‘White Lotus’ producer reveals biggest ‘struggle’ filming seasons — and how they choose the locations

nypost.com:

“The White Lotus” is back for Season 3, this time in Thailand (airing Sundays at 9 p.m. on HBO and Max). Executive producer David Bernad told The Post that when it comes to finding the perfect location for each season, “There’s a macro approach, which is ‘what’s a country that has a film community or local crew that also has a tax rebate that’s film friendly?’ We start in a broader sense, and each season has a larger theme.”Each season of the Mike White-created dark dramedy / mystery series follows a group of different wealthy miserable people on vacation at the fictional “White Lotus” luxury resort – and each season starts with a death, before slowly revealing the events leading up to the incident.

Season 3’s stars include Walton Goggins, Jason Isaacs, Carrie Coon, Leslie Bibb and Patrick Schwarzenegger. “This season, we were trying to explore eastern philosophy, eastern religion versus western culture.

So we were focused on Asia, and you narrow it down,” Bernad explained. “There’s a few countries that fit the criteria of what we were looking for.

It’s all organic, we go in [to the location scouting process] with an open mind.”Choosing hotels to film each season in is, “kind of like speed dating,” he quipped. “You kind of know it when you feel it.”For this season in Thailand, he said it’s like a “Marvel movie, where you [create] the ultimate hotel,” since they filmed in sections of several different hotels, and compiled the footage together to look like one hotel.