How Natasha Rothwell helped Belinda get her groove back in ‘The White Lotus’ Season 3
Most fans of The White Lotus believe we’ll see Natasha Rothwell’s Belinda again. But if the character’s Season 3 exit sailing off into the Thai sunset with her son, Zion (Nicholas Duvernay), $5 million richer is the last we see of the spa manager, it’s a well-deserved happy ending for both the fan favorite and the actress who plays her.
Rothwell earned an Emmy nomination for the HBO series' first season, which ended with the death of Hawaii-based Belinda’s dream to open her own spa after investor Tanya (Jennifer Coolidge) pulled out. Rothwell watched Sicily-set Season 2 as a fan, and knew that Tanya had died trying to escape a hit orchestrated by her husband, Greg (Jon Gries). When she binged creator Mike White’s scripts for Season 3, and read that Belinda’s exchange program was complicated by her recognizing resort restaurant patron "Gary" as Greg, Rothwell couldn't help but think of that famous line from Ghost: "Molly, you in danger, girl."
"By the time it's like he knows she knows that he knows she knows, I couldn't read fast enough," she tells Gold Derby.
It was always scripted that Greg would ultimately invite Belinda and Zion to his home to discuss buying her silence on his whereabouts, and that Zion would steer the conversation. But Rothwell, who worked with White on developing Belinda in both her seasons, made a request: "I was just like, 'I really want her to have some agency. I want to see her take control of her fate, even if it is not the best decision but it's the best decision in the moment,'" she says. "I just pitch ideas, and Mike spins gold."
SEE Filming The White Lotus terrified Sam Nivola more than once
Zion still got to show off his future MBA, but now he surprised his mother by upping their planned counteroffer to $5 million. "That’s why you have her choking on her scotch, being like, 'What the f--k?'" Rothwell says. The audience — and Zion — believe moral Belinda leaves the negotiating cocktail table in a crisis of conscience. When Zion chases after her, however, she tells him exactly how to use her staged outburst to go back in and close the deal.
"This happened in the moment for me as character motivation: We see Belinda watching Greg. I'm watching Jon Gries, who's just a phenomenal actor and a brilliant person, and he flinches when Zion says, 'Five,' and I kind of realize, 'Oh, I have him against the ropes.' In that moment is when Belinda's like, 'I'm gonna storm out and we're going to really play this up,'" Rothwell says. "So between myself and Mike and all of the actors in that scene, [we’re] really able to give Belinda the agency, give Zion that youthful indiscretion, and also surprise Greg at the same time."
Rothwell also talked with White about her experiences traveling and suggested Belinda share a moment with a Black couple at the resort. "We shot a longer scene with the couple in the first episode, and I really do think it was brilliant for Mike to trim it [to a wave and nod at dinner], because that look is so often what the moment is," she says. "As someone who travels, you don't really sit down and have conversations with other Black people that you see in other homogenous spaces where you feel sort of on the outside. You kind of look and you're like, 'You good?' 'Yeah. You good?' It's like this visual conversation."
White encourages improvisation, and Rothwell notes Belinda’s expletive-filled reaction to her Thai host Pornchai (Dom Hetrakul) finding a monitor lizard in her room in Episode 5 was all her. The sex scene that followed was obviously scripted. "For the first time in her life, she's allowing herself to receive joy and not just be the giver of it," she says of the wellness provider and single parent. "So to receive from Pornchai professionally learning new things, and someone who really sees her and loves what she loves and wants to learn like she wants to learn — there's something really erotic about being seen so fully." That said, the actress, a multihyphenate writer-producer in her own right with Hulu’s hidden gem How to Die Alone and Issa Rae's Insecure, reminded White that Belinda had probably been out of the game for a minute, so the seduction couldn’t be smooth.
"I leaned into my own neuroses of just, like, every time is the first time," she explains. "So Belinda has to figure out, how does she communicate her needs? This is someone who bites her tongue for a living at work — how does she say she wants him? It has to be clumsy." The former Saturday Night Live scribe ad-libbed the line, "But just so you know, this is consent. … Do you guys do that here? We just started…"
Rothwell is well aware that some fans consider Belinda leaving Pornchai behind rather than taking him with her to launch a spa elsewhere not unlike what Tanya did to Belinda in Season 1. "I understand on the surface they look pretty similar in terms of two people choosing themselves over someone else," she says. "[But Belinda] did not promise something that she didn't keep, whereas Tanya did. Tanya promised Belinda the world and just snatched it away. And I think the devastation of Season 1 is Tanya ignited this dream in Belinda, and it seemed cruel. But I do think there's culpability on Belinda's part [in] Season 1. She completely outsourced her happiness to Tanya, and that's a dangerous thing to do. In Season 3, Belinda never promised Pornchai anything. She was just like, 'Yeah, let's think about it. Let's talk.' It wasn't a no, but it certainly wasn't a yes in the way it was Season 1. And so when audiences try to make the apples to apples comparison, I'm like, let's pump the brakes a little bit. [Laughs] Tanya was a little bit more villainous than Belinda in this moment."
To be clear, Rothwell is proud of Belinda’s decision. "To choose yourself is a hard thing to do. I'm in therapy for 20 plus years, and it's still something that it's a practice — you have to remember every day, you have agency, you have choice, and it's OK to put your needs first. And I feel like Belinda has never chosen herself before," she says. "So to me, it's actually this powerful moment of showing that you don't owe anything to anyone in that respect. You have to take care of yourself first. You have to put your oxygen mask on first. And I see her doing that in this moment."
We know that Belinda now intends to get as far away from Greg as possible. For what it’s worth, Rothwell thinks a winterscape White Lotus would be beautiful, but she can’t imagine White choosing to spend seven months in the cold. "I can't imagine that he would be like, 'Let's go to Norway!' and him in a parka. I don't even think I've ever seen him wear a coat, frankly," she says. "There's so many places in the world that the show can take us. I think the continent of Africa would be incredible, Morocco, Egypt, South Africa, Ethiopia, any of the amazing countries there could be really cool. The show speaks so much to the insidiousness of class, and I feel like that would be such a really great petri dish to explore that."