1 week Ago By Ethan Shanfeld
SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers for Season 3 finale of “ The White Lotus ,” now streaming on Max. When Mike White called him, asking if he’d return to “The White Lotus” for a third season in Thailand, Jon Gries said, “I’m available anytime, anywhere. You name it, I’m there.
” But unlike his trips to Hawaii and Sicily, Gries’ involvement in Season 3 required an extreme level of secrecy. At the start of production, he flew to Thailand disguised in a hat, dark sunglasses and a COVID mask, and made it to set undetected. But that was only the beginning.
“When I finally got to Thailand, the first thing I wanted to do was meet my castmates,” Gries tells Variety . “Everybody likes to feel each other out, because we’re all in this thing together.” He’d get invited to hang out with the cast and crew before executive producer David Bernad would call: “I’m so sorry, Jon, but you can’t go.
” “I ended up staying in my room a lot,” Gries says. Initially, White wanted to hide Gries from even the cast of “The White Lotus,” but he soon realized, between wardrobe fittings and makeup, that Gries was bound to cross paths with the other actors. “In the beginning, they were toying with the idea of keeping me an utter secret, like in solitary confinement,” the actor says.
Gries was ultimately allowed to socialize with the rest of the ensemble, but the series’ tight-lipped approach to his character’s return paid off. When Greg is revealed as “Gary” in the Season 3 opener, it came as a shock to viewers, who thought they’d seen the last of Tanya McQuoid’s murderous spouse. Flash forward to the finale, Greg is in a tense conversation with another “White Lotus” alum, Belinda (Natasha Rothwell).
She knows he had something to do with Tanya’s death and serves as a reminder that Greg’s tranquil life in Thailand — where he rides his yacht and swims laps in a hillside mansion courtesy of his ex’s fortune — could be taken away at any minute. In the penultimate episode of the season, Greg offered Belinda $100,000 in exchange for her silence, saying she could use the money to fulfill her dream of opening her own spa, which is what Tanya would have wanted. (Aww?) Belinda has moral qualms about accepting this deal, but with the help of her son Zion (Nicholas Duvernay), she returns to Greg with a counteroffer: $5 million.
Greg eventually acquiesces, and the two characters vow to disappear from each other’s lives forever. Below, Gries discusses his third go-around at “The White Lotus,” and whether Greg’s is a happy ending. He also makes sense of his character’s cuckold fantasy and details what might have happened if Belinda came back to the negotiating table alone.
You fell into the Mike White trap. No. As anyone would, I read the character and thought, he’s got to be too good to be true.
When is the other shoe going to drop? But then I thought, maybe he is the real deal. That he’s sincere in his plight. The doctor says he’s done at any minute, and he’s just living life like water off a duck’s back.
At that point, there was no legacy with the show. We had no idea what was going to come next, so I said to Mike, “I don’t have any tricks up my sleeves here. I’m just playing this straight as a gun.
” And he said OK. There was a day where we all went out on a boat and then stopped at a local sandwich place on the way back, in Phuket. An Australian guy walked up to me and said, “I know you, you’re from ‘The White Lotus.
’ And I know they’re filming here.” Of course, he didn’t recognize any of the other people, even though they were the cast. I just said, “Yeah, they’re here.
I’m visiting. What a perfect time to visit people I know who are working here!” I really sold it without missing a beat. He said, “I have a golf company, you should come visit.
” And I said, “I’m only here for a week, I’m just going to stick it out where I am.” I had friends reaching out to me saying, “I can’t believe you lied to me.” That happened throughout the whole run of the show, because some people don’t watch when it airs.
They binge later, which is too bad for them. I think binge-watching “The White Lotus” is cheating yourself. The environment played a big role.
The original start date was planned earlier, and the season would have been much easier to work in. But because of the actors strike, we didn’t start until March and April, with April being the hottest month in Thailand. The locals said, “It’s never been this hot.
” It felt like an environmental emergency. The water of the ocean was ridiculously hot, like a bathtub. There was no relief.
It was really intense. There was a lot of illness. I was lucky I didn’t get food poisoning, but I don’t eat meat.
Normally, that’s going to get you before a vegetable. There’s this illusion that whatever happens in Thailand stays in Thailand. There are a lot of expats and people whose stories aren’t really told.
