David Bernad
Appearances
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 1: "Same Spirits, New Forms" with David Bernad and Michelle Monaghan
In fact, you can be self-justifying.
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 1: "Same Spirits, New Forms" with David Bernad and Michelle Monaghan
Yeah.
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 1: "Same Spirits, New Forms" with David Bernad and Michelle Monaghan
This is a dream, Josh, to be interviewed by you. At long last. It's taken me 20 years.
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 1: "Same Spirits, New Forms" with David Bernad and Michelle Monaghan
No. At the very beginning, if I had to bet money, we were going to end up in Japan. And I think Mike and I have always had just a deep appreciation and kind of love of Japanese culture and Japan in general. And when we set out to—we were going to go scout Japan, and HBO said to us, you know— Can you just check out one other country?
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 1: "Same Spirits, New Forms" with David Bernad and Michelle Monaghan
And so when you kind of boil down the list of Southeast Asian countries that have a rebate and have a crew base and are film friendly and the weather worked for our dates, it was really only Thailand. So we said, okay, let's scout Thailand first. We'll appease HBO and then we'll go on to Japan. And A fun fact is Mike, who was twice on The Amazing Race, had been eliminated twice.
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 1: "Same Spirits, New Forms" with David Bernad and Michelle Monaghan
And both times, the elimination station was in Koh Samui. So Mike always had this kind of aversion to Thailand. So I would never, ever have thought we'd end up in Thailand.
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 1: "Same Spirits, New Forms" with David Bernad and Michelle Monaghan
Yeah. I mean, we started off in Bangkok and then we went from Bangkok to Phuket to Krabi and then up to Chiang Mai. I think we just discovered just how incredibly beautiful the culture is in Thailand and Buddhism and also the warmth of the people can't be understated. And I think the real...
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 1: "Same Spirits, New Forms" with David Bernad and Michelle Monaghan
turning point for us was we were in chiang mai and mike had bronchitis and he ended up in the hospital we were supposed to fly to chiang rai and we ended up staying a couple extra days there in chiang mai and we put mike on this nebulizer which i guess is like a really strong steroid and he i never heard of a nebulizer you never had to do one for your baby no it's like this little inhaler mask oh oh wow yeah okay and he ended up hallucinating
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 1: "Same Spirits, New Forms" with David Bernad and Michelle Monaghan
And he hallucinated the season. And he came in. He got out of the hospital. Yeah. He came into the van. I was there. And he goes, I had the most vivid dreams last night. I was on the steroid and I couldn't sleep. And he told me what he dreamt. And that is what we shot. Wow. It is almost exactly that. And it came to him as a vision.
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 1: "Same Spirits, New Forms" with David Bernad and Michelle Monaghan
And I think, I think the way, you remember him telling me just how incredibly well he was treated by the nurses and how much they cared about him. And he just kind of fell in love with Thailand. And when we left Thailand to fly to Japan, I was like, oh yeah, we're going to end up shooting in Thailand. And we got to Japan and I think kind of to your point,
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 1: "Same Spirits, New Forms" with David Bernad and Michelle Monaghan
The interest of the show is never to look down or make fun of local culture. I think Japanese culture is so specific and it's so beautiful. I think to do a show set in Japan, you're going to end up getting into things we didn't want to get into, where Thailand is really about Buddhism. Buddhism itself permeates everywhere in our experience.
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 1: "Same Spirits, New Forms" with David Bernad and Michelle Monaghan
That just felt like a more ripe place to kind of investigate Eastern versus Western philosophies. Yeah.
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 1: "Same Spirits, New Forms" with David Bernad and Michelle Monaghan
Yeah, I think since I've known Mike, and I've known Mike 20 years too, he's always been interested in Buddhism. It's something that's come up a lot. He's read a lot. So I think for us, once we got there, the Buddhist ideals and kind of Buddhist storytelling was something that was already in his head.
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 1: "Same Spirits, New Forms" with David Bernad and Michelle Monaghan
Yeah? Yeah. Good luck with that.
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 1: "Same Spirits, New Forms" with David Bernad and Michelle Monaghan
As we traveled around, you kind of realized how if you're going to do something in Thailand, that's going to be a subject matter you're going to have to tackle. So I think thematically, he was already there.
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 1: "Same Spirits, New Forms" with David Bernad and Michelle Monaghan
in and then before mike starts writing he goes and lives you know he lived in sicily for three or four months he lived in thailand for three or four months and he kind of went around and investigated different cities and local culture and he met a lot of really interesting people and i think through those travels kind of he pulled out some of the thematic ideas and he met a couple funny characters when he had a little adventure and i think that led to some of the stories in the show
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 1: "Same Spirits, New Forms" with David Bernad and Michelle Monaghan
Mike's going to have to answer that. I would say we were very ignorant. about Thailand. And that's what's so exciting about the show. You know, in Thailand, they call it soft power. And soft power is this idea of them trying to figure out how to export Thai culture. Because really what Americans know about Thailand is probably from The Hangover.
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 1: "Same Spirits, New Forms" with David Bernad and Michelle Monaghan
And it's this idea of like, it's a party country of like sex tourism, which that's not what Thailand is, obviously. And for us, we were kind of ignorant And the second you land, the second you get in there and you really immerse yourself, you realize just how beautiful Thailand is. So it kind of just really coalesced in a natural way.
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 1: "Same Spirits, New Forms" with David Bernad and Michelle Monaghan
You know, similar to Sicily, we were never going to – I would have bet money we were going to shoot in France. And we were in Sicily – And we were at a hotel and there's all these heads everywhere. And we asked the guy, what are these heads? And he told us a story about this Moor soldier who came and fell in love with a local Sicilian woman.
