Mike White on Money, Status, and Appearing on “Survivor”

Last summer, the screenwriter, director, and actor Mike White took a road trip around the American West with his dog. He was in a depressive quarantine funk, driving aimlessly, when he received an e-mail from HBO. Because of the pandemic, the network had a content void it needed to fill, and execs were reaching out to writers like White for ideas. White, who made a name in Hollywood in the early two-thousands with comedies such as “School of Rock” and “Orange County,” saw the HBO e-mail as a kind of lifeline, he told me—an opportunity to shake himself out of pandemic stagnation. And the network’s urgency might benefit his creative process, he thought. If he could come up with a worthwhile project and push it through production, he said, “It’ll be like a boulder they can’t stop. I can do exactly what I want to do.”

In his recent work, White has been preoccupied with wealth and class and the way they warp social hierarchies: “Brad’s Status,” a White film from 2017, stars Ben Stiller as a middle-aged dad newly obsessed with comparing himself with his much more affluent and successful college friends. In “Beatriz at Dinner,” another film released the same year and written by White, Salma Hayek plays a holistic healer who accidentally becomes a guest at the discomfiting dinner party of one of her uber-wealthy clients. When HBO came calling, White returned once again to ideas about wealth, this time within the context of marriage. What resulted is “The White Lotus,” a six-episode limited series that takes place over the course of a week at a Hawaiian resort. It’s a delicious and tonally ominous show about rich people on vacation and the catastrophic things that can happen when the super-privileged collide with the people who’ve been sent to serve them. The eccentric and dazzling ensemble cast includes Connie Britton, Steve Zahn, Molly Shannon, and Jennifer Coolidge.

White has an unusually high profile for a Hollywood screenwriter because he often acts in his own projects, either in starring roles or minor supporting parts. (He is perhaps best known as Ned Schneebly, Jack Black’s meek sidekick in “School of Rock.”) His career is also unusual because he is well known for a project that ultimately failed: in 2011, he released “Enlightened,” a dramatic comedy and meditative tone poem about a striving, newly converted idealist, Amy Jellicoe (played by Laura Dern), and her battle against her soulless corporate employer. Despite receiving critical adulation, “Enlightened” was cancelled by HBO after two seasons owing to low viewership. Fans and critics were outraged, and White—whether he wanted to or not—became, to some, a symbol of resistance against Hollywood oppression and commercialism. After the show was cancelled, he explained, he spent time “licking his wounds,” did some soul-searching, took boilerplate screenwriting jobs, and appeared in Season 37 of “Survivor.” (White has a deep and abiding obsession with reality television.) “The White Lotus” is a vindication of sorts—and also his sexiest and glitziest television work to date. We spoke recently over Zoom, and our conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Your last show with HBO, “Enlightened,” was a critical success, but it was cancelled after two seasons. That was almost ten years ago. How did the new show come to be?

There was a practical backstory to it, which is that HBO did not have content because so many shows shut down because of COVID. I think they came to me because they know I’m kind of a fast writer. I’ve tried to get stuff going at HBO ever since “Enlightened.” It wasn’t like I just left TV. I did a pilot for them that I thought turned out really well. I wrote a script, with Jennifer Coolidge starring, that they did not want to do. They couldn’t have passed faster on it. And so, you know, I kind of think I benefitted because of the COVID situation with them. Usually, with TV, everything is really picked over—at the beginning of any new show, every script you write is super-scrutinized. The filtration system of getting something on the air is aggravating and time-consuming. So, being able to do something in this time window . . . I thought, If they go with this, it’ll be like a boulder they can’t stop. I can do exactly what I want to do.

I always wanted to do a show about a couple that’s on a honeymoon—a thing about money, and someone marrying into money, and realizing what she may have lost. The Faustian bargain that happens when you want a life style, but you also want to retain your independence and power. And so I thought that was a good place to start. Instead of just focussing on one couple’s honeymoon, I constellated the show with many people grappling with ideas about money. Who has the money can really create the dynamic of a relationship, the relationship itself, the sense of self. Money can really inform and pervert our most intimate relationships, beyond just the employee-guest relationship at the hotel.

Hawaii pops up a lot in your work, and now you’ve made a whole show set there. What’s your relationship to Hawaii?

When I was little, I would go to Hawaii with my family. My dad was a minister, so we didn’t have a lot of money. It was my first experience of being somewhere other than where I lived. The Hawaiian culture is very specific, and there’s something very magnetic and beautiful about it. After I made “Enlightened,” I actually was able to buy a place there. I was hoping to be Paul Theroux and have my Hawaiian writer’s retreat or something. And it is such a paradisiacal, idyllic place. But it’s also such a living microcosm of so many of the cultural reckonings that are happening right now. There are ethical aspects to just vacationing there, let alone buying a house there. The longer I spent time there, the more I realized just how complex it is. And it just felt like that might be interesting as a backdrop to this show.