It’s a tacit agreement that nobody inquires. Greg finds comfort with that — he feels like nobody’s going to bother him there. There are too many people who are flying off the grid and under the radar.
An interesting story happened to me years ago, and I used it to justify how this went down. I was offered a job in an independent film company. And the person who was bankrolling the whole thing really bamboozled these producers into thinking he had incredible wealth.
One night they picked me up in a limousine and said, “We want to offer you a job.” He offered me $75,000, and I started laughing. I called the other producers and said, “I don’t think this guy knows what he’s doing.
I don’t think he’s real. He really felt like $75,000 was a lot of money.” This guy was a con man, and he didn’t understand the value of money.
I think that’s how Greg/Gary is. Even though he’s bought himself this ridiculously ostentatious home and yacht and God knows what else, his idea of handing out money — he’s still the rural, suburban guy he grew up as. I believe he weighed his options, and he took Zion at his word: “We go away.
” And he figured, in the long run, it’s no problem when you have that kind of money. I wrote a whole thing about why he would do it, which involves maybe alleviating some of his guilt about Tanya by doing something in her honor. I did.
I have the script in my binder, and I flip the pages over and write stories. I write stories about Greg’s past, about how he meets Chloe, about how he views people in general. He’s a bit of a misanthrope.
He doesn’t want to engage with anybody. He’s a bit of a prisoner in an interesting way, because he doesn’t trust anybody. Chloe is a perfect sidekick because she’s savvy, and she can play a hard game.
And she’s beautiful and sexy, so that fulfills a very visceral desire. I don’t believe Greg would have told her about Tanya, other than that she passed away and he came into the money. He might fabricate that he was involved in helping build her wealth.
He also may have fabricated — if not told truthful — stories about things he’s done in the past in order to test her, to see if it shocks her or if she can roll with it. For the first year, I imagined that Greg was auditioning Chloe. She’s definitely a femme fatale in her own way.
I think she may have considered being an escort and may have been a hostess at some of these places. I had a friend who once worked at a Korean hostess bar. They don’t do [sexual] stuff, but if one were to offer the right money, then maybe one would do something.
The agreement is written in stone that it’s a “hands off” type of place, but the woman I know who worked there said a lot of agreements were made off the book. In my mind, that’s where I saw Chloe existing. It helped a lot.
As they say, it’s not so much what your character says, it’s what other people say about your character that informs who that person is. I recognized that Greg has no interest in having friendships. Everything was on a contract basis, as it was easier to have control of those relationships, as opposed to being beholden out of love or loyalty, or any of those things.
He’s living a detached life. Mike White is so brilliant. There’s also the scene where Chloe comes back from the Full Moon Party and tries to lie to me [about sleeping with the brothers], which is so stupid because I have a crew that’s running the boat.
Obviously they told me everything that was going on, I assume. Greg crosses every “T” and dots every “I” in that regard. So, he decides to change gears and say, “Have him over.
I want him over.” At the same time, he’s also saying, “I need you to help me with something, because I’ve got Plan A, and if that doesn’t work I’ve got Plan B.” The complication is Zion.
Had Belinda come alone and refused the $100,000, there’s no telling what might have happened. I don’t think he would have gone that far, but he might have put some pressure on her to leave. He could have scared her.
I didn’t know when I came into Season 3 if I was going to be the one to die. As I read the episodes, I started to feel like I was maybe the one to kill someone, because there’s a lot more implied with Greg than spoken. But I try not to guess too much.
For Greg, it’s a bit of “Welcome to the club!” This is what happens. It’s a commentary on the individuality that one buys when they have a larger bank account. They can extract themselves from the commiseration that is the regular populace.
I think everything I was supposed to do in Episode 8 was there. I don’t know if there’s ever going to be a resolution. When Greg is telling Belinda that he loves Thailand and wants to die there, I think that’s a bit of a story, to make it all sound so picturesque.
This guy can’t sit still. I have no clue. What is it they say about being the greatest hockey player in the world? You have to know where the puck is going before it goes there.
I’m no hockey player. I can’t even imagine going into the incredible mind of Mike White. This interview has been edited and condensed.
See Variety ‘s coverage of “The White Lotus” finale, including a recap, cast interviews and a review, here ..
