With the third season of HBO's "The White Lotus" now wrapped, creator Mike White is speaking out about the show's Emmy-winning composer stepping away from the series.
Cristóbal Tapia de Veer told The New York Times last week that he would not return for the HBO drama's fourth season, saying, "We already had our last fight forever."
But on Tuesday, White told Howard Stern that he was not aware of any feud
"I honestly don't know what happened, except now I'm reading his interviews because he decides to do some PR campaign about him leaving the show," White said, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
"I don't think he respected me," he continued. "He wants people to know that he's edgy and dark and I'm, I don't know, like I watch reality TV. We never really even fought. He says we feuded. I don't think I ever had a fight with him."
White said that what may have sparked the ordeal were emails he sent the composer with some notes.
"I don't think he liked to go through the process of getting notes from me, or wanting revisions, because he didn't respect me," White said. "I knew he wasn't a team player and that he wanted to do it his way. I was known that he would go to The New York Times to [expletive] on me and the show three days before the finale. It was kind of a [expletive] move."
White also revealed that he faced creative challenges working with composer de Veer during the show's first two seasons.
"By the time the third season came around, he'd won Emmys and he had his song go viral, he didn't want to go through the process with me, he didn't want to go to sessions," White said. "He would always look at me with this contemptuous smirk on his face like he thought I was a chimp or something … he's definitely making a big deal out of a creative difference."
In his interview with The New York Times, de Veer said that White felt he was "always unprofessional to him, because he "didn't give him what he wanted."
"But what I gave him did this, you know — [won] those Emmys, people going crazy [for the show] … That is the main thing that I'm most happy about — it was worth all the tension and almost forcing the music into the show, in a way, because I didn't have that many allies in there … This was a good struggle," he said.
Zoe Papadakis ✉
Zoe Papadakis is a Newsmax writer based in South Africa with two decades of experience specializing in media and entertainment. She has been in the news industry as a reporter, writer and editor for newspapers, magazine and websites.
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