At any point in your Hawaii journey did you identify with the rich tourists you were portraying in the show?

I have a place in Hanalei, and there’s all these tech bros. The tech world has found Hanalei. So there’s these huge houses—not my house—that are being sold for thirty million right on the beach. Mark Zuckerberg has a place there. And I’d be, like, Ugh, those guys. They own the world! And then I was, like, I am that guy. The people who live there [in Hanalei] and have lived there their whole lives, they’re all being displaced. And it’s a small enough place that you can kind of hold it all in your head in a way that you can’t in a place like L.A. It’s a complex place, and I didn’t feel like I could tell the story of the native Hawaiians and their struggles to fight some of their battles, but I felt like I could kind of come at it from the way I experienced it. At first, it’s, like, It’s so beautiful! I’m in touch with nature and it’s so healing. Then you realize it’s on the backs of people who’ve had a complicated history with people like me.

Your most recent big projects—“White Lotus,” the films “Brad’s Status” and “Beatriz at Dinner”—have all been about wealth and class struggle. Has anyone you interact with in your real life been able to recognize themselves in these projects and felt attacked?

[Laughs.] I do think there are people that I draw from. Right now, there’s just a really comical thing going on in my bubble. I’m not from money. But I know a lot of people now who have money, and everyone they know has money. They live in a bubble of money. They’re so defensive right now—the culture has them on their heels.

“Enlightened” was coming at issues of inequity and injustice from the position of a person who has no agency and no money. And that was interesting, to get in the headspace of that. With this project, I thought it would be interesting to try to get in the heads of people who have more money and a little bit more power. These are people who could do something about inequality. I wanted to try to understand why they don’t want to do something about it, and why they’re defensive, and what they use to justify being complacent and afraid of change. And to do it in a way that felt credible. I didn’t want people watching the show to be able to say, “That’s the bad guy! I’m the good guy.” I wanted them to see the rich people in the show and think, That’s me—I am that person. I’ve said those things. I’ve been defensive in that way.

I think of that show “Succession.” It’s a great show, but it’s very king’s court. You can kind of otherize them. They’re billionaires. With “White Lotus,” I wanted it to be more, like, this is your next-door-neighbor rich person who is part of the system.

The first episode of this series frames the show as a murder mystery, but that’s not exactly how things turn out. Can you talk about that decision?

As someone who doesn’t really traffic in the world of mysteries and dead bodies, I was, like, you know, it’s such a trope at this point. All of these limited series where there’s a dead body at the beginning. I was, like, You want your dead body? Here’s your dead body. I also felt like it was helpful in the sense that I knew I wanted to create a show that had this kind of cognitive dissonance of beautiful people and a beautiful location, but then there’s this sense of dread, of blood in the mouth. Something dangerous was going to happen. You want to feel like, at some point, there’s going to be a human sacrifice. With this show, I wanted to say, “Yeah, there’s actually going to be blood on the floor here.” It’s not just an overcooked score where people are sitting around having conversations over dinner at a hotel. I wanted to give people a sense that this is going to go somewhere a bit dangerous.

You have a knack for casting interesting or unexpected actors in your projects. How did you approach this one?

I have a casting director, Meredith Tucker, who casts a lot of stuff for HBO. I went to college with her, and she’s one of my closest friends. She’s cast everything I’ve ever done. I don’t like the casting process of just seeing names on a list and just trying to get big names. HBO is cool about wanting who’s best for the part, and there’s not a lot of pressure to get big stars in every part. Almost everyone in the show auditioned, which is an important process. Murray Bartlett auditioned, and his audition was so funny. I wasn’t that familiar with him, but, when I saw his audition, I thought, We can’t do better than this.

The daughter, Olivia, and her friend Paula are so perfectly emblematic of this very specific leftist-contrarian type. In the series, they’re pictured sitting by the pool reading books by Camille Paglia and Sigmund Freud. Was there any specific source of inspiration you drew from?

I see myself as a pseudo-intellectual in the sense that I am very interested in the cultural conversations, but I’m a little bit of a dilettante. I’m a screenwriter who lives in Santa Monica. I’m not a sociologist from the University of Chicago. I try my best to be an intellectual because I grew up wanting to be smart. But, whatever, anyways, my point is that some of those books are books that were meaningful to me. I went to school at Wesleyan and was basically focussed on deconstructionist theory when I was there, and I got really into that whole world. And I came out the other side of it being a little bit cynical about what that all is. And so I was kind of playing with what I was like in college.

