The White Lotus Season 4: Cast, Location And Everything Else We Know So Far

Since the third iteration of The White Lotus wrapped up more than a year ago, speculation has been rife about what what new collection of eccentrics and property porn showrunner Mike White’s brain will concoct for us in the follow-up.

One of the many thrills of Emmy-winning show is its ever-rotating cast and location – with season four arguably set to pack in more stars and luxury settings than ever before.

Fortunately for White Lotus fans, we’re now one step closer to checking back into TV’s most chaotic resort, with filming now underway on season four.

As fans wait patiently for the next instalments, here’s everything we know abut the new season, from cast members to shooting locations…

When will The White Lotus season 4 be released?

For the time being, exact details about when we should expect to see The White Lotus back on our screens are being kept under wraps.

However, with production beginning in mid-April, it’s a fair bet that we can expect the next season of the sun-drenched hit show to debut in 2027.

Where will the next season of The White Lotus be set?

Season four will take us back to Europe after previous seasons in Thailand, Italy and Hawaii, with The White Lotus opening its doors in France this time around.

And with shooting taking place across the French riviera and Paris, it sounds like we’re in for a characteristically luxurious experience.

For the first time, the story will be set across two different White Lotus resorts, with the Airelles Château de la Messardière serving as the White Lotus du Cap, and the Hôtel Martinez being transformed into the White Lotus Cannes.

Shooting is also due to take place in the French capital, but HBO has specified that these scenes will still be set in the south of France, even if that’s not where they’re filmed.

The Château de La Messardière hotel is a rumoured filming location in the next season of The White Lotus
The Château de La Messardière hotel is a rumoured filming location in the next season of The White Lotus

JARRY via Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images

What will season 4 of The White Lotus be about?

So far, creators are staying tight-lipped on exactly what the next storylines will entail.

In the early stages of planning the new season, Variety cited a combination of sources and alluded to filming dates that indicate we could see the Cannes Film Festival work its way into the plot.

HBO later confirmed this to be the case in an official press release, which teased: “The fourth season will follow a new group of White Lotus hotel guests and employees over the span of a week, taking place during the Cannes Film Festival.”

The Cannes Film Festival is rumoured to be a plot point in the next season of The White Lotus
The Cannes Film Festival is rumoured to be a plot point in the next season of The White Lotus

via Associated Press

Season three saw the conclusion of the plot that straddled all series of the show, surrounding Jennifer Coolidge’s Tanya and her eventual demise, so we can presume that that’s now totally done and dusted, and we’re in for a completely fresh storyline.

Having said that, the show has a penchant for bringing back old characters, and with Natasha Rothwell’s Belinda setting off to start a new life at the end of season three, there’s always the possibility that we could see a return from other familiar faces in the next run.

Which actors are in the White Lotus season 4 cast?

The good news is, we have a hefty list of cast members confirmed to be on the call sheet in the White Lotus’ next outing.

Charlie Hall, Helena Bonham Carter and Steve Coogan are all set to appear in the new season of The White Lotus
Charlie Hall, Helena Bonham Carter and Steve Coogan are all set to appear in the new season of The White Lotus

Evan Agostini/Jordan Strauss/Vianney Le Caer/Invision/AP

Among them are well-known faces like Helena Bonham Carter, Steve Coogan, Vincent Cassel, Ari Graynor, Sandra Bernhard, Chris Messina, AJ Michalka (aka one half of musical duo Aly & AJ) and Alexander Ludwig.

The likes of Caleb Jonte Edwards, Corentin Fila, Nadia Tereszkiewicz, Dylan Ennis and Marissa Long will also be checking in.

Meanwhile, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Brad Hall’s son Charlie Hall, previously seen in The Sex Life Of College Girls, will take the “nepo baby” baton from last season’s Patrick Schwarzenegger and Sam Nivola when he joins the cast.

It was later announced that Kumail Nanjiani would be joining the line-up, along with New Girl actor Max Greenfield, Marvel star Chloe Bennet and Jarrad Paul.

Kumail Nanjiani, Sandra Bernhard and Max Greenfield are more recent additions to the White Lotus cast
Kumail Nanjiani, Sandra Bernhard and Max Greenfield are more recent additions to the White Lotus cast

Richard Shotwell/Evan Agostini/Invision/AP

Following this, Deadline revealed that established US names Rosie Perez, Heather Graham and Ben Schnetzer had also joined the cast, alongside European performers Tobias Santelmann, Frida Gustavsson and Laura Smet.

