Natasha Rothwell’s Belinda has been “The White Lotus” mainstay for three seasons, and this year the much put-upon character was faced with a moral conundrum that — just so happens — was Rothwell’s own doing.
“That storyline was my pitch,” Rothwell told Sterling K. Brown in their “Actors on Actors” interview for Variety.
This season, Belinda encounters Tanya’s (Jennifer Coolidge) widower and (she suspects) murderer Greg, (Jon Gries), who offers to buy Belinda’s silence. While son Zion (Nicholas Duvernay) helps up that payout to a multi-million dollar figure, Belinda takes hold of her own power in the situation.
“Listen, this is why I love Mike White. Originally it was Belinda’s son, Zion, running the show,” Rothwell explained. “I told Mike I really wanted to see Belinda have agency in this moment. Can she take over the negotiation in some way? What is an authentic way for her to show that she’s pushing her chips in along with her son? Being able to show that turn, she sees that she has power over a white man — the kind of man that she’s been rubbing the backs of for a long time.”
Rothwell said that her character saw an “opportunity to get something she fundamentally believed she deserved.”
“She’s a moral center for the show,” she said, but added, “I’m scared for her, because I do think karma is real and the money is blood money.”
Rothwell also has choice words for fans that chastise Belinda’s actions toward potential spa partner and lover Pornchai (Dom Hertrkul).
“People are just like, ‘Oh, you just left Pornchai on the side of the road.’ She fucked the dude one night. She had a one-night stand. She owed him nothing. Belinda had an opportunity to betray herself again, but no. Circumstances changed,” she said.
When the first season aired in 2022, Rothwell similarly discussed with IndieWire the show’s “opportunity for conversation unlike anything [she’d] ever seen.”
“People really are forced to reconcile their behavior and the way they see themselves, and the way they see class and how it expresses itself in travel and resort life and vacations,” she said. “We specifically try to extricate ourselves from having to think about good and bad and ugly things on vacation. Mike’s way into that is so beautifully awkward and funny and sad.”
“The White Lotus” Season 3 is now streaming on HBO Max.