Hunter Harris
Appearances
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Episode 7: The Mike White-iverse
Laura Dern feels like she's doing a good thing and, like, really desperately wants to do a good thing, and that's what makes that so tragic. You can feel how much she wants to improve herself and improve everyone else, but she just keeps bucking up against this wall of everyone else's ego. But she's still trying, whereas on the White Lotus, I think this desire to...
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Episode 7: The Mike White-iverse
change others is much more out of control and dominance.
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Episode 7: The Mike White-iverse
I mean, this is going to sound weird, but I can totally see why it got canceled. Like, it's too good. It's too smart. You had gold in your hands watching this show.
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Episode 7: The Mike White-iverse
on Survivor specifically, where people hide if they went to an IV or if they're a psychiatrist or if they're a cop or something like that. Because you always have a target on your back if you have one of these jobs. He did such a good job of being like, oh, I just kind of work in Hollywood. I just work in TV.
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Episode 7: The Mike White-iverse
When he's not maybe one of the most astute, I don't know, observationists in working in television, which I would be like, target on your back immediately. You're too good at this game. I think he's so good at like playing sweet, but also playing very cunning, but also not being too cunning, but also being very playful, friendly.
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Episode 7: The Mike White-iverse
And I mean, honestly, if you've talked to anyone who's directed actors, that sounds like exactly what you need to do.
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Episode 7: The Mike White-iverse
Absolutely. I mean, Survivor, first of all, let me say this. When I... started watching Survivor, I thought it was a show that you watched in the hospital. I thought this was a show that you watched on your deathbed. Plug is about to be pulled and Survivor is just on. I thought it was like daytime TV. But when I started watching this series, I was like, oh my gosh.
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Episode 7: The Mike White-iverse
There are so many social dynamics, physical dynamics, of course. But the way that you can start an episode on the bottom and end, not on the top, but at the top of the middle, which is exactly where you want to be. And that's kind of where he rode the
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Episode 7: The Mike White-iverse
throughout the entire season, which is perfect because you want to be someone on Survivor who is seen as not a weakness, but also a huge competitor for someone at the very end. You want to be the person they bring along with them, but you also don't want to be someone that it's like, oh, I can cut you easily and not feel like I'm losing a real vote.
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Episode 7: The Mike White-iverse
And that I think is that's really the mark of a genius. Honestly, that means more to me than Mensa.
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Episode 7: The Mike White-iverse
Enlightened kind of felt like a secret shared amongst the people that I really respected and admired. Like, oh my gosh, have you seen Enlightened? You haven't seen anything until you've seen Enlightened. To call it an office dramedy sounds too reductive, almost, because the show really blossoms and blooms in so many really emotional ways.
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Episode 7: The Mike White-iverse
Laura Dern plays this woman who's just teetering on the edge of a breakdown, and she comes back to work after a breakdown. And you see her trying to build new friendships, trying to make her life feel as big on the outside as it does maybe to her internally.
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Episode 7: The Mike White-iverse
There's one really incredible scene where Laura Dern has this whole monologue about how she has this renewed sense of empathy for her mother because she acknowledges that her mother was also once a child and that she has to kind of mother both of them in this very prickly, difficult dynamic between the two of them.
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Episode 7: The Mike White-iverse
And the fact that Mike White was able to capture that so personally and also so viscerally, like the rage of like, why can't you be the mother I wanted you to be? But also, I'm not the daughter that you wanted probably either. I mean, really, it's like some of the best writing on television I've seen ever.
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Episode 7: The Mike White-iverse
Between Enlightened and The White Lotus, you can just see how specific the vision is across any kind of setting. Enlightened kind of feels very far from White Lotus, and yet they both feel like they're made from the same specific brain. That is, you know, the mark of someone who I think is, like, really good at what they do.