Côte d’Azur, France
Kat Jamieson slid open the doorways to her poolside lodge room in Saint-Tropez and was greeted with an surprising sight: cameras and a movie crew surrounding actor Laura Dern, who was holding court docket in entrance of the rippling blue water.
“She was wearing this fabulous Missoni caftan,” Jamieson tells NCS Travel.
Jamieson couldn’t imagine it. Not solely was she witnessing an Oscar-winning actor at work, however she’d additionally purchased the very same Missoni caftan the day earlier than, within the lodge’s on-site boutique.
“I was going to plan on wearing it that day, and then I saw her wearing it by the pool, and I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, we’re twins.’”
If the concept of a lodge reward retailer promoting a $1,000 designer pool throwover feels surreal — not to mention an actor casually filming a poolside scene as visitors watch on — you’re clearly not accustomed to the world of HBO’s “The White Lotus.”
Jamieson’s Laura Dern second occurred whereas she was spending a week at Château de la Messardière, a Nineteenth-century palatial house turned sprawling Côte d’Azur resort, run by unique French lodge firm Airelles. The spectacular property is doubling up this summer time as a functioning real-life lodge for the 1% and a principal filming location for the subsequent season of the Emmy-winning, 1%-satirizing TV present, “The White Lotus.”
Filming is at the moment underway for the fourth season of the present, which beforehand immortalized such impossibly stylish, intimidatingly luxe properties because the Four Seasons’ San Domenico Palace in Taormina, Sicily and Four Seasons Resort Koh Samui in Thailand.
Rumors swirled for a lot of final 12 months about season 4’s potential filming location — solely the Alps had been dominated out as a result of creator Mike White hates the cold. When White zeroed in on the French Riviera, there have been reviews of him staying at the picturesque Hotel Negresco on the promenade in Nice, France. Grand-Hôtel du Cap-Ferrat, a Four Seasons property within the unique Riviera group of Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, was repeatedly prompt as a potential participant — given its grandeur and the franchise’s earlier choice for Four Seasons properties.
Eventually, earlier this 12 months, Airelles’ Château de la Messardière was confirmed as this season’s principal filming location. Cannes’ Art Deco Hotel Martinez was additionally nailed down, with HBO saying the Cannes Film Festival will function the starry backdrop to this season. Reports counsel the Mandarin Oriental Lutetia in Paris can also be set to star within the collection, however HBO has maintained the motion will stay set on the Riviera. (HBO is owned by Warner Bros. Discovery, the mother or father firm of NCS.)
When the information broke about Château de la Messardière, Connecticut-based Jamieson already had her keep booked. As a longtime fan of the present, she was delighted. The vogue influencer, touring along with her investor relations adviser husband, assumed filming can be completed earlier than they checked in. She by no means anticipated a scene to play out throughout her keep.
“They didn’t contact us, and I don’t know if it’s because they didn’t know this exact schedule,” she says of the lodge. “I know they were reshooting some of the scenes because they had an actress change-up, so maybe it was just luck that we got to see the reshoots.”
The change-up in query was Laura Dern changing initially solid British star Helena Bonham Carter. The frenzied reporting round this information is illustrative of the thrill that continues to encompass “The White Lotus,” which has settled on a completely engaging formulation: an intriguing solid of business stalwarts and up-and-comers, tremendous fancy motels, out-of-touch wealthy of us versus downtrodden lodge employees — oh, and homicide.
Jamieson and her husband didn’t work out an excessive amount of about potential plot strains for season 4, though they “got to see the whole scene transpire around the pool.”
The filming was seen from their lodge room terrace.
“We could see the entire filming taking place and Laura Dern in her pool scene from our private patio,” says Jamieson.
They weren’t requested to signal NDAs, however the crew did ask that lively filming not be recorded. Photos and movies had been permitted when the cameras weren’t rolling. All Jamieson may choose up plot-wise was some traditional “White Lotus”-style “tension” within the poolside scene.
“There seemed to be a tense conversation that Laura was having at the pool with the other actor. They were very deep in convo,” she says. “They filmed for probably about five hours by the pool, but we were able to walk through the whole set in between takes, and it was very exciting.”