And, of course, there’s also the possibility that we’ll see some unexpected guest stars later down the line, as was the case during last season’s surprise appearance from Sam Rockwell.

What have the creators of The White Lotus said about season 4?

While White Lotus creator Mike White is keeping his cards pretty close to his chest for the time being, he dropped a few season four tidbits in a recent interview with W Magazine.

He spoke about shooting his latest stint on the reality show Survivor six months before kicking off his White Lotus prep, explaining: “I came up with the concept of the show and the characters while I was there. But I don’t know if the experience itself really influenced it.”

Mike explained that the experience of returning from Survivor, and seeing the social media of people who he’d bonded with on the show, shaped his thinking for the series.

The White Lotus returns for its fourth season next year
The White Lotus returns for its fourth season next year

Fabio Lovino/HBO

“I don’t know if that’s exactly the theme of the next season of White Lotus, but it’s definitely something I’ve thought about a lot – prioritising likes or the attention of strangers over creating real relationships,” he noted.

Pressed on what the new season will be about, the creator said “it’s a bit about fame, about who has the world’s attention, who is the plus-one, and how that can organise a relationship”.

“Some people are satisfied with the love of just an intimate partner, and some people need the love of strangers and a bigger kind of attention,” he elaborated.

The White Lotus creator Mike White
The White Lotus creator Mike White

via Associated Press

And after the high melodrama of guns, blood and parables we saw in season three, last year Mike said he was keen to return to themes more aligned with season one in an interview for the official White Lotus podcast.

“Maybe something a little bit back to the first season where it’s satirising stuff that I know about,” he pondered.

“Art and criticism and movies and fame and celebrity and a film festival type of thing, or like an art world sort of situation. It just feels like that would be some kind of new theme to get into that’s maybe a little less heady than what we just did, but still have some juice to it.”

The first three seasons of The White Lotus are available to stream on Sky and Now in the UK.

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I Lost My Daughter To Cancer. 4 Well-Meaning Words Left Me Feeling More Alone In My Grief

When we hear about the death of a child or young adult, we are unsettled, unmoored. Such deaths are out of the natural order. And if it could happen to your child, it could happen to mine. Life is never safe once you have children.

When my daughter died of cancer at age 40, some people remained silent, distancing themselves, as if the death of a child might be bad luck, contagious. Other well-intentioned people hesitated, retreated, reaching for a safe landing.

“There are no words.”

“Your loss is unimaginable.”

“I can’t imagine what you are going through.”

Why is it so easy to find words for joyous occasions – births, graduations, weddings – yet we lose language when seeking words to console and comfort the bereaved? Death humbles us, revealing the empty spaces in language.

I understand. I do. My daughter’s death left me without words. It is incomprehensible to lose a child. Grief isn’t one emotion; it is a tsunami of sadness, anger, shock, pain, helplessness and deep yearning. Perhaps reaching for the shorthand, “There are no words,” is an easier way to say: There will never be words large enough to express this sadness.

After Alex died, I fell into many empty spaces in language, especially the space where I had no name for myself, a parent who has lost her child. Names exist for a child who has lost a parent (orphan), or for a woman who loses her partner (widow), but what do we call an orphaned parent?

Recently, though, I stumbled upon vilomah – a Sanskrit word that means “against the natural order.” The word vilomah embraces the primal injustice of outliving one’s child, inverting the generational order, an upside-down world. Parents expect to predecease their children, not bury them. To be a vilomah is to become an unwanted messenger from a distant point of human existence.

Bereaved parents – vilomahs – aren’t surprised when we learn the word bereavement has its roots in Old English, meaning to deprive, rob, take away. The future tense has been rearranged: Our children have been deprived of their hopes and dreams – their future – and we, their parents, are robbed of our future with them.

The author (right) with her daughter Alex at a family party.

Photo Courtesy Of Nancy Sommers

The author (right) with her daughter Alex at a family party.

But placeholders such as “there are no words” close off conversations when they most need to begin, forcing a parent who has lost so much to find words to comfort the speaker. Bereaved parents need their friends and families to be safekeepers, using specific words to describe our beautiful children, reminding us that our children live on in their memories.

I needed words of comfort to bring her back – stories about her light and love, her acts of kindness and courage. I needed to hear people say her name – Alex – and surround me with words of love.

Here’s what I want to say to everyone: be brave. There are no perfect words to comfort the bereaved, no comfortable words for something so uncomfortable. You can’t fix my loss, but you can hold in your hearts everything about Alex that made her specific and human – her love for birthdays and balloons, pandas and popsicles, dresses with pockets, Japanese art and fashion design, running marathons and then ultramarathons, making everything look so easy.

