The White Lotus: Which stars are checking in for season three?
Natasha Rothwell, Jason Isaacs, Aimee Lou Wood and more are checking into The White Lotus season three. (Getty)
A whole host of new famous faces are set to check into The White Lotus, as the first cast members of season three of Mike White’s black comedy have been announced.
Though there’s still some way to go before the third season of The White Lotus is released, following a delay in filming due to last year’s actors’ and writers’ strikes, teasing of what’s to come has already begun.
We know that season three will be set in Thailand. We know that the third season will be “longer, bigger, and crazier” than the previous two. We know that, devastatingly, Jennifer Coolidge’s Tanya “These Gays” McQoid will remain killed off.
Deadline has also previously revealed that the new season will feature characters including a “patriarch, a female corporate executive, an actress, a couple of mothers, a country club wife, a misfit and a yogi”.
We also now know the names of most of the actors set to star in the third outing, and they include a Harry Potter star, a beloved movie actor, and a White Lotus familiar face.
Considering previous stars, including Aubrey Plaza, Theo James, Sydney Sweeney and Lukas Gage have made the show the hilarious, twisted holiday destination that it is, there’s a lot to live up to. Here’s exactly who is joining the cast of season three.
Aimee Lou Wood
In one of the most exciting bits of The White Lotus casting news, Sex Education‘s Aimee Lou Wood, who plays the adorably scatterbrained Aimee Gibbs on the Netflix comedy series, will be heading over to Thailand.
While she’s best known for her role on Sex Education, Aimee Lou Wood is about to have a big 2024: alongside The White Lotus, she’s about to star in Channel 4 miniseries Alice & Jack, Netflix drama series Toxic Town alongside Jodie Whittaker, and BBC comedy show Daddy Issues.
Jason Isaacs
British Harry Potter actor Jason Isaacs will be heading for a stay at The White Lotus season three, but exactly what role is yet to be announced.
Though the 60-year-old star is best known for playing Draco’s father Lucius Malfoy in the Harry Potter film series, his full filmography is huge – he’s starred in nearly 100 movies, and over 50 TV series.
Many will know him for his turn as Gabriel Lorca in Stark Trek: Discovery, as Jay Perry in award-winning 2021 film Mass, or as Colonel William Tavington in 2000 war drama film, The Patriot.
We’re betting all our money on him being the patriarch.
Carrie Coon
Star of stage and screen Carrie Coon will be packing a bag too, as she’s the most recent actor to be announced for season three.
She’s best known for starring in HBO’s current historical drama series The Gilded Age, and HBO’s former supernatural drama series The Leftovers. You’ve probably also seen Coon in Fargo, The Nest and even in Rosamund Pike’s thriller Gone Girl.
The 42-year-old is also a certified Tony nominee, for her role as Honey in the 2012 revival of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Her role in The White Lotus is not yet known, but we’d love to see her serve Republican realness as a “country club wife”.
Patrick Schwarzenegger
Actor and son of Arnold Schwarzenegger, 30-year-old Patrick Schwarzenegger, has also joined The White Lotus season three.
It’s undeniable that Patrick is best known for, well, his dad, but he’s also had some pretty successful roles on screen in recent years. For the queer community, he’s probably most recognisable for his role in The Boys spin-off, 2023’s Gen V, and for starring as Thad Radwell in the short-lived but very sweet Ryan Murphy series, Scream Queens.
Parker Posey
Queen of the indie film Parker Posey is a perfect pick for The White Lotus. The 55-year-old Golden Globe nominee is a walking eccentricity, and we know those characters thrive in Mike White’s oddly brilliant series.
Posey, 55, is known for her huge string of appearances in independent films, but has also had some pretty huge mainstream hits, too. She’s starred in movies ranging from rom com You’ve Got Mail to horror Scream 3, and most recently, she featured in Beau Is Afraid.
There’s no word on who she’ll be playing, but we reckon she could pull off a mother quite well.
Natasha Rothwell
Wonka and Insecure star Natasha Rothwell is the only cast member announced for season three who is a returning guest at the The White Lotus. Well, not quite a guest, more an employee: Rothwell played spa manager Belinda in season one.
Season one saw Belinda offered the money to set up her own beauty business by Coolidge’s ditzy Tanya McQoid, but of course, Tanya ended up going AWOL before the deal could be finalised. We all know what happened to her next.
Speaking about the first script she read of season three, Rothwell revealed that she “gasped out loud a minimum of five times,” adding: “Everyone needs to buckle up, because it’s going to get real!”
Shalini Peiris
Sri Lankan actress Shalini Peiris will be packing her bags for the trip of a lifetime in The White Lotus season three. She’s best known for 2023 sci-fi series The Ark, ITV medical drama The Good Karma Hospital, and CBBC’s Danny and Mick.