Some lodge visitors may complain about a pool being closed throughout their keep, particularly once they’re paying a massive worth — room charges fluctuate seasonally, with suites in peak season round $3,000-$6,000 a night time. However, there are literally three massive out of doors swimming pools at Château de la Messardière, in addition to one indoor pool. When NCS Travel visited in May, every pool seemed gorgeous in its personal proper. One being off limits on account of Hollywood stars didn’t appear to be a main hardship.
“We didn’t mind at all,” says Jamieson. “It was just fun to be able to observe such a unique show that we’ve been watching for years. My husband actually asked if he could be an extra in the show. They said, ‘Sorry, we’ve already cast a bunch of French people.’ But it was still just so fun to be in the mix and observe.”
As the set was prepped for filming, the couple noticed the lodge’s luxurious orange Airelles pool pillows being changed on the solar loungers with equally luxurious, blue White Lotus-branded pillows.
“They also laid out a bunch of protective carpet and everything like that, because they have those gorgeous pavements, and the grass is pristine, and so they kept it pristine, still,” provides Jamieson.
The hilltop Château de la Messardière is unfold over roughly 32 acres, full of hidden, verdant corners that really feel personal and serene — assume poolside terraces and particular person picnic tables crowded with cushions, trying over Saint-Tropez’s rolling hills and the lodge’s flower-filled gardens. Visible within the distance is the Bay of Saint-Tropez.
During NCS’s go to, the Orient Express Corinthian — the world’s largest sailing yacht, whose rooms go for roughly $5,300 a night time — was in port for its inaugural crusing and seen from the resort. Tucked away within the lodge’s stunning grounds are trampolines, tennis courts and an out of doors gymnasium. Jamieson suggests the sheer measurement, sprawl and serenity of the property meant some lodge visitors might have been totally unaware that filming was even occurring.
“They did a nice job of being really quiet and respectful,” she says. “Because the hotel, again, didn’t announce anything — you probably wouldn’t have known if you weren’t invested or watching the show. We just found it so thrilling, and we felt like we were so lucky to even get to see a little part.”
According to Jamieson, “The White Lotus” crew additionally filmed at Saint-Tropez’s Pampelonne Bay, identified for its pristine golden sand, heat azure-blue waters and rows of unique seashore golf equipment. Most of Saint-Tropez’s motels are dotted across the village and surrounding hills, all about a 15-minute-drive to the waterfront, however most have satellite tv for pc seashore golf equipment at Pampelonne. The city’s luxurious motels ferry visitors to the seashore in type: Château de la Messardière transports residents to its seashore membership, Jardin Tropeziana, through Rolls-Royce.
“We asked our driver one night, and he said he was able to be an extra in the show, so he loved that. He was really excited,” remembers Jamieson. “He’s like, ‘I didn’t say anything, but they filmed me opening the door and driving the Rolls-Royce.’ So that’s really fun. I’m looking forward to seeing him.”
Pampelonne Bay seashore golf equipment additionally embrace movie star scorching spot Le Club 55 — the unique Nineteen Fifties venue in Saint-Tropez, which has its origins within the filming of the 1956 French traditional “And God Created Women.” Today, solar loungers at Saint-Tropez’s seashore golf equipment are priced by the hour, by row — based on their proximity to the Mediterranean Sea.
On the day NCS Travel visited Pampelonne, most visitors had been sipping rosé and lounging moderately than really swimming. Bucking the pattern by descending into the water gives dreamy swimming circumstances — crystal-clear, heat water with a row of superyachts bobbing within the distance.
The solely adverse? The intrusive thought that on “The White Lotus,” that is precisely the second the physique would wash up on the sand.
“The White Lotus” was conceived by director White in the course of the pandemic as a approach of using the claustrophobia of a Covid “bubble” to create must-watch TV. In the primary season — filmed on the Four Seasons’ Maui at Wailea, Hawaii — White, his crew and his solid of actors together with Jennifer Coolidge and Sydney Sweeney took over the lodge, empty of paying visitors because of the pandemic, and filmed totally inside the confines of the resort.
