Somehow, the spiciest thing to come out of season three of The White Lotus isn’t the brother-on-brother wank — it’s the beef between creator Mike White and composer Cristóbal Tapia de Veer. After his interview with the New York Times revealed he wouldn’t be returning for a fourth season, Tapia de Veer set off a public back-and-forth feud with White, who called him dishing about the drama “a bitch move.” Now, the composer is talking to the press yet again about their tiff and is dragging HBO’s budget into it. Will it ever end?
The composer doesn’t seem to think so. “All of a sudden I’m in this Selena Gomez kind of world where I got TMZ running after me for a comment, and then the New York Times,” Tapia de Veer told The Ankler. The feud getting so much attention is “obviously not fun for so many reasons,” he said, adding that “Mike White doesn’t truly appreciate a situation that what I gave him is truly a gift to him. So it’s a very dark thing, you know.”
During the interview he also made sure to point out that out of the 15 Emmys the show has received, three of them are his. “And these songs are major hits, like ‘Renaissance’ is like going around the world with Tiësto and all that. Do you know how much Pepsi pays for something like that? HBO, their fucking broke-ass,” he continued. “I get paid like 50 times more for something like that [for a brand], and it takes me one day, and I spend eight or 10 months on the show. So all of this stuff, these are all really dark thoughts. And I just want to not have to think about that.”
I’m sure White doesn’t want to have to think about this either. While he hasn’t responded to the new comments just yet, I’m sure he has something to say. In the meantime, I’ll be waiting with my popcorn.