You can reminisce joyfully about photos of Alex at the finish line of her 100-mile runs, beaming with a thumbs-up, or about the ways in which she celebrated life’s small pleasures and brought family along for the celebration. Her beautiful curls and welcoming smile that felt like a hug, or the big-hearted gifts she gave – she was a spectacular gift-giver.

Or her love for s’mores and ice cream cake, sushi and dumplings, for growing dahlias and daisies, for the multitudes she contained. These loving, specific words capture the light Alex carried, the vividness with which she lived her life.

When someone says, “There are no words,” I hear “That’s all there is to say,” and when they say, “Your loss is unimaginable,” I hear “I will not try to imagine your loss.” These expressions allow speakers to retreat, staying emotionally adjacent to the bereaved parent’s loss, leaving us isolated, sealed off, deprived of moments of true connection.

When friends and family tell an Alex story or ask for one, they open the uncomfortable spaces in language and let my daughter live on in words.

Bereaved parents live with the geography of our grief, becoming familiar with its peaks and valleys, its edges. Our grief doesn’t disappear; its tail is long. No worries if you didn’t bring the casserole or cannoli; there is plenty of time to offer comfort to a bereaved parent and honour a child’s memory.

I am grateful to the many friends who continue to lift up Alex’s name and carry grief with me – like the neighbour who cooked Alex’s favourite dumplings each month for an entire year, leaving them on our front porch with a simple one-word note reading “love”. For the friends who plant dahlias to honour Alex, or wear dresses with pockets remembering her, and the friends who are listening presences, lingering in the backyard to talk about Alex.

And I am always grateful to the wonderful friends and family who put April 2, Alex’s birthday, and July 15, the day she died, on their calendars, knowing these are both rough days for me and important days to honour Alex’s memory.

A Jewish proverb reminds us of why we need to try to fill the empty spaces in language: “One dies twice – the first time when a body stops breathing; the second time when a name is no longer spoken.”

To a bereaved parent, silence feels like forgetting. Whenever someone speaks the name of my beloved child and asks about her, her life story is kept alive.

If you know a bereaved parent, reach out with loving words and gestures, show up and help carry their grief – and do it again. And again. Become safekeepers of memory – tell a story; ask for a story. Help a bereaved parent find the spaces where their beloved child continues to live.

There are always words.

Do you have a compelling personal story you’d like to see published on HuffPost? Find out what we’re looking for here and send us a pitch at pitch@huffpost.com.

Help and support:

  • Mind, open Monday to Friday, 9am-6pm on 0300 123 3393.
  • Samaritans offers a listening service which is open 24 hours a day, on 116 123 (UK and ROI – this number is FREE to call and will not appear on your phone bill).
  • CALM (the Campaign Against Living Miserably) offer a helpline open 5pm-midnight, 365 days a year, on 0800 58 58 58, and a webchat service.
  • The Mix is a free support service for people under 25. Call 0808 808 4994 or email help@themix.org.uk
  • Rethink Mental Illness offers practical help through its advice line which can be reached on 0808 801 0525 (Monday to Friday 10am-4pm). More info can be found on rethink.org.
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Wall Planks May Be The Best Exercise For Blood Pressure

Regular exercise can help to manage blood pressure, because it makes our hearts stronger.

But according to a huge 2023 study, which looked at 270 trials from 1990-2023, “isometric” exercises might be the most effective at the job, with “wall sits” the best performer among these.

Researchers found that isometric exercise was more likely, on average, to lower blood pressure than aerobic exercise training, dynamic resistance training, combined training, and high-intensity interval training, though all forms were still immensely helpful.

What is isometric exercise?

It involves keeping your body still while you tense specific muscles for a set period of time. You don’t move your joints during the movement.

“Isometric exercise” is sometimes called “static” exercise.

It is the opposite of “dynamic,” or “isotonic” exercise, which involves little load and consistent pressure on various muscles. For example, running and swimming.

Most forms of exercise involve a combination of isometric and isotonic exercise, though some are 100% one or the other.

What are some examples of isometric exercises?

These include:

  • Wall sits
  • Planks
  • Glute bridges
  • Side planks
  • V-holds
  • Calf raises
  • Hollow holds
  • Copenhagen planks.

In the 2023 study we mentioned earlier, published in the BMJ, wall sits (placing your back against a wall with your thighs parallel to the ground) were the most effective of the isometric exercises for lowering blood pressure.

Does that mean I should only do isometric exercises?