Several years later, this mannequin stays the present’s modus operandi, although with pandemic restrictions gone, later seasons have seen an uptick in scenes filmed exterior lodge grounds. The third season, for instance, was filmed throughout a number of Thailand resorts and included quite a few out-property scenes.
Even if the present has expanded its horizons, “White Lotus” actors nonetheless get pleasure from an prolonged keep on the luxurious motels the place they’re filming, creating an uncommon dynamic. Season three actor Jason Isaacs told Vulture the expertise is “a cross between summer camp and ‘Lord of the Flies’ but in a gilded cage.” His co-star Aimee Lou Wood told Variety that residing and engaged on set is “basically a reality TV show.”
During Jamieson’s keep at Château de la Messardière, she slowly realized a number of of her fellow lodge visitors had been really “White Lotus” solid and crew.
“We did get to see some of the actors off-duty one night, and they were all laughing and having fun, because a lot of them are in their 20s. So that was really cool to see. It seems like the cast really does mesh and get along, and they’re just all having a blast,” she says.
“They were mingling with the guests, kind of in an unassuming manner. Some of these actors are a little bit more up-and-coming, so I actually probably was sitting next to them and didn’t even realize it at the pool or at breakfast.”
The meta nature of “The White Lotus” is an element of its attraction. Jamieson was delighted by the concept that Laura Dern’s fictional lodge resident most likely picked up her Missoni caftan within the lodge reward retailer, precisely the best way she did.
“As a guest, you go into the boutique, try a couple things you gravitate towards. I gravitated towards the caftan, and it really was a natural move for her to wear that,” she says. “It really shows that they were inspired by the setting, because it also was this season’s Missoni. And Missoni and Saint-Tropez is iconic.”
One night, Jamieson says she ended up mendacity poolside with the present’s director of pictures.
“She was so excited to chat with my husband and I,” saying she was excited to talk with new folks after spending a month with the identical group. “She was so sweet, just chatting to us about our life and our travels … I guess the Airelles property was really their home base for a whole month, that’s a dream to be able to stay there for a month.”
For motels, internet hosting a movie crew for a month is not any imply feat. Many of the resorts on the French Riviera are closed in the course of the winter months, however behind-the-scenes elements make filming in the course of the low season difficult — not least as a result of the sun-drenched look is central to the present’s model. TV viewers need to see Laura Dern wafting by a sunny pool in that Missoni caftan, not huddled for heat in a sweater.
This filming scenario can also be difficult by the truth that a host of real-life rich visitors see the French Riviera as their summer time home-away-from-home. Karin Perrault, visitor relations supervisor at five-star Hotel Byblos — a Saint-Tropez establishment the place Mick and Bianca Jagger celebrated their marriage ceremony in 1971 — says Byblos has common visitors who keep for as much as two months within the summertime, “even a little bit more.”
Sitting by Byblos’ pool (not like Château de la Messardière, it solely has one, although the lodge’s additionally house to the well-known Caves du Roy nightclub, the place the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio and Lady Gaga have been noticed on the dance flooring), Perrault tells NCS Travel that Byblos will get frequent filming requests however turns them down.
“They need certain dates, which are difficult for us to manage and welcome back our return guests,” she says. “We cannot say ‘yes.’”
Anecdotally, it appears Château de la Messardière might have needed to do some juggling to accommodate this 12 months’s manufacturing. Irish couple Gabby Seputyte and Ben Hauer had been booked to remain within the lodge in late April. Speaking to NCS Travel in May over Aperol spritzes and rosé on the terrace of the lodge’s Bar 1904 (the home wine is Château d’Estoublon ‘Roseblood’ co-owned by Airelles proprietor Stéphane Courbit and former French president Nicolas Sarkozy), the couple remembers receiving an surprising e mail forward of their keep:
“Our booking got canceled,” says Hauer, explaining an actual purpose wasn’t given however they suspected it was on account of a combine of dangerous April climate and “the filming of the show.”
