‘The White Lotus’ composer not returning for season four over creative differences

A composer for HBO‘s hit series The White Lotus has confirmed he won’t be returning to work on season four – find out why below.

• READ MORE: ‘The White Lotus’ season three review: irresistible holiday soap remains TV’s most essential destination

Chilean composer Cristóbal Tapia de Veer has a fair number of acclaimed pieces, having worked on films like Babygirl, the Smile franchise and more. But he’s perhaps best known for his work on the celebrated White Lotus series for HBO.

Fans have loved his ‘Aloha!’ theme song for season one, as well as its rework ‘Renaissance’ for season two. So when season three debuted with an entirely new theme song, fans were livid – check out their reactions here.

Now, de Veer has revealed in a chat with The New York Times that he’s walking away from the series after longstanding friction with The White Lotus’ creator and director Mike White dating back to 2021’s debut season.

Reflecting on first being contacted to compose a theme for season one, de Veer said felt like he wasn’t a good fit, as his compositions are typically “super dark and edgy”, given his background in horror and thrillers. White, however, wanted a different approach.

According to de Veer, White had a temp score to refer to that was something you’d “listen to in Ibiza, in some clubby place with a chill, sexy vibe. And there’s literally no edge to it. It’s a good song; it’s nice music. There’s just absolutely no — whatever you find in the White Lotus music, the relationships with the characters — there’s none of that. It’s just nice background music.”

Still, de Veer stuck to his guns and fought to have his vision included in the show, despite “crazy people and screaming and stuff like that”. For season two, he reworked the track for its Italian setting, and that went over well with audiences as well.

However, when work on season three began, de Veer said he had “no direction” to work with and ultimately crafted a new theme, but had slipped in some core elements of the previous themes. But when season three premiered, those elements were cut out, leaving fans furious.

de Veer explained: “When that came out, I had TMZ calling me, even people from England and from France, because they wanted some kind of statement about the theme. People are furious about the change of the theme, and I thought that was interesting.

“I texted the producer and I told him that it would be great to, at some point, give them the longer version with the ooh-loo-loo-loos, because people will explode if they realize that it was going there anyway. He thought it was a good idea. But then Mike cut that — he wasn’t happy about that.”

He added that he thinks White was “just saying no to anything” at that point, and he took it upon himself to release the extended cut on YouTube. Now, de Veer says audiences are warming up to the season three theme.

Reflecting on his exit from The White Lotus, de Veer told The New York Times: “You know, I was watching the Emmys, and it’s like, there’s one thing I’m pretty proud of and that is I feel like I never gave up. Maybe I was being unprofessional, and for sure Mike feels that I was always unprofessional to him because I didn’t give him what he wanted. But what I gave him did this, you know — did those Emmys, people going crazy.

“People don’t remember, but at first some people were complaining about the music: ‘I can’t concentrate on the characters, and it’s too much and I’m so stressed out.’ But I’m really happy to take those kinds of risks. That is the main thing that I’m most happy about — it was worth all the tension and almost forcing the music into the show, in a way, because I didn’t have that many allies in there.”

The third season of The White Lotus received a four-star review from NME, with Nick Levine writing: “A little sweetness definitely helps to balance out the prevailing saltiness. As the season progresses, the sneaky intricacy of White’s plotting begins to yield surreal, shocking and genuinely hilarious moments.

“No one can write a scene where one character pretends not to remember another quite as exquisitely as White. Tanya may be gone, but this transgressive soap opera remains unique and completely jaw-dropping.”

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