Walton Goggins
Walton Goggins, who was nominated for an Emmy for his role as Boyd Crowder in FX’s Western crime drama series Justified, is confirmed to star in The White Lotus season three. Most recently, fans saw him in the Justified spin-off, Justified: City Primeval last year, and in 2020’s Unicorn, for which he was nominated for a Critics’ Choice Award.
The 52-year-old could face off with Jason Isaacs for the role of patriarch we reckon.
Leslie Bibb
Nineties model and Iron Man actress Leslie Bibb has also been confirmed for an as-yet unnamed role in The White Lotus season three: we reckon she’d be stellar as the “female corporate executive”.
Most recently, the 49-year-old actress has been seen portraying the devil in Netflix’s God’s Favorite Idiot series alongside Melissa McCarthy, as well as in Robert De Niro comedy film About My Father.
Morgana O’Reilly
New Zealand-born actress Morgana O’Reilly has had a varied career, starring notably as Naomi Canning in hit Australian soap Neighbours, in sitcom Mean Mums, and as the lead in 2014 horror-comedy film, Housebound.
Some might know her best for her work on stage though, as her one-woman show The Height of the Eiffel Tower was a hit at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2014.
It seems likely that soon enough, she’ll be best known for her stint in The White Lotus‘s third season.
Sam Nivola
Actor Sam Nivola might not be too well known, but he soon will be: in 2023, he starred in two of the year’s biggest films, Maestro, Bradley Cooper’s biopic about bisexual composer Leonard Bernstein that is creating a lot of Oscars buzz, and Eileen, a sapphic thriller starring Anne Hathaway and Thomasin McKenzie.
He played Leonard Bernstein’s son Alexander in Maestro, and troubled teen Lee Polk in Eileen. It’s not known who he’ll play in The White Lotus, but regardless, it’s a huge series to add to his growing CV.
Dom Hetrakul
Dom Hetrakul might not be a big name in the western entertainment world, but in Thailand, where the third season of The White Lotus is based, he’s a pretty huge deal.
He’s known for his appearances in almost 20 films including historical drama series King Naresuan, while he’s also appeared in more than 50 TV series. He’s worked with some of Hollywood’s greats too, including Jessica Chastain, Patrick Stewart, and Kyle MacLachlan.
The 47-year-old is also a business owner, with his family running one of Thailand’s most-read newspapers, Daily News.
Michelle Monaghan
Golden Globe-nominated True Detective actress Michelle Monaghan is about to have a busy 2024: as well as becoming a resident at The White Lotus, she’s also landed a part in Mia Goth and Halsey’s wild and wacky slasher film, MaXXXine.
You’ll probably recognise her from films including Gone Baby Gone, Mission: Impossible III, and Fallout, or from series including Netflix’s 2020 thriller Messiah.
Sarah Catherine Hook
To many, Sarah Catherine Hook is one of the lesser known stars recently announced as part of The White Lotus‘s third season. For a very certain subsection of the LGBTQ+ community, though, Sarah Catherine Hook is well and truly mother.
She’s best known for leading beloved lesbian vampire season First Kill – a series that fuelled uproar after it was unceremoniously cancelled by Netflix after just one season, despite having a huge LGBTQ+ fanbase.
Other than that, she’s known for appearing in two episodes of American Crime Story.
Miloš Biković
Serbian-Russian actor Miloš Biković is also headed for a chaotic stay at The White Lotus next year. He’s not too well known in the US or UK, but his biggest movie role is without doubt in Russian comedy Surf and Surf 2, in which he played the lead, Gregory a.k.a Serf.
Serf was a certified box office smash in 2019, and remains one of the highest-grossing Russian films of all time.
Christian Friedel
German actor Christian Friedel is another star who might not be a household name yet, but he’s just had his biggest role to date. He played the lead, Nazi official and convicted war criminal Rudolf Höss, in 2023’s critically-acclaimed, Oscar-contending drama film, The Zone of Interest – which comes out in the UK on 2 February this year.
As he checks in to The White Lotus season three, Friedel is definitely one to watch.
Tayme Thapthimthong
Tayme Thapthimthong is probably the least known actor announced for The White Lotus season three, but according to his IMDb page, he’s still got a few TV series under his belt, including miniseries Thai Cave Rescue, Jason Statham and Jessica Alba’s Mechanic: Resurrection film, and 2014 detective movie Skin Trade.
Lek Patravadi
The third Thai actor to star in the upcoming third series is Lek Patravadi, who is widely seen as an acting and arts veteran in Thailand. She made her breakthrough more than 50 years ago in Thai TV series, Mai Mee Sawan Samrab Khun, for which she won a Takkata Thong Award, according to the Bangkok Post.
Most recently, fans have fallen in love with her all over again thanks to her role in 2018 Thai-Chinese drama series In Family We Trust.
According to Deadline, there are still more deals with actors being done for the upcoming series. Which means, if you’re reading Mike White, there’s still time to cast Marcia Cross and Lindsay Lohan as a mother-daughter duo, OK?