The Dublin-based couple was supplied a keep on the lodge’s boutique sister spot, Airelles Pan Deï Palais within the heart of Saint-Tropez, or an improve and rebook for the tip of May. They went for the latter, and like Jamieson, had been completely delighted by the “White Lotus” hyperlink — even when filming doubtlessly disrupted their trip plans.
“I’ve been a fan for a long time,” says Seputyte.
“I was glad I booked this hotel before it was even announced, because it’s probably going to be impossible to get a booking now, because it was already popular,” says Hauer. “Look at any of the other hotels that they filmed in for the other seasons, they quadrupled in popularity after the show…”
Much of the humor in “The White Lotus” comes from the wealthy visitors’ entitlement, outrageous requests and out-of-touch views on actuality.
In the primary season, there’s Jake Lacy’s character Shane, who turns into obsessive about the actual fact he’s missed out on the lodge’s coveted “Pineapple Suite” on his honeymoon. His obsession turns into a bitter feud with the lodge supervisor which spirals into comedian tragedy.
While reporting within the French Riviera, NCS Travel overheard a number of conversations completely suited to the present. Take the Byblos residents casually discussing upcoming helicopter rides above Saint-Tropez — or a visitor at stylish new Saint-Tropez addition AREV, explaining to a lodge worker in painstaking element precisely why he loved the lodge’s Japanese bogs, whereas the waiter stood politely, listening diligently and nodding.
Meanwhile, on the Four Seasons Grand-Hôtel du Cap-Ferrat’s dreamy Club Dauphin — a restaurant constructed into the cliffs overlooking Cap-Ferrat’s infinity pool — two ladies ordered, then promptly rejected, glasses of native Provençal wine as a result of “2022 was a terrible year for rosé.” (Cue this reporter frantically Googling “what went wrong with 2022 rosé?” beneath the desk whereas persevering with to fortunately sip mentioned rosé.)
Many of the area’s motels — together with Château de la Messardière, Hotel Martinez and Grand-Hôtel du Cap-Ferrat — not too long ago scored a coveted spot on France’s official “Palace” list reserved for hospitality ranges that exceed even these of a conventional five-star property.
The service at these ultra-luxury properties is on one other stage. It’s frequent, for instance, for visitors to obtain a number of presents over the course of their keep. NCS Travel noticed sportswear-clad visitors having fun with the intensive breakfast buffet at Grand-Hotel du Cap-Ferrat carrying Four Seasons-branded water bottles inside massive, gifted straw seashore baggage. The baggage are given their very own designated seats on the terrace tables.
And these motels aren’t giving out low cost freebies — assume luxurious pajamas, scented candles, leather-based pouches, and glamorous straw hats. When Hauer proposed to Seputyte throughout their keep at Château de la Messardière, he says they returned to a lodge room stuffed with heart-shaped balloons, a bottle of 2015 Veuve Clicquot champagne, a cake and a framed photograph of them post-proposal, snapped by employees that very lunchtime. He hadn’t given the lodge a heads-up, and couldn’t fairly imagine it.
The five-star Riviera way of life is a straightforward one to adapt to: suites with personal swimming pools, scrumptious contemporary seafood, and stunning views from secluded terraces. Everything is so gorgeous, and all the things is so seamless. Consequently, when one thing doesn’t go totally to plan, the mishap stands out way over they’d wherever else.
On NCS Travel’s journey there have been a few moments that prompted the “What would Shane from season one say?” prepare of thought — from getting dropped off by a lodge chauffeur at a public seashore parking zone, a 25 minute hike away from the supposed swanky Saint-Tropez lodge seashore membership vacation spot, to arriving solo in a new lodge room solely to be inexplicably greeted with a “Happy Wedding Anniversary” chocolate cake.
Mike White is an professional at discovering humor in these moments, mining every chosen vacation spot for its particular idiosyncrasies. Series producer David Bernad has hinted that the author settled on the French Riviera setting after “a really specific experience with a waiter and a maître d’, and it was the stereotype. It was a very funny moment.”
