The third season of The White Lotus may be over, but the drama continues for the hit HBO show. In a new interview, creator Mike White hit back at composer Cristóbal Tapia de Veer, who told the New York Times last week that he is quitting the show.
De Veer, who composed the show’s score and viral title sequence stylized for each of the three seasons’ locations, told the Times that he would not return for the show’s fourth season following creative differences with White. “We already had our last fight for ever, I think,” he said of White. “He was just saying no to anything.”
Speaking with Howard Stern on Tuesday following the season finale, White, who also serves as the show’s sole writer and director, disputed de Veer’s characterization of the split. “I honestly don’t know what happened, except now I’m reading his interviews because he decides to do some PR campaign about him leaving the show,” he said. “I don’t think he respected me. He wants people to know that he’s edgy and dark and I’m, I don’t know, like I watch reality TV.”
“We never really even fought. He says we feuded,” he continued. “I don’t think I ever had a fight with him – except for maybe some emails. It was basically me giving him notes. I don’t think he liked to go through the process of getting notes from me, or wanting revisions, because he didn’t respect me. I knew he wasn’t a team player and that he wanted to do it his way. I was thrown that he would go to the New York Times to shit on me and the show three days before the finale. It was kind of a bitch move.”
De Veer’s work has been acclaimed by fans and critics: he won three Emmys for The White Lotus, including outstanding theme for season one. The season two version of the theme song became a club hit, remixed by artists such as Tiësto and Sofi Tukker.
White added that he and de Veer had had a rocky relationship during the first two seasons of the black dramedy, which has netted HBO 15 Emmys to date. “By the time the third season came around, he’d won Emmys and he had his song go viral, he didn’t want to go through the process with me, he didn’t want to go to sessions,” he told Stern. “He would always look at me with this contemptuous smirk on his face like he thought I was a chimp or something … he’s definitely making a big deal out of a creative difference.”
Stern replied: “You’re the genius behind this thing. Why quit a hit show because you got some notes and some differences? Just work it out.”
White responded: “He is very talented. [But] I’ve never kissed somebody’s ass so hard to just get him to – to lead that horse to water. Have fun with whatever you’re doing next.”
In the Times story, de Veer said: “Maybe I was being unprofessional, and for sure Mike feels that I was always unprofessional to him because I didn’t give him what he wanted. But what I gave him did this, you know – did those Emmys, people going crazy … That is the main thing that I’m most happy about – it was worth all the tension and almost forcing the music into the show, in a way, because I didn’t have that many allies in there.”
At issue appears to be the third season’s title sequence, which proved more divisive with fans – some expressed disappointment over the absence of the distinctive “ooh-loo-loo-loo” vocal ululation of the previous versions. According to de Veer, he attempted to persuade producers to assuage critics by releasing a full version of the theme that included it, but White refused.
“I texted the producer and I told him that it would be great to, at some point, give them the longer version with the ooh-loo-loo-loos, because people will explode if they realize that it was going there anyway,” he said. “He thought it was a good idea. But then Mike cut that – he wasn’t happy about that.”
Though the third season and its conclusion drew mixed critical reviews, The White Lotus has become a juggernaut for HBO. Sunday’s season finale drew 6.2 million viewers, breaking a series record set the week before by 30%.
