Stop Asking Mike White’s Casting Guru If You Can Be on ‘The White Lotus’

Casting director Meredith Tucker and White Lotus creator Mike White have been friends and collaborators since they met in an acting class during their freshman year at Wesleyan University. They’ve worked together on many of White’s projects, including 2007’s Year of the Dog, 2016’s Mamma Dallas, and 2017’s Brad’s Status, and she also helped out on his hit series Enlightened. Over the years, they’ve developed a shorthand that has served them well. “It makes things a little easier,” Tucker tells Vanity Fair. “I mean, it makes things a little harder too, because I don’t want to let him down.”

breakout performances from actors like Meghann Fahy, Leo Woodall, and, most recently, Patrick Schwarzenegger. It’s also juiced the careers of more established actors, such as Jennifer Coolidge and Carrie Coon. So it should come as no surprise that a lot of hopeful agents and actors are metaphorically knocking on Tucker’s door.

“I’ve been getting a lot of emails from actors that swear they’ve heard that it’s gonna shoot in Morocco, they swear it’s gonna be in Türkiye this year,” she says with a laugh. “Some people are like, ‘I’ve never acted before, but I’d really love to be on the show.’ I think because it’s so hypernaturalistic, people assume these people are not acting. But it takes tremendous skill and tremendous writing and tremendous directing to make it seem that way.”

While she can’t say anything about the upcoming season, Tucker, a five-time Emmy winner who earned hardware for The White Lotus in 2022 and 2023, had plenty to say about her work on the show—including how they cast such real-looking siblings, what she looks for in an alpha male character, and why she thinks the show appeals to so many actors.

Vanity Fair: Almost everyone has to audition for The White Lotus. Do you and Mike start with a wish list of actors for each role?

Meredith Tucker: We start working on lists, but then take a lot from the agents—especially with the younger characters. I did not know Sarah Catherine Hook before we started this process. I knew Patrick [Schwarzenegger], I knew Sam [Nivola], but I did not know Adam DiMarco before we started. So a lot of those parts really do come from auditions. Obviously, it’s not a democracy—but because the show is so popular, I do try to cast a wide net and give people the opportunity to read. Especially the young people who might not have had that much professional experience.

Has the process changed a lot since the first season, when the series wasn’t as well-known as it is now?

The thing about season one—we did it very quickly, but it was one of the few things that was trying to shoot in that fall 2020 window that was actively casting. So because Michael was already established as this writer-director that people do in general clamor to work with, people were pretty enthusiastic, even from the start. Obviously, that has only grown. Season one, because it was a short timeline and because we were shooting in the States, we could only consider Americans. And now that we’ve gone global, the incoming can come from everywhere.

How do you go about casting siblings and families? Do you choose one person first, then cast around them?

It’s kind of crazy that it’s worked out as well as it has in the past. It’s a degree of, do these people physically look like each other? Do you buy it? We don’t do chemistry reads at all and never have. But season one, when we saw Sydney [Sweeney] and Fred [Hechinger] and Steve [Zahn] and Connie [Britton], it was like, Wow, these people really do look like a family. It really does come organically from the performances.

Patrick Schwarzenegger told me about how he seduced the camera in his audition tape. Do you remember his tape?

I remember him being very present and dropping into the character very realistically—the confidence. I did not think, Oh, he’s making eyes at me. But it was a very, very strong self-tape. And it seemed like he understood the kind of guy he was playing. As the season goes on and the layers come out, especially in the last episode when he’s talking to Chelsea on the beach—and then she sees Rick and runs away, and he looked so longingly at her, realizing that he will never have that? I just thought it was such a beautiful moment.

How did you go about casting the three friends played by Carrie Coon, Leslie Bibb, and Michelle Monaghan?

Michael did want them to look a little bit alike, because of the identity and Buddhism and mirroring that was the thematic point of the season. Because they were childhood friends, they had to be relatively the same age. We were playing with some women in their early 40s, and what that kind of meant if you’re closer to 50, as opposed to closer to 40. Ultimately, he decided he liked going the older route. For Michelle’s character, an older actress—it’s loaded for her in some regards. For Carrie’s character, the disappointments of life and all of that. And Leslie just sort of taking stock of everything. I think Leslie was the first one, and we built around that. The three of them did such a beautiful job.

Do you see anything specific about the alpha males you’ve had to cast throughout the series, from Patrick to Theo James?

The thing that’s so great about Michael’s writing is that, yes, these guys look one way, but they are so multifaceted. I think about Theo when he is flossing his teeth, when Daphne is on the phone with the kids. It was such a small moment, but there was such anger in the flossing. They’re three-dimensional; it’s not like they’re just bros. In terms of these guys in particular, you just need to be able to see the humanity. You need an actor who can present all the different facets, all the different colors.

I’ve always thought casting is intuitive. Do you think that’s the case?

I think it very much is. It’s, do you actually buy this person in this character? And there’s something slightly inexplicable about that. Especially with this show. The nature, the tone—it is slightly hyperrealistic but incredibly grounded, but real and funny. Some people’s energy is just not quite right for it. They can be a phenomenal actor, but just might be a little theatrical. They might not have the right sense of humor. Not everyone does fit in this world, I don’t think.

How has your process changed since you started working on this show?

A lot of it is just managing the incoming [requests], which is understandable. People want to be on the show. I’ve said this before: It is much better to be on a show that everyone wants to be on. But it’s about being able to say, “Hey, I don’t think this person is right,” and I hope that people will take me at my word. Especially with something like this, when we don’t want to divulge certain things narratively in the casting process. I have a lot more information than they do. And so trying to convey, like, “Hey, I understand your client really loves the show, but they’re not right here”—I hope I’m getting better at explaining that. But sometimes people just don’t listen. A lot of times they don’t listen. I understand they are doing their job, and if they have a client that really wants to be on the show, it is their job to not take no for an answer.

Speaking of, anything to share about the next season?

I have no idea what’s going on for next season. I don’t think Michael knows yet. People are saying “so-and-so would be great on the show”—it’s like, yeah, they could be. I have no idea if there’ll be a part for them. [Laughs] But again, I feel very blessed and lucky to be part of it.

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