Celebrity and fame
This upcoming season additionally guarantees to focus particularly on movie star and fame, a excellent match for the French Riviera. Saint-Tropez turned the middle of French filmmaking within the Nineteen Fifties and Nineteen Sixties, morphing from a sleepy fishing village to a world movie star scorching spot. VIP visitors are commonplace within the area, and based on Byblos visitor relations supervisor Karin Perrault, each lodge within the space is used to accommodating stars and their particular wants.
“We have our security agents always walking around,” she says. “The Saint-Tropez authority, they work very hard also to make this place feel secure … It’s a small village, but you have beautiful properties, so it’s a big investment, and everything works in harmony.”
While stars vacationing on the Riviera often need to stay discreet, in the course of the Cannes Film Festival, their presence is thrust beneath the highlight. Cannes’ Hotel Martinez is confirmed by HBO to be taking part in the fictional “White Lotus Cannes” and in actual life, the Martinez serves as a main hub for celebrities in the course of the annual film showcase, due to its proximity to Cannes’ well-known Boulevard de la Croisette.
NCS’s Thomas Page, who has lined the Cannes Film Festival since 2017, calls the Martinez the “perfect choice” for a season filmed across the pageant. He factors to the Martinez’s well-known staircase, with its “beautiful geometry,” as an apparent filming location. Page additionally suggests the Cannes seashore golf equipment, which host personal after-parties that run into the early hours, may present the proper stage for some typical White Lotus theatrics.
“You are feet away from the sea, on the fringe of those parties,” he says. “It’s exactly the kind of setting where events could spill over; things could spell doom for someone, potentially.”
Meanwhile, Château de la Messardière’s confirmed fictional title “White Lotus du Cap” suggests the resort could possibly be taking part in a fictionalized model of Grand-Hotel du Cap-Ferrat or, maybe extra probably, Antibes’ Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc the place celebrities typically keep in the course of the pageant and which Vanity Fair recently dubbed “the glamorous power center of Cannes.”
With the movie pageant serving as backdrop, unconfirmed reviews counsel the collection may revolve round two rival movie crews, one staying on the “White Lotus Cannes,” and the opposite on the “White Lotus du Cap.” Filmmakers had been not too long ago noticed recreating the Cannes environment post-festival, in late May.
This current Cannes filming coincided with US actual property developer and movie fanatic Michael Banovac’s French Riviera trip. To his pleasure, whereas eating al fresco at Cannes’ Ristorante Federal, Banovac discovered himself sitting subsequent to season 4 actor Steve Coogan.
“We just struck up a conversation, and I was asking him a little bit about ‘White Lotus,’” Banovac tells NCS Travel.
“He was filming this past week on a yacht in the Côte d’Azur near Cannes. They’re going to be integrating between Saint-Tropez, Cannes, a very little bit of Paris … And then they’re going to have a little bit of filming in Monaco, I don’t know where. But that’s kind of what I gleaned.”
Coogan was tight-lipped on actual plot factors, however Banovac was nonetheless excited to get a bit of perception into the present’s path.
“I’ve seen all the seasons, and I’ve been to the majority of the hotels, except for the ones in Thailand,” he says. “The settings are so lavish and elegant.”
Banovac had additionally been anticipating the Four Seasons Grand-Hotel du Cap-Ferrat to play a starring function and has his personal theories on why the manufacturing went in a totally different path with Château de la Messardière.
“Mike White needed a place that they could rent out, have some privacy, and also get a lot of local extras involved in the hotel, and I think that’s why they chose that hotel in Saint-Tropez which is a little more remote,” he suggests.
During his 10 days touring the French Riviera, Banovac says he consistently discovered himself in conversations concerning the present. During NCS’s South of France soujourn, the title was additionally a fixed chorus throughout breezy lodge terraces and sun-kissed seashores.
Banovac suggests the Côte d’Azur is the proper match for the upcoming collection.
“The main theme, from what I’m gathering, is fame and relevance,” he says, suggesting the motels within the area, being well-known in their very own proper, are the proper match. “When they’re at these very extravagant hotels, I think it’s going to tie into beauty, extravagance, opulence, and also relevance.”
Clarification: An earlier model of this story contained a longer quote by Kat Jamieson that has been paraphrased.