Season three of The White Lotus may be finished, but creator Mike White is still feeling some jet lag over his surprisingly public conflict with seri
Season three of The White Lotus may be finished, but creator Mike White is still feeling some jet lag over his surprisingly public conflict with series composer Cristóbal Tapia de Veer. Just before its hotly anticipated finale, the man behind the show’s viral theme song told The New York Times that he would not be checking into The White Lotus season four due to his and White’s innovative clash: “We already had our last fight forever.”
Speaking to Howard Stern days later, White said Tapia de Veer’s interview surprised him. “I honestly don’t know what happened, except now I’m reading his interviews because he decides to do some PR campaign about him leaving the show,” White said. “I don’t think he respected me. He wants people to know that he’s edgy and dark, and I’m, I don’t know—like, I watch reality TV.”
In the Times article, the composer did say that when he received the script for The White Lotus’s first season, “I wasn’t sure that it was something for me, because it was very well written, but there’s a reality TV kind of vibe.” His music, by contrast, is typically “the opposite of this, it’s super dark and edgy.”
Differences aside, Tapia de Veer and White worked in harmony for the show’s first two seasons. “By the time the third season came around, he’d won Emmys and he had his song go viral. He didn’t want to go through the process anymore,” White told Stern. “He would always look at me with this contemptuous smirk on his face, like he thought I was a chimp or something.”
With White’s input, Tapia de Veer felt the season-three version of the theme song was missing some of the familiar sounds from the first two installments. “I texted the producer and I told him that it would be great to, at some point, give them the longer version with the ooh-loo-loo-loos, because people will explode if they realize that it was going there anyway. He thought it was a good idea. But then Mike cut that—he wasn’t happy about that.”
The composer, who has since released his uncut version of the theme song on YouTube, went on to say, “Maybe I was being unprofessional, and for sure Mike feels that I was always unprofessional to him because I didn’t give him what he wanted.” Tapia de Veer added that he had informed the White Lotus team of his departure from the show, but “I didn’t tell Mike for various reasons; I wanted to tell him just at the end for the shock and whatever…. At some point he heard about that.”
From White’s point of view, the composer is “definitely making a big deal out of a creative difference.” As the showrunner told Stern on Tuesday, “We never really even fought. He says we feuded. I don’t think I ever had a fight with him—except for maybe some emails. It was basically me giving him notes. I don’t think he liked to go through the process of getting notes from me or wanting revisions, because he didn’t respect me. I knew he wasn’t a team player and that he wanted to do it his way. I was thrown that he would go to The New York Times to shit on me and the show three days before the finale. It was kind of a bitch move.”
The Emmy winner noted that Tapia de Veer “is very talented,” but “I’ve never kissed somebody’s ass so hard to just get him to—to lead that horse to water. Have fun with whatever you’re doing next.”
White hasn’t minced words since the conclusion of The White Lotus season three. When asked about critics who believe the show this season moved slowly and didn’t have enough plot, he had this to say on the official White Lotus tie-in podcast: “I’m world-building. If you don’t want to go to bed with me then get out of my bed. I’m edging you! Enjoy the edging. If you don’t want to be edged, get out of my bed. Do you know what I mean? Don’t be a bossy bottom.”
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