Did you feel like the cancellation of “Enlightened” made it harder for you to pitch new work?

For me, when you do something that feels like it’s close to the bone and had the reaction it did—where, critically, it got a lot of good stuff, but it just didn’t push its way to the front of the line—it made me feel like I didn’t have the heart to go deep for a little bit. I was, like, I’ll just take some jobs and write some stuff for hire. I was, like, O.K., they need a writer for “Pitch Perfect 3”? I’ll do it. I did “Survivor.” I did write some movies, some stuff that was meaningful to me. But I guess I was licking my wounds a bit. It’s like being in a relationship where you get burned and you don’t have the stomach to go through that again, so you take some time to heal.

There was a narrative around “Enlightened” being cancelled. You became a poster boy for real artistry getting burned by Hollywood, or by the viewers having bad taste, or something. Was that a misrepresentation, or did you identify with that narrative?

It’d be funny if I said that I’d been burned by viewers’ bad taste. You know, I guess I still am always surprised that my taste is not exactly mainstream? And I know that’s true, but every time I have to learn it again. I hate pandering to audiences. I don’t like anything that feels like I’m trying to do something to win a popularity contest. I have a natural defiance of that. Sometimes I thought it had to do with my politics and what I wanted to focus on. But I realized that it doesn’t even matter. If we made “Enlightened” now, it would feel like it was pandering to the zeitgeist! HBO even brought up the possibility of doing a third season. But, right now, that doesn’t feel like a bold decision.

Did I hear you correctly, that there’s been interest in a third season of “Enlightened” . . . after all that?

HBO has mentioned in the last two or three years, saying that they would be interested—a one-off short season or a movie that wraps everything up. I’m not saying I would never do it, but it just makes me wonder: Why do you want to do this now? I’m such a contrarian. I love Laura [Dern], and there would be reasons to do it. But I kind of feel like it’s the Ghost of Christmas Past. It’s funny, because Amy Jellicoe could actually be the villain of the third season. There could be a funny twist.

The television landscape has obviously evolved tremendously since you made “Enlightened.” How has the streaming ecosystem changed the way you make or pitch shows?

O.K., so, I wrote a script that I was really into, for Aubrey Plaza and for me to be in. We were playing ourselves, but it was this weird sex comedy set in Sweden. My character was basically a very predatory version of myself. There were some MeToo elements. The script was definitely poking the bear. And so we went around to all of these streamers, and I could tell people really liked the script. But everybody was kind of afraid to do it. There are all these streamers right now, and there’s all this business. It does feel like there’s a lot of places to go and take the meeting. But then, when you go into the rooms to have the meeting, you realize they all want the same thing. There’s not a lot of incentive for them to try something that feels like they might get criticized for it. There’s a very corporatized thing going on. There’s not that big of an upside to taking on something that would cause more problems than it’s worth.

It was always hard to make stuff for me. But, back in the early two-thousands, I just felt like there were more people running places who were individuals and had their own individual taste and would take different types of risks. It’s not to say there aren’t cool, risky things being made. But, when they type my name into the algorithm at Netflix, it must come out zeroes or something. When I go to their offices, I get no sense that they have any idea who I am or what I’m doing there. You really feel like it’s some kind of Terry Gilliam “Brazil” version of futurist entertainment.

Did Quibi ever approach you to make content?

Before “White Lotus,” I wanted to do this show with Jennifer Coolidge, and I honestly think it was the best script I ever wrote. It would be the coolest show. It got really close at all these places, but the rejection was the same everywhere. It was just too weird. And the producer was, like, “Well, maybe we could take it to Quibi!” I was, like, “I’m not taking this to Quibi!”

You’d have to dramatically restructure the project.

There’s just something about making stuff for people to watch on their phones. I’d rather write “The Emoji Movie 2,” to be honest.

There’s obviously an emphasis these days in auteur television—focussing on the story of one writer or one director. You have an especially interesting story: you grew up in an evangelical Christian bubble, and your father was a prominent ghostwriter for figures like Jerry Falwell, and your dad eventually came out as gay. Have you ever thought about writing a script based on these experiences?

No. I think it’s hard. Things have been brought to me because people know about my dad and my childhood and that I grew up around that whole world. But I have such a bad taste in my mouth about all of that that I don’t think I could do a humanist, dimensional approach to it. It would be difficult for me to approach it in a way that wasn’t full of bile.

O.K., now I want to talk about your time on “Survivor.”

Woo-hoo!

You’ve gone on “The Amazing Race” twice, and you were on “Survivor” in 2018. The season had a David-vs.-Goliath theme, and you were on the Goliath team because of your Hollywood success. You actually made it to the end and almost won! How do your highbrow Hollywood friends react to your reality-TV obsession?

