Yahoo Lifestyle "I don’t know what my face is doing!" Leslie Bibb on The White Lotus and its toxic trio
Leslie Bibb stops herself midway through a long and beautiful rumination about season 3 of The White Lotus to exclaim, “I’m like a babbling brook!” As part of the trio of lifelong friends (alongside Carrie Coon and Michelle Monaghan) reuniting in Thailand, she plays Kate, the friend caught in the middle. Playing peacemaker as often as she’s playing shit stirrer, Kate is always either pausing to consider a diplomatic response or communicating with just nonverbal facial expressions that say enough to fill a burn book cover to cover. Bibb’s faces have since gone viral online, themselves an expression of the myriad of feelings viewers have about the three women christened by creator Mike White as the “Blonde Blob.”
But in real life, Bibb is much more verbal, especially when it comes to talking about what she calls the “significant, singular experience” that is The White Lotus. “You can’t break it down into a little tidbit or sound bite,” she says. “It’s the greatest fucking work experience in my life, and the hardest, and the most exhilarating. All the mosts.” She doesn’t want it to end, which is why she hasn’t watched the season yet. “It feels like if I watch, it’ll become a balloon that’s going to burst.”
For Bibb, the season has been both a personal affair and a family affair. Her longtime partner, Sam Rockwell, came to the production late to film a series of scenes alongside Walton Goggins. In one, Rockwell’s character delivers a gripping monologue that has been praised as an absolute showstopper. This came just weeks after Bibb was herself the centre of another showstopping scene, in which Kate implies to her liberal friends over dinner that she voted for Donald Trump. It was the kind of awkward, tense tap dance that many viewers have done around their own dinner tables. It’s also a testament to Bibb that the scene didn’t define Kate—but rather added to her complex but relatable allure.
In the second of three interviews with the Blonde Blob, Harper’s Bazaar spoke with Bibb about wearing pajamas to a pool party, what’s really going on between Kate and Parker Posey’s Victoria, and how so much of The White Lotus is told in what’s not being said.
Mike White calls your trio the “Blonde Blob.” How did you get cast into the blob, and how did you emerge as Kate?
First of all, look at the two women I’m working with! One of the beauties of this job—I never [usually] get to work with them because we’re always in competition for a job! The fact that we all have a slightly similar essence, and most projects need only one person that fills that essence, means that only one of us usually gets the job.
When you read Kate on paper, it would be so easy to make her the archetype of a “square.” That’s what’s on the surface and what’s easy. But when I read her, I saw all of her insecurity, and it was really interesting to me. There was a nervousness to her, this need for everything to go perfectly. I think Kate is so afraid of the edges because when you go outside of the edges, you don’t have control. And she’s controlling; she’s a perfectionist. And when I first met with Mike, he said to me, “I feel like you’re a perfectionist.” I said, “No, I’m not a perfectionist!” But of course I am a perfectionist, to a fault. It’s something I work on in therapy and in life. I think perfectionism is the result of old childhood trauma. It’s about using control to keep yourself safe: If I can control it, it won’t hurt me.
The trio do so much gossiping, but there’s a lot of wordless communication going on between them too. How did the three of you develop that?
We were shooting the first scene in the villa, when we walk in, look around, there are monkeys, we chat a little, and then Laurie gives a cheers: “To Thailand…to a week of new memories.” That cheers felt like the crux of the scene. We don’t really say much, so they’ll cut some shit in the edit and we’ll get to that part. So instinctively, we all did the same thing: We sort of motored through the scene. Usually in television, faster is funny. Directors are always asking you, “Can you say it faster? Can you do it faster?” But Mike came out from behind the monitors, and he said, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, everybody slow down. You can take your time. I’m interested in the silences.” And I remember I was sitting in that chair in that pink bathing suit, and I looked out from the villa, and I thought, This is going to be different. It just unlocked something.
The scenes between your characters have triggered so many viewers and sparked so much conversation. Did you think your dynamic would start this kind of discourse?
