SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers for Season 3, Episode 4 of “The White Lotus,” now streaming on Max.
For Charlotte Le Bon, playing Chloe in the third season of “The White Lotus” meant tapping into the character’s blunt, wholly assertive disposition. Chloe, the quick-witted French Canadian who’s been living in Thailand with her much older boyfriend Gary a.k.a Greg (Jon Gries), tells it like it is.
“She’s really that bitch, which is really fun to play because I’m not like that at all in real life,” Le Bon says.
Courtesy of Stefano Delia/HBO
In the fourth episode, Chloe welcomes several of the main White Lotus vacationers onto Gary’s yacht. New dynamics form, such as the group of four partiers: Chloe and Chelsea (Aimee Lou Wood), and brothers Saxon (Patrick Schwarzenegger) and Lochlan (Sam Nivola). Flash encounters between characters who are otherwise in separate storylines, like Chloe and the boys’ mother, Victoria (Parker Posey), provide insight into how each person moves through the world. Chloe also seems to want to get out of her boyfriend’s grasp for a bit, and Gary (who viewers will recognize as Greg, the suspicious, murderous husband of Jennifer Coolidge’s Tanya McQuoid in the earlier seasons) reluctantly agrees.
Chloe’s time on the yacht were the first scenes Le Bon filmed, after getting to Thailand through an extremely quick audition process that involved a self-tape and hopping on a plane about 10 days later.
Le Bon spoke with Variety over Zoom in Paris about being on the yacht (which was as sweltering as a “sauna”), why Chloe is getting closer with the brothers — and what she thinks is going on in Chloe and Gary’s relationship.
What was it like filming on the yacht and establishing a rapport with the rest of the cast?
My first scenes were on the yacht, so I was obviously really stressed out in the beginning. But this cast was particularly warm and generous, and just so gentle. It’s really rare that you feel like that with people. And I really feel like I’ve made some friends on that set.
The yacht — it was so hot. It was the hottest I’ve ever been in my life, definitely — even the locals were suffering. We would leave the hotel, go to the port, and that would probably be a 35-minute ride, and then we would take a speed boat, and then we would have to do a 40-minute speed boat on waves going like this [motions choppy waves]. We were taking nausea pills, and then going on the boat.
And because Ben Kutchins, who’s such a talented DP, was so precise with what he wanted in the background, he kept turning the boat all the time in order to have some specific islands in the background. So it was the most nauseous thing ever. It was 50 degrees [Celsius]. But fortunately, there was some little space inside the boat, and there was some AC in it.
Courtesy of Stefano Delia/HBO
Why does Chloe invite the entire Ratliff family to the yacht?
Because she’s just an attention whore. She’s a show off; she’s a bit cocky. What I like about the scene where she meets Patrick Schwarzenegger and she’s like, “I hear you’re a douche” — I think she’s a douche as well. And she just likes to show off her things and show off how rich she is, even though it’s possibly not her money, and just to put some fabulous outfit and just act as if everything is completely normal.
How was it filming the interaction between Chloe and Victoria? Victoria mocks her afterwards and says, “Miss Congeniality.”
That was the first scene I shot, and the “Miss Congeniality” wasn’t written. It’s just Mike White’s talent to be able to sometimes just pick up some stuff in the scene that he didn’t think about, or he just get inspired by a dynamic. I remember when we first shot the scene, I was trying to be nice with everyone, and acknowledging everyone and Parker’s character as well. And he was like, “Can you just ignore her?” And then I ignore her, and he loved it. And then he was like, “Can you just be like a little bit of a bitch to her?” He just finds those dynamics so fun.
There’s some competition between women — you definitely see that in the dynamic between the three girls in the season. I think he’s just really inspired by all our human bullshit. He’s almost like a sociologist for me.
On the yacht, we see the group of four — Chloe, Chelsea, Saxon and Lochlan — forming. Why is Chloe drawn to hanging out with the brothers?
Because they’re young, sexy blood in her head. She sees an opportunity to seduce and have fun, and they’re young, and they’re completely different from Gary. As she said before, she’s been there for a year with Gary, and she’s really bored with him. Maybe she thinks that they’re not that smart, and that she can manipulate them and maybe do whatever she wants with them, not with Chelsea, but more with the boys. Because I really think there’s a sincere friendship going on between Chloe and Chelsea.
