How Dare You Give Notes to Parker Posey on ‘The White Lotus’?

Now that we have two episodes of the Jennifer Coolidge-less The White Lotus season three under our belts, it’s time we talk about Parker F-ing Posey.

On the internet, some of you dare to question this genius’ “excessive” use of syllables in her Southern drawl. You have the temerity to critique the realism of her performance. I have extensive theatrical training (still chasing that return on investment) and I can say with professional (ish) confidence that her acting choices are nothing short of a master class in character acting.

Those who criticize her fail to understand the choices she’s making and why. You have thrown down the gauntlet and I am here to challenge you.

Posey joins the White Lotus cast this season as Victoria Ratliff, a Xanax-riddled, passive aggressive, checked out mom of three. Instead of being horrified by her creepy, creepy older son, Saxon’s incestuous behavior around his siblings and his general misogyny, Victoria finds him to be hilarious and harmless. She’s also not particularly concerned about her husband, Timothy (or as she likes to say “Tim-Oh-THEE”), who keeps running out of the room to talk on the phone about what we presume is the imminent collapse of his career and their good fortunes.

Posey first made me laugh at a Southern drawl in Waiting for Guffman (“It’s the DAY of the SHOW, y’all”) and has, throughout her career, been consistently great at a Southern line read. She is a bonafide Southerner. Before she became “Queen of the Indies,” she hailed from Baltimore, Maryland, and grew up in Louisiana and Mississippi.

As to whether or not Posey’s accent or performance is realistic, who says White Lotus is meant to be “realistic?” It’s always been a commentary on the wealthy and how ridiculous they are. Her character name, Victoria Ratliff, sounds like she’s in a soap opera, like As the World Turns, where Posey made her screen debut. That is intentional. I fully believe someone as broad as Victoria Ratliff exists in this world, and I bet she is at a Four Seasons somewhere. (The three seasons of White Lotus are all filmed at Four Seasons around the world.) She’s drunk and high, laughing at the absurdity of everyone worrying about the state of the world. She knows that, no matter what, she will be fine. She’s too rich and too white to fail, so she might as well numb the intrusive thoughts and enjoy herself.

For her character on the show, Posey told Variety she was inspired by the theatricality of Tennessee Williams plays, specifically Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Take a gander at the plot of the play and you can undoubtedly see the parallels between the play’s conflicts and the Ratliffs’ own potential crumbling, both financially and emotionally.

Posey is a smart actress, basing her White Lotus characterization choices on Williams’ work—her performance harkens back to the dramatic, sweeping performances in these older Southern tales. While the identity of the body we saw in the opening moments of the season still remains a mystery, I wonder if tragic allusions will come into play—might it be Timothy face down in the water?

Posey told Bustle she wants to be memed for this performance, like Jennifer Coolidge was last season before her character’s hilarious demise. The second episode has a plethora of meme options. I very much enjoyed her first shot of the ep: She’s sleeping on her back with her hands over her heart, like she was dreaming of all the potential “Bless your hearts” she has ahead of her. At breakfast, she tells the family, “I slept like a corpse.” Her drugged smile afterwards makes it seem like Victoria is in on her own joke—she is a walking shadow in her own life.

My vote for meme of the week is the little puppy dog hands and squint she affects when Leslie Bibb’s character interrupts her family time to tell her they know each other from a baby shower. She freezes Bibb out, but with a smile on her face, which her nice, younger son calls her out on. She’s not bothered. She’s on vacation.

Another contender is the second episode’s dinner scene in which there is a delicious moment of dramatic irony when Victoria implores her children to get along, saying, “Most people don’t have good morals. They’re scammers.” Moments later, Timothy gets a call from his elusive business associate, and we learn Timothy has been doing some illegal dealing and is, himself, a scammer.

May we all have the inner peace of this woman in these tumultuous times. I do predict she’s going to unravel as the season goes forward and she learns the ramifications of whatever’s going on with her husband and son’s workplace. I can’t wait to watch her fall apart. Might she be the shooter?

The best part of The White Lotus has never been its realistic skewering of our actual elite class. The magic of the show is in the weird character moments and interactions when these spoiled people get even the littlest bit uncomfortable.

In previous seasons, we had a very different flavor of rich lady, Jennifer Coolidge’s Tanya, a bubblegum-flavored nouveau riche idiot with a heart of gold. Now in the category of “oblivious rich woman of a certain age” we have something darker but no less delicious in Victoria Ratliff. Parker Posey, like Jennifer Cooliage before her, understood the assignment.

Perhaps their experiences on Christopher Guest projects, all of which had ensemble casts and memorable, sometimes cartoonish characters, helped prepare them for the big-swing acting choices on this show. Posey’s Victoria is a broadly drawn masterpiece, a representative of the type of woman who runs the world behind the scenes of her husband’s machinations. She doesn’t need to speak to the manager in a raised voice or shrill tone. She simply needs to smile and wait, like a crocodile patiently, luxuriously luring in its prey.