One of TV’s glitziest and awe-inspiring mystery dramas is once again upon us, with fans eagerly awaiting HBO’s Season 3 premiere of The White Lotus, which critics had differing thoughts about. While we likely won’t see lots of unanswered Season 2 questions getting ironed out, nor any resolution for Portia’s storyline, we’ll thankfully reconnect with Natasha Rothwell’s Belinda and learn what she’s been up to.
No clue if the masseuse will learn about Season 2’s big death, but Rothwell herself opened up about learning of Jennifer Coolidge’s Tanya being the second chapter’s key victim. And it may surprise no one to learn that the actress was indeed gobsmacked to see her biggest Season 1 screen partner get killed off, and that she had to learn about it along with everyone else in the world. Appearing on Today, Rothwell confirmed she was an avid watcher, and said:
I was probably the most rabid fan of Season 2. (I) remember the moment Jennifer died. I screamed and, like, threw my phone across the room, grabbed my phone, texted Jennifer. I’m like, 'Holy ... what?'
You gotta love that the actress' first reaction was to throw her phone, the very device she immediately needed to use to react to what she'd just seen on her TV. And of course her go-to move was to send a message to her former co-star alluding to her shock and disbelief. Hopefully not through a smashed screen, of course.
When Jennifer Coolidge responded, she addressed the fact that even though Rothwell was a big part of Season 1 and was likely privy to most of what creator Mike White had in mind for the characters, her absence in Season 2 meant she was just as out of the loop as the average viewer. As she put it:
And then, yeah, she was just like, 'I couldn’t tell you.'
Considering she was personally asked by White to reprise her beloved Season 1 role in the latest episodes, Natasha Rothwell is obviously in on the secrets awaiting audiences as Season 3 rolls along. With Tanya no longer in the picture, a new corpse is expected to pop up somewhere at the Thailand resort, and Rothwell's co-star Leslie Bibb teased that it won't play out the same way fans might esxpect. According to Bibb:
Even the way it starts is not like the way a usual White Lotus starts. Yes, here’s a death, but it is something ... it ain't just a body bag.
Fingers crossed this latest mystery body has some kind of direct ties to the past two seasons, preferably in ways that connect Jon Gries' Greg to Tanya's death. We definitely need closure there, especially after Jennifer Coolidge seemingly revealed Greg’s devious actions tied back to Season 1, which potentially made him this series' biggest connective tissue.
The White Lotus Season 3 arrives on HBO on Sunday, February 16, at 9:00 p.m. ET, and will be streaming with a Max subscription.
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