Mike White Couldn't Help But Relate To Quentin While Filming The White Lotus Season 2

Tanya McQuoid (McQuoid-Hunt if you want to get technical). For many, she is the shining star of "The White Lotus" franchise, and not just because she is one of only two characters to make an appearance in both seasons. Played by the always-extraordinary Jennifer Coolidge, Tanya is a supremely wealthy woman who also just happens to live with a supreme amount of insecurity. Season 2 finds her married to Greg Hunt — the pretty shady dude that Tanya falls in love with while staying at the Hawaiian White Lotus in season 1 — and while she may have finally found love, her self-doubt is on full display now more than ever. Only after Greg (Jon Gries) unexpectedly leaves her to take care of some work-related business (I.E. an affair), does Tanya finally find her stride by teaming up with a group of "high-end gays" that befriend her at the Sicilian resort. 

Quentin (Tom Hollander) is the most charismatic of the bunch, taking Tanya under his seersucker wing, lavishing her with expensive food and drink and a never-ending onslaught of irresistible compliments. So when Quentin offers to take Tanya to his home in Palermo, she's powerless to say no. However, even though things first seem like fun and games, soon, Tanya finds herself in, let's just say, an unexpected situation. It turns out that there is quite a lot more to Quentin and his charms than Tanya initially realized for many, many reasons. But even though Quentin is not as fun-loving and easygoing as he seems, his character is still the one that Mike White, the show's creator, surprisingly relates to the most in season 2. 

It might seem funny to relate to — major spoiler coming up here — a character who's working with the Mafia to wine and dine Tanya into complacency so that they can kill her. But Mike White has no shame in sympathizing with the on-screen would-be-murderer. After all, if you want to get really technical about it, White's the one who sent Tanya to her death, not Quentin. In an interview for The Ringer, White talks about this impulse to see himself reflected in Quentin, saying, "The reason I said I relate to Quentin is because I feel like I was doing to Jennifer what Quentin was doing to Tanya." (White first mentioned his draw to Quentin in an interview for The Guardian where he said, "I'm not as sophisticated as him, but I aspire to be. He's like this Gore Vidal figure. I guess I'd like to be Gore Vidal.")

Because White wrote season 2 of "The White Lotus," it was his decision to make this season be Tanya's last (a choice that has left many fans, including myself, extremely sad). And though she did go out as extravagantly as only Tanya McQuoid could, her death was still a hard one for everyone to swallow. White tells The Ringer, "I want[ed] her to have this great sendoff. But I [was] always heading to kill her." He explains how his mindset echoed Quentin's, explaining how he gave "her this bravura story line [where] she [got] to do all these fun things in Italy and wear cool clothes." Still, though, he recognizes "also there's a part of me where I'm torturing her." For White, this means he was always conflicted about his relationship to Tanya/Jennifer. "There are times when I'm like, 'Am I her guardian angel, or am I her little devil?' he says.

The similarities between Quentin and Mike White don't just stop there. While it's true that both White (off screen) and Quentin (on screen) are actively seeking to end Tanya's life in the most extravagant way possible, White believes there is also a deeper similarity between himself as a writer and the character. Much like Quentin on the show, Mike White identifies as gay, a fact that White says he explores more in season 2 of the show. "It actually speaks to something I'm trying to get at a little bit with the story line in the show: gay men's infatuations with certain kinds of women," White tells The Ringer. He goes on to explain, 

"I think there's a little bit of sadism in it. Women that are classically divas for gay guys, like Judy Garland, they also like to see them suffer. There's a pleasure to watching women's pain, if it's done in the right way: The idea of a woman who's been disappointed in love and then she finds these great gay guys and she's going to have this How Stella Got Her Groove Back moment, but they really are there to torture her."

White recognizes that perhaps this "makes [him] sound diabolical," but he justifies his impulse to compare himself to Quentin, saying, "As a director, I'm setting up this whole thing and it feels like Quentin was doing that too. He probably feels bad about, you know, killing her, so he's going to justify it by giving her a big party, she's gonna get laid and then ... you know." In the end though, while Tanya's final days are quite eventful, Quentin definitely did not expect to go down with her, leaving us to wonder if anyone is really safe from Mike White's deadly pen, after all.