The best approach to exercise seems to be a mixture of weight training and aerobic training. This has been linked to increased longevity compared to sticking to one or the other.

Speaking to the British Heart Foundation, senior cardiac nurse, Joanne Whitmore, said: “Exercise is good for your heart health and health in general. It can reduce the risk of heart and circulatory diseases by up to a third.

“Aerobic exercise in particular can help the heart and circulatory system work better through lowering blood pressure. Current guidelines also encourage muscle-strengthening exercises, like yoga or Pilates.

“It’s encouraging to see other forms of exercise explored in this research as we know that those who take on exercise they enjoy, tend to carry on for longer, which is key in maintaining lower blood pressure.

“However, there are other lifestyle choices that can benefit your blood pressure. These include keeping to a healthy weight, eating a balanced diet, cutting down on salt, not drinking too much alcohol and taking any prescribed medication”.

Speak to your doctor if you have a heart condition and want to take up new exercise, she added.

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Pete Hegseth Quoted A Bible Verse. Turns Out It Was A Rip-Off Of ‘Pulp Fiction.’

In a move that seems indicative of the Trump administration’s increasingly fractured relationship with the Vatican, Pete Hegseth appeared to mistake lines from a classic crime film for Scripture during a public appearance this week.

The defense secretary delivered a prayer during a livestreamed worship service at the Pentagon on Wednesday. “They call it CSAR 25:17, which I think is meant to reflect Ezekiel 25:17,” he said in his introduction of the prayer he’d been given.

However, viewers quickly noticed his words more closely echoed one of Samuel L. Jackson’s monologues from 1994’s “Pulp Fiction” than the biblical verse he’d referenced.

“The path of the downed aviator is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men,” Hegseth said in part. “Blessed is he who, in the name of camaraderie and duty, shepherds the lost through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother’s keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to capture and destroy my brother, and you will know my call sign is Sandy 1 when I lay my vengeance upon thee.”

Watch Pete Hegseth’s prayer service below. His reference to Ezekiel 25:17 begins around the 6:56 mark.

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In “Pulp Fiction,” Jackson portrays hit man Jules Winnfield, who offers a similar declaration before shooting a man to death.

“The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men,” he says. “Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and goodwill, shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother’s keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know my name is the Lord, when I lay my vengeance upon thee. And I will execute great vengeance upon them with furious rebukes; and they shall know that I am the Lord, when I shall lay my vengeance upon them.”

Hegseth said the prayer was recited by the “Sandy 1” combat search and rescue (CSAR) mission in Iran, and to be fair, Pulp Fiction writer-director Quentin Tarantino reportedly drew from a scene in the 1973 Japanese film Bodyguard Kiba as the basis for Jackson’s monologue.

The actual Ezekiel 25:17 passage as it appears in the King James Bible is significantly shorter than both Hegseth’s and Jackson’s, reading simply: “And I will execute great vengeance upon them with furious rebukes; and they shall know that I am the Lord, when I shall lay my vengeance upon them.”

Hegseth has yet to address the discourse publicly. The Pentagon’s chief spokesman, Sean Parnell, issued a statement on X Thursday acknowledging the CSAR prayer and Hegseth’s words were “obviously inspired by dialogue” in Pulp Fiction, but that both the prayer and the film scene were “reflections of the verse Ezekiel 25:17, as Secretary Hegseth clearly said in his remarks at the prayer service.”

“Anyone saying the Secretary misquoted Ezekiel 25:17 is peddling fake news and ignorant of reality,” he added.

Still, videos comparing Hegseth’s prayer to Jackson’s monologue went viral online and, as of Thursday, had drawn a fair number of snarky responses.

“When our leaders mix up God and a movie, in trying to suggest that God is behind them, that suggests the muddle we’re all in,” New York Times journalist Nicholas Kristof wrote on X.

Journalist and author James North quipped: “The Old Testament’s ‘Book of Tarantino.’”

Hegseth’s prayer gaffe comes amid rising tensions between the Trump administration, including President Donald Trump himself, and high-ranking Catholic leaders.

On Sunday, the president deemed Pope Leo XIV “WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy” in a post on his Truth Social platform after the pontiff criticized both the Iran war and the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration.

That same day, Trump drew further outrage when he shared what appeared to be an AI-generated image of himself as Jesus Christ ― or, at the very least, a Christ-like figure ― on Truth Social.

Though the president argued the image was intended to depict him as a doctor, he or his team quietly deleted it after public figures on both sides of the political aisle condemned it as “blasphemous.”

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