make them look as if they belong in the same hotel. Since the breakfast restaurant was at the top of a hill and the dinner restaurant was next to the sea, we joined them through plants and greenery to make sure the two restaurants followed a path down the hill. In addition, we tied them together with the same interior and used similar colors and structures to remind the audience that this is a way out.
The dinner restaurant is on more of a flat outdoor space, so we wanted to create volume and new roads to enrich the place and make it more of a party for the eyes. For example, we add a pond with Lotus flowers to the restaurant, as well as a large scene flanked with fire pits and statues to serve the performances and script. On the walls we add a metal/neon artwork as a reference to Thai shadow dolls – we interpreted the forms to integrate a darker presence, a demon, into this modern restaurant scene. The dinner restaurant was also a night photography, so we used lighting rigs to shape the roads and emphasize inputs and exits on the characters.
All in all, it was extremely important to make it a unique experience while recognizing it. We could not lose what defines the “white lotus” look/style, but we must also reinvent pieces of it.
Animals such as birds, monitor lizards, snakes and monkeys are seen all the time. Did you lean your way into any of these animals in your Production design?
With inspiration from ancient traditions, plants and animals became symbols and motifs this season – each group of characters in the story is represented by some animals. In this way, the animals you see throughout the season are not just decorative. Part of the story draws strength from the fact that these characters are submerged in nature and in so close to animals for what feels like the first time, which provokes different emotions in them – Fear, anxiety and choking, to name a few. The animals in the design produce a deeper resonance in the parts of the story that urge the natural world to drive the characters against conflict and emotions.
What were a few things you add to one of the movie spaces that developed Buddhism or the spiritual theme that Mike White wrote about this season?
As I travel all over Thailand, I was struck by the spirit houses, or San Phum, which you can find anywhere, from home to sidewalks to religious places. The tradition of spirit houses goes back to centuries, long before the arrival of Buddhism in Thailand, and is related to Animism, the belief that spirits live in all parts of the natural world – Montäns, trees, rivers, etc. These shrines were added to each villa in the hotel, because they act as a home for spirits that protects the country.
In addition, while we visited so many fantastic temples with Mike, we had the privilege of seeing many ancient Buddhist murals. I used this artwork in the hotel lobby and in the bedrooms in every hotel suite. We felt it might be interesting for “The White Lotus” to link each character to a specific part of these murals, which created a visual and narrative link between the painted story and the character’s journey.
The color’s orange is also woven throughout the season. This color palette was inspired by Thai monks’ clothing in all their different variations, based on monk ranking and structure. I wanted to melt by and now in a coherent aesthetic that spoke to this country’s lush cultural and artistic history, so that this color is not only decorative on the sets we built but also a spiritual element.
Finally, another particularly fun piece of this process was the creation of a floating moving island with a huge statue of Buddha in the middle of a pond for one of our sets. Because it was so big, we definitely had to put in the work to make it live, but it all gathered to communicate a beautiful theme of spirituality and the importance of balance – it became almost a symbol for my own experience to work with This season. I felt in peace knowing that all the work we did would create a place that was both new and exciting while I remained unequivocally “White Lotus.”
“The White Lotus” will be broadcast on Sundays at 21 o’clock at Max.