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 1: "Same Spirits, New Forms" with David Bernad and Michelle Monaghan
And the woman found out that he had a lover back home and she chopped his head off. And that's what those heads represent is this kind of story about jealousy and infidelity and and kind of the history and culture of Sicily. And once we heard that story, I think that opened up what Mike wanted to write.
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 1: "Same Spirits, New Forms" with David Bernad and Michelle Monaghan
In a similar way to us traveling around Thailand, opened up this idea of doing a season about Buddhism and the beauty of Thailand.
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 1: "Same Spirits, New Forms" with David Bernad and Michelle Monaghan
I think right away, I mean, again, if you had told me that John Grice would still be in the show season three when we were shooting season one, I would never have believed you. But John's amazing. He's an amazing actor, amazing human being. And I think... Mike immediately had this idea of how to keep Jennifer Coolidge's story going in a way that would surprise audiences.
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 1: "Same Spirits, New Forms" with David Bernad and Michelle Monaghan
For Mike, you know, the Tanya storyline has evolved as kind of a through line. And he had this brilliant idea of how to keep that storyline in the show. And once we knew Natasha was in, Mike had the brilliant idea of bringing Greg back and seeing what happens when those two cross.
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 1: "Same Spirits, New Forms" with David Bernad and Michelle Monaghan
Yes.
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 1: "Same Spirits, New Forms" with David Bernad and Michelle Monaghan
Who is it? It's Walton Goggins. Of course. Yeah.
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 1: "Same Spirits, New Forms" with David Bernad and Michelle Monaghan
I wonder. Well, it's funny because if you spend enough time with Mike, you're going to end up as a character in one of his movies or shows because he's always paying attention and he's really good at picking up on funny moments you don't even realize he's paying attention. So... There's a lot of me, I think, in the show. That or I'm a narcissist and I'm just projecting.
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 1: "Same Spirits, New Forms" with David Bernad and Michelle Monaghan
You're distributed amongst. Yeah. There is definitely one line in there that I told him as an anecdote. When we were in Bangkok, I had gone out for drinks with someone and she told me that the women in Bangkok call these bald men LBHs, losers back home. So I went back and told Mike the next day, which I was really excited when that ended up in the script.
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 1: "Same Spirits, New Forms" with David Bernad and Michelle Monaghan
Yeah. I mean, you know, it's interesting when we're making the show. HBO picked the show up very quickly. in July of 2020 and said, can you get a show shot this year that can be out in 21? And Mike and I had sold and thought about multiple versions of a travel show that examined upstairs, downstairs life and the resort culture and colonialism.
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 1: "Same Spirits, New Forms" with David Bernad and Michelle Monaghan
and you know mike started writing really quickly and then the idea of this of the murder plot was something that came later that was never the idea of the show was always kind of these really specific characters kind of interacting with each other and examining more existential ideas so this idea of like a plotty show was never something that we set out to make and even when we were cutting season one
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 1: "Same Spirits, New Forms" with David Bernad and Michelle Monaghan
I remember we got this note about the end of the pilot returning to the dead body to remind people that there's a dead body. I remember talking with Mike about it and he was like, I don't think people are really going to care about that. They're going to forget that the dead body exists. Let's not really focus on the show.
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 1: "Same Spirits, New Forms" with David Bernad and Michelle Monaghan
Obviously, for some people, that's a big part of the show and they're hooked into that. Season one is really just like, as you said, a lot of people sitting around a table talking. Part of that was because we had to shoot that in a bubble. We couldn't leave the hotel. And that was partly why the show was so contained. Season two is really a bedroom farce.
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 1: "Same Spirits, New Forms" with David Bernad and Michelle Monaghan
And I think Mike, who's brilliant at plotting and brilliant at writing soap, and I mean that as a compliment, he's like, how do I escalate this and make this a really fun bedroom farce? And And I think after the success of season two, it's like, how do I make this even bigger? That's what led us to that and the nebulizer is what led us to season three.
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 1: "Same Spirits, New Forms" with David Bernad and Michelle Monaghan
It's also funny, like in even season two, when we started shooting, we were still in the throes of COVID. So we were slightly contained. And this is the first time we've made the show with kind of nothing holding us back. This was a massive production. We were in so many six cities or something and constantly moving and so many hotels.
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 1: "Same Spirits, New Forms" with David Bernad and Michelle Monaghan
And I think he kind of wanted to challenge us to kind of go bigger.
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 1: "Same Spirits, New Forms" with David Bernad and Michelle Monaghan
I know.
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 1: "Same Spirits, New Forms" with David Bernad and Michelle Monaghan
No, of course. Thank you so much for having me, and thank you guys for doing this. It's been fun.
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 1: "Same Spirits, New Forms" with David Bernad and Michelle Monaghan
Right. I was like, a number of times. That was where you identified that.
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 1: "Same Spirits, New Forms" with David Bernad and Michelle Monaghan
Thank you.
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 1: "Same Spirits, New Forms" with David Bernad and Michelle Monaghan
You know, you sure know how to treat a burnt out bitch.
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 1: "Same Spirits, New Forms" with David Bernad and Michelle Monaghan
Mom. Mom. You were asleep.
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 1: "Same Spirits, New Forms" with David Bernad and Michelle Monaghan
Okay.
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 1: "Same Spirits, New Forms" with David Bernad and Michelle Monaghan
It's not realistic. We will be keeping the phones, Pam.