‘The White Lotus’ new season tackles our wellness obsession

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Digital detoxes, meditation, Buddhist philosophy and other antidotes to contemporary life have entered “The White Lotus." In the third iteration of the HBO anthology created by Mike White, wealthy vacationers don’t just want a lavish holiday. They want to heal their souls.

For them, that means heading East. At their service is the staff at a luxury wellness resort in Thailand, who offer them a hodgepodge of treatments, not entirely traditional—think sensory deprivation tanks and a machine that collects biometric data. The season, which premiered in February, befits the moment.

As wellness culture with all its facets has escalated into a movement that’s gone as far as Washington, D.C., the series investigates what it takes to heal a collective spiritual malaise. But it doesn’t provide easy answers. “The wellness industrial complex needs us to be sick in order to continue," said Natasha Rothwell, who plays spa manager Belinda.

“So what Mike shows is some really sick individuals, spiritually seeking something to fix it. And the gag is: You gotta fix yourself." The actors became wellness coaches in their own right—and pampered themselves plenty for the job. To embody healers, some actors studied Eastern therapies.

Rothwell visited Thai spas and got a massage in which her soul left her body, she said. Much like her character, who is on an exchange program at the resort to improve her craft, Rothwell asked real-life massage therapists their own tools of the trade. “There’s so much of the client that you take on as a masseuse emotionally," she recalled discussing with a spa worker.