“[The White Lotus] is the well-established brainchild of Mike White,” music supervisor Gabe Hilfer told The Hollywood Reporter of working on the hit HBO show. “It’s his sandbox to play in, and we’re all there to help him just make it as exactly what he wants it to be.”
Hilfer, who joined for the show’s second season, said his main task as music supervisor is to take viewers into the each season’s resort setting. He noted that season two was “very distinctly” Italian, while season three, which wrapped up its run Sunday night, is distinctly Thai. He added that they always strive for authenticity but that getting into the point of view of each season’s guests is important.
“You’re immersed when you enter The White Lotus, and we want music to be a part of that too,” Hilfer said, adding that he was vaguely familiar with Thai music prior to season three due to past projects. “I also reached out to a lot of people that I know who have contacts in Thailand, and we ended up having a couple great resources in Bangkok, who were immensely helpful because basically their whole job is working on music licensing with Thai artists.”
With the show heavily featuring the music of Thai artists and having one of the biggest pop stars in the world in the cast, it begs the obvious question: Why wasn’t Lisa’s music in the show? “I’ve worked on a lot of things that have musicians as actors, and I kind of feel like you’re crossing a boundary because they’re no longer their fictional character,” Hilfer explained. “It’s just a little meta if you’re hearing their music while you’re seeing them on screen, but they’re not playing themself.”
The music supervisor says there was a discussion with her label but that it never came up in the body of the show. “If she was playing Lisa on vacation at the White Lotus, maybe it would’ve been kind of a fun little wink, but as she is Mook in this and has a different role, I think it would’ve been a little too self-aware or meta,” he said, adding, “Obviously, she’s such a megastar, and Blackpink is its own phenomenon.”
Hilfer also weighed in on fans’ passionate online debates for things such as the main title sequence. “The show is a phenomenon in popularity and gets talked about so much,” he said. “Popularity just brings more eyeballs and more opinions and scrutiny. If you work on something that is incredible, but nobody watches it, nobody’s really commenting and giving you their opinion on specific stuff.”
He added, “When I hear the stuff — and I’m not deaf in terms of reading the stuff online and I see what people say — I look at it as almost flattery because it means that people are paying attention so much and they’ve loved it so much before that they’re having a hard time with change.”