I think Carrie, Michelle, and I were a bit naive in the fact that we weren’t sure if people were going to connect with us. It’s not Greek like the Ratliffs’ storyline or Shakespearean like Rick’s storyline. Everything feels like a Grecian or Shakespearean tragedy, and then you get the Blonde Blob, and we were worried that it was going to be boring somehow. And then I remember Mike saying, “It seems slight, but if we do our jobs right…” And that really freaked me out. I was like, “Slight? It’s The White Lotus! Nothing is slight.” But now I understand what he meant. It seems like three gossiping girls, but in true Mike White fashion, it becomes something much bigger.
The dinner scene in episode 3 where Kate comes out as a potential Trump voter especially sparked a lot of chatter online.
I think that might have been my audition scene, actually! I remember that Carrie, Michelle, and I wondered if it was going to be relevant. Because Mike wrote it in 2022, and the season was meant to start shooting in 2023, but then there was the writers’ strike, and then there was the actors’ strike, and so it got pushed to 2024. And even in 2024, I remember thinking, Is this going to date the show? But I swear, Mike White should have a crystal ball and a turban and sit behind a window with his palm out and tell people’s fortunes, because he’s a soothsayer. Somehow that scene became very relevant.
Your facial expressions throughout the show, and in particular during that dinner scene, have gone viral.
My facial expression happened in the moment, so I don’t know what I did! Honestly, at any time, I don’t know what my face is doing. So inevitably, I start giving off these weird facial expressions. Even in real life, I’m a terrible liar because I can’t stop my feelings from showing on my face. Which is especially bad when you’re on The White Lotus. When people ask me about spoilers, I have to just start looking down so that I don’t make eye contact. We threw a Christmas party, and we had a bunch of our friends here, and one of them asked, “Did Sam come visit you in Thailand?” And I was just like, “I gotta go get somebody a drink!”
Speaking of your partner, Sam Rockwell, his surprise appearance this season to deliver that showstopping monologue was really something else.
His monologue is really iconic. And I remember reading that monologue when I got the scripts for all eight episodes, and I thought it was the most amazing thing I’d ever read. I kept rereading it. There’s a message in there that Mike is saying to the world. I searched, I had an appetite, I didn’t know what I possessed inside me, and then… He’s always trying to subliminally make you think.
And I think it connects a lot to what Carrie, Michelle, and I often say, that if these women just had opened up to one another in the beginning about what they were searching for and what they wanted, their vacation would have been very different. Kate could have said, “I’m not very happy in my marriage. My husband has the job, and I’ve given up mine. I’m trying to make myself feel important, even though I don’t feel important.” She bought into the idea of what she thought would make her happy. And now she isn’t and she doesn’t know how to unwind herself from it. And if she’d just come out and said all this, and if Jaclyn and Laurie just came out and told their truth, there wouldn’t be any gossiping, there wouldn’t have been that dinner where they all danced around the subject. There would be a way to actually have the uncomfortable conversations. They’ve known each other since they were eight years old, and somehow they feel like strangers to each other. And you realise it’s because everybody’s compartmentalising.
What do you think is holding Kate back from putting it all out there?
I think her real fear is that they’re going to drop her. And for Kate, these friendships are very important to her because they knew her when she was at her most fearless. But now, she’s the one of the triangle who can be most easily dismissed. When they’re in the party scene, they say something like “Oh, Kate doesn’t dance.” They’re so dismissive of Kate! They’re always acting like “Oh, Kate.” “Shut up, Kate.” “Fuck off, Kate.” I was like, “If one more person tells poor Kate to shut up…!”
Knowing this about Kate makes the scene where Victoria Ratliff completely blanks her at breakfast even more crushing. Will we learn more in the finale about their connection? Or was that scene more about unravelling Kate’s psyche for the audience?
I can’t tell you whether or not it expands more. What I can tell you is that in that moment, Kate feels invisible. That scene may seem benign, but it’s integral in informing us who Kate is. She’s just desperate for people to see her. She’s got this one friend, Jaclyn, who’s so famous. She’s got this other friend, Laurie, who’s so rooted in herself. And now there’s Victoria and the way she dismisses Kate. She’s thinking, This fucking lady is sitting there looking at me like we didn’t spend a whole weekend together? It’s sort of a heartbreaking moment for her. Her insecurity, how badly she wants to be seen—it’s all on display in that scene.
