Before Mike White was the brilliant mind behind HBO's wildly popular comedy-drama The White Lotus, he was a reality-show warrior.
The Emmy-winning writer and director, also known for writing School of Rock, appeared on two seasons of The Amazing Race alongside his father and was the runner-up on Season 37 of Survivor—experiences that White tells NPR helped to inspire The White Lotus. With the show's first season taking place on the picturesque Hawaiian island of Maui, in a fictional high-stakes resort for the ultra-wealthy, White points out that it's not difficult to draw parallels between the series and Survivor.
"Survivor is not that dissimilar, which is a lot of times just people kind of kvetching about who's tending to the fire or they're hangry because they haven't had anything to eat. But then the music is making it feel like this is going to end up bad for somebody," he said. "And then you have these transitions of sharks in the water. And I was like, we do that in White Lotus...I have to cop to being influenced by Survivor and these shows where you have a device that makes it feel like it's a built-in cliffhanger."
White Shares Some Less-Obvious White Lotus Inspirations
While Survivor might seem like an obvious inspiration behind the tropical paradise nestling the fictious White Lotus resort chain, White shared that he also pulled creative inspiration from his beloved childhood shows.
"I'm definitely in the Fantasy Island [and] Love Boat generation. I was probably 10 to 13 years old when they were in their heyday. And I love those shows," he said.
White, 52, also relied on some unsuspecting inspiration for two of the show's characters, played by Simona Tabasco and Beatrice Granno.
He said, "My other favorite show is Laverne & Shirley. The two prostitutes in [The White Lotus], I was like, there's something very Laverne & Shirley here about these girls, because Laverne and Shirley were always trying to break into the party that they weren't invited to and they were these underdog, working-class girls."
But despite his success with The White Lotus, White says that he doesn't take it too seriously, even with the "prestige" of being on a network like HBO.
"When you're on HBO and there's all this sense of, 'It's prestige TV and blah, blah, blah,' I'm doing basically a reboot of Laverne & Shirley meets Fantasy Island with some Survivor dropped into it. I think those early entertainment things that capture your imagination definitely stick with you," he added.
Seasons 1 and 2 of The White Lotus are now streaming on HBO Max.