“Don’t Be All, Like, Uncool”: How ‘The White Lotus’ Echoes ‘The Real Housewives of New York’

The trio of blonde friends vacationing at The White Lotus this season may feel a tad familiar to Bravo fans. Jaclyn, Laurie, and Kate—played by Michelle Monaghan, Carrie Coon, and Leslie Bibb, respectively—are longtime pals on a good old-fashioned girls trip to Thailand. Their active is tricky from the start: At every opportunity, two of the women will split off to gossip about the third. Things take an even more dramatic turn in the show’s most recent episode, when Jaclyn—a married television actress who has spent the trip trying to convince Laurie, a recent divorcée, to have a fling with handsome, flirty hotel worker Valentin (Arnas Fedaravicius)—winds up hooking up with Valentin herself.

If a group of middle-aged women partying at a resort and causing chaos by bringing men back to their hotel rooms feels a bit like déjà vu, that’s because this very same plot is a hallmark of another TV series: The Real Housewives of New York City. And since White Lotus creator Mike White is an avowed fan of the Housewives franchise—“You watch stuff like The Real Housewives and you start to think, ‘We’re all so vacuous! Is there any nobility to any of these people?’” he told The New York Times in 2011—looking back at the most notorious Housewives field trips may assist us predict where Jaclyn, Laurie, and Kate’s storyline is going.

Girls’ trips in exotic locales happen on every iteration of The Real Housewives; we’ve seen casts travel everywhere from Amsterdam to Cartagena. But Jaclyn, Kate, and Laurie’s Thailand trip bears the closest resemblance to two specific trips undertaken on the original Real Housewives of New York City, which ran from 2008 to 2022 before being rebooted with a brand modern cast. (The less said about the modern RHONY, the better).

The first came during the fifth season, when the show’s main cast—then comprised of Heather Thomson, Carole Radziwill, Sonja Morgan, Ramona Singer, Aviva Drescher, and ex-countess Luann de Lesseps—takes a girls trip to St. Barts. (In typical Aviva fashion, she shows up tardy, with her husband in tow.) In the 13th episode of that season, “Pirate Booty Call,” the ladies hit the hottest club in St. Barts: Le Ti. At the club, much fuss is made over handsome Tomas Ribiero, a maitre d’ and “artistic director” who naturally is dressed up like a pirate.

“It’s Johnny Depp,” says de Lesseps. (Being compared to Depp was considered a compliment at that time.) “You might as well surround yourself with fabulous looking guys, why not?” But in a confessional interview, Morgan is quick to point out that she was the one who saw Tomas first, implying a bit of competition for the pirate’s attention. Soon enough, the RHONY ladies, led by Luann, are dancing on tables in pirate outfits provided by the Frenchmen. “I’m not just any pirate woman,” Luann says to Tomas, flirtingly.

Carole Radziwill, Sonja Morgan, Ramona Singer, Heather Thomson, Aviva Drescher, Luann de Lesseps in St. Barts in “Pirate Booty Call” from RHONY.Xavier Merchet-Thau/Bravo/Getty Images