I remember I was at a party at Courteney Cox’s house—I’m not really good friends with her, but I was there. And I was just about to go on “Amazing Race.” And Jennifer Aniston was there, and I was so proud and excited. I was, like, “I’m going on ‘Amazing Race’ with my dad!” I could see Jennifer Aniston’s eyes being, like, Why the fuck . . . ? That’s not anything that anyone aspires to, to be a reality contestant. I actually just auditioned with my boyfriend to be on “House Hunters International.”

With “Survivor,” I had a party for the penultimate episode I was on, at my house. And, you know, it was the best night of my life. I won the challenge that night. Everyone thought I was throwing the party because I was going home, but instead I won the immunity challenge. I had friends from childhood there. I had the “Survivor” contestants there. And then I had people like Diane Keaton and Angelina Jolie! I was, like, This is the best. So, you know, maybe they think I’m crazy. Doing those shows, I thought, I’m not going to let losing the credibility of some ritzy-titzy person or critic or whatever prevent me from having this experience.

I have to imagine a lot of people thought you were going on these shows ironically, as a joke.

It’s not ironic. It’s not ironic. “Survivor” is the only show I really devotedly watch, even though I get frustrated with it. Part of my job and my way of life is studying people and analyzing motivation and character. I still feel like, even on the most contrived reality show, the people are human and they’re more interesting than some of the most well-scripted drama. And for me, as a writer of drama, I aspire to do what reality television already does. To create characters that are surprising and dimensional and do weird shit and capture your attention.

On “Survivor,” more than any other reality show, the producers don’t seem to mess with what happens.

I do think they have a tendency to over-engineer plot twists. I preferred it a little more when it was about a social experiment. When you could really use the “Survivor” landscape as a chance to talk about the workplace and how people succeed in life. Over time, it leans a little bit toward the game-show component, which is less interesting to me. Even when I sometimes question some of their twists or whatever, I still think it’s really a well-produced, cool show.

Do you keep up with longtime “Survivor” host Jeff Probst now, socially?

I do.

Will you come back as a returning player in a future season?

Probst is, like, “Let’s be real—you’re never going to go on the show again.” I was, like, “Really? Why?” We are friends. We’ve become more friends since I was on the show, and he’s an impressive guy. I think the fact that we’ve become close is probably why he says that. I don’t know. I don’t think they want the Hollywood Goliath who knows Probst to win a season. Now that Probst knows I can get to the end, I don’t think he wants there to be a chance of that happening again.

You have an unusual screenwriting career, because you’ve appeared as an actor in so many of your projects. What itch does acting scratch?

I was into acting at the beginning because I’m not good at managing people, and directing felt like a scary thing to me. I don’t want to tell people what to do. But I also felt like, as a writer, it was frustrating. You write something, and then you get sent back to the cave. So acting felt like a way to participate in the making of it. I like acting less now. I liked attention more when I was younger. I guess I was just on “Survivor,” so there’s definitely a part of me that wants to be seen. But I played “Survivor” because I really wanted to play, but I do get some enjoyment out of being seen.

What’s on your plate now, in terms of future projects?

My hope is that maybe HBO will want to do another round of “White Lotus.” I feel like it might take place at a sister hotel, a different kind of seasonal thing. I think there’s another season in me that kind of has a different way into this that I think would be cool if they’d let me do this. I also have another idea for a series that is actually kind of under way. It’s based on this Dutch movie called “Stop Acting Now,” which is about these activist-artists who realize that they’re wasting their lives as artists and just need to make the world a better place. It’s a little bit like “Enlightened” but kind of more multi-protagonist.

In your final “Survivor” episode, where you are meant to plead your case to the jury, you noted that you tend to come off like an introvert, but, in your real life, you’re actually managing tons of people at work. What’s that like for you?

It’s kind of like how I think of the Olivia and Paula characters in the show. When you’re young, you identify with youth. And you identify with the underdog and the child. I never really sought out to be the guy in charge, but I also wanted to have control of my art and make it myself. When you do that, you become a manager of many people. You see, when you are in charge, you get on the receiving end of a lot of people’s ego needs. People project onto the boss, in a way. Maybe it’s selling out, or maybe it’s just getting older. But, when you read something in the news about the bad boss and the virtuous employee, you’re, like, it’s a little bit more complicated than that. You try being in charge! You try having all of your decisions second-guessed.

I still am with the underdogs. But there are times for me where it’s hard to be in charge. I want to be on good terms with everybody, but I also want to make my show good. And it’s, like, when people don’t show up for me, suddenly I’m, like, Am I a bitch? I don’t know. Probably.