Being the Blonde Blob meant that you, Carrie, and Michelle had to pull from the same wardrobe haul but still create an individual style that told your story. What story was Kate’s wardrobe telling?
I made this choice with Kate where the outfit she arrives in is very different than the rest of her vacation wardrobe. Because she is definitely the kind of woman who goes to buy a whole new wardrobe for a vacation. She’s got the money, so she’s going to go shopping for new clothes, and she’s never gonna wear them again in Austin. So when Kate shows up, she’s in this Paul Smith dress, and it’s very straight. And then as soon as she sets foot on that island, she’s Tits McGee! Everything is V-neck, everything is low-cut. I can imagine that back home, it’s not what she wears to functions with her husband, Dave. But here, she’s pretending to be somebody else.
What about the pyjamas she wears at the pool party back in the villa?
In that episode, she’s wearing that crazy, amazing, very provocative dress through the water-gun fight scene and then the party scene. But by the time they go back to the villa, Kate cannot stand those Russian guys, and she’s so annoyed with Valentin. He is ruining her vacation. He’s wreaking havoc between her friends. So I went on set on the day of the shoot, and I asked the costume designer what I was wearing in that pool scene. She said, “The same dress.” And I said, “I want to change to pyjamas.” Because there’s nothing more passive-aggressive than bringing people back to your house and then putting on pajamas that say, Get the fuck out.
After that episode aired, a friend of mine told me about two separate occasions where she’d hosted a dinner party and had to go upstairs and come back down in pyjamas. Only then did her guests get the hint that it was time to go. So you were really onto something there!
See, that woman—you tell her, “Thank you.” She gets it. At first, Mike and the costume designer weren’t sure about it. I was like, “No, no, no, make them fabulous.” I wanted them to say party, so they have this print with little jet planes and champagne bottles. But they’re also long-sleeved—not a cute T-shirt and shorts set—so that Kate can be covered up. To her, it felt like an armor. So it says: “I’m here to party. But also, get out of my house.” It’s such an asshole move without being an asshole. I showed it to Mike and he just started laughing.
It sounds like you’re drawing from some experience yourself here.
Honestly, though, can I tell you something else about the pyjama thing? I present as an extrovert, but I’m really an introvert. Sam Rockwell, though, is just a total introvert. He’s so shy. He does not like to throw a party; he wants to be at the party. But we always end up hosting for some reason. We will have people over at our house and he will literally just get up and leave. One time we were throwing a party and I was like, “Where’s Sam?” And he suddenly walked into the house with our neighbours from down the street. He’d just left the party, went to their house, hung out with them for a while, and then walked back to the party. And I said, “Cookie, what are you doing?” He said, “I got overwhelmed.” So someone like Kate might walk around in pyjamas, but he just leaves!
Carrie Coon had a lot to say about the psychology of gossiping, though she was on the fence with my suggestion that shit-talking can be productive. What’s your take on why the trio’s gossiping scenes have resonated so much?
We all do it. Gossiping is a way of connecting. For the most part, we use gossip as a currency to connect. Why act like it’s something we all don’t do? I was at dinner with one of my guy friends, and he was sitting there just trash-talking. It made me laugh so hard. This is a 60-something-year-old straight guy gossiping about other straight guys, and in that moment, if I’d put a blonde wig on him, he’d have been part of the Blonde Blob.
Yes! We act like gossiping is a gendered thing, but men—even straight men—do it too.
One of the guys on set was the dolly grip, Paul, a Kiwi dude. And he’s, like, a dude, right? Michelle and I finished a scene, and he came up to me and said, “I love the ladies’ storyline.” I said, “You do?” And he said, “Yeah, it’s my favorite one.” I ran to Mich and said, “Paul said we’re his favorite storyline! Maybe there’s something here.”
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
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