Courtesy of Fabio Lovino/HBO
What is Chloe getting out of this new friendship with Chelsea, who has a parallel relationship with her own older boyfriend?
They’re polar opposites, and that’s probably why she’s really attracted to her. Because Chelsea is really sensitive and gentle. It feels like she’s a very vulnerable young woman, and Chloe probably has that in her, but she just built that huge fence around it. And I think she’s also attracted to that in Chelsea, and Chelsea for the same reason is attracted to Chloe’s boldness.
There’s an interesting conversation between Chloe and Gary when she asks him if she can take the boat without him and just with the friends. Is Chloe in any way scared of what his reaction might be, or does she know that she’s got him wrapped around her finger?
I think it’s a mix. I think she’s kind of walking on egg shells a little bit with him. Maybe there’s a part of her that is kind of scared, but I think that probably excites her. I think she likes being scared. She likes to play with fire, and she knows that what she’s asking is really bold and not really subtle, but she still [goes] for it, but that’s just their deal. He’s older, and he just can’t keep up with her. If he would try to imprison her, she would probably just go crazy and leave. So that’s probably the only way to keep her is just to let her free, which is a beautiful definition of love.
She does say “I love you” to him.
It’s really sincere.
Do you think there’s actual affection there?
Yes, I think there’s definitely affection.
What do you think her motivation is in dating Gary, long term? Does she have an end goal for where she wants the relationship to go?
I don’t think she really thinks long term. She’s just right in the moment. I don’t think she has a plan, and that’s why she’s a little bit lost, because she probably doesn’t really know what her true desires are.
Courtesy of Fabio Lovino/HBO
Do you think Chloe is aware that people might perceive her to be a sex worker, which Rick (Walton Goggins) suggests in the second episode?
Yeah, probably, but she really doesn’t care about that. I think she just likes when people talk about her. She doesn’t really care. And what I really like about her character, too, is that she really speaks her mind. There’s some episodes later on where she just faces Saxon for some things that he did, and she just tells the truth, and I like that. She really doesn’t give a shit!
Chloe says to Chelsea in the season premiere that the bald white guys in Thailand are LBHs — “losers back home.” How does her awareness of the social dynamics among expats in Thailand help her navigate her life there?
There’s still an arrogance to it. Even though she’s an expat and even though she talks about the LBHs, there’s still such an arrogance to it. I think she still thinks that she’s maybe above that, but she’s definitely part of them.
Chloe mentions in Episode 3 that Gary’s ex-wife committed suicide. Does she suspect something sinister behind his wife’s death? How much does she know about his past?
It’s complicated, because that’s a conversation I had with Mike, and I think we had different opinions on it. For Mike, she’s not aware of what happened. For me, I was playing something that was right in the middle where it could be true that she doesn’t know what happened, but I was kind of excited to play something where she knew everything, and that they were kind of a team. Even if he didn’t tell her the truth, I don’t think she buys that story. I think she’s a smart girl, so she probably doesn’t buy it, but she just likes telling the story because it’s a creepy story, and it attracts attention.
When Belinda comes up to them at dinner and asks Gary if they met in Hawaii, is Chloe skeptical about Gary’s response?
I think she’s skeptical of both of them. That’s the thing. Like she says in one of the scenes, he never talks about her, about his ex-wife. So the second this woman comes and she talks about Tanya McQuoid, it’s very unusual. Maybe, in part, she’s skeptical, she’s maybe a tiny jealous — because we’re talking about another woman that shared his life. And also, it’s either he’d never talked about Hawaii, and she thinks it’s really weird that this woman comes up and talks about Hawaii, or she knows everything and she’s scared that this woman brings this information up.
In the same episode, Gary notices Chloe and Saxon looking at each other at dinner. How does she feel about Gary’s judgment in that moment?
Usually she would probably say that she’s not interested about other men, and that the age difference doesn’t matter to her, and that she’s really happy with that and that she’s not interested in young men in general because they’re boring to her, and they don’t have a lot of mystery. They don’t have the density, like depth. So I think the second he sees that, it says quite the opposite. She’s just getting caught doing something that she shouldn’t, or she wasn’t subtle enough about it.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
