Page 98 - Metropolis Magazine nº115

a great actress and so fun. I just these more hard-boiled type Can you talk about the Ratliff
remember after the first season, of characters like Rick, Walton sibling dynamic?
there were a lot of people that Goggins’s character, and there's Mike White: The concept of
were bummed that Belinda had this trope of these bald men who Timothy’s storyline is a father who
such a melancholy fate and that are traveling alone or sometimes loves his family and is a provider
she was stuck working at this have younger girlfriends and and now that's threatened. There’s
hotel and her dreams of having you just feel like they may have this idea of his inability to admit
this spa had been dashed. And left in the middle of the night defeat combined with this fear
so, I felt like there might be a way from wherever they're coming that this family is not going to
to revisit her story that would from. That really seemed like be able to function without the
be satisfying because we left her something I could lean into as comforts and conveniences that
kind of hanging there. The idea far as generating stories and come with money.
of working with her again was characters that would be unique to And there’s Victoria who
incentive enough. the Thailand story. thinks her family is better than
everybody else and no one else
Exploring masculinity? I think masculinity can be a kind even matters. She's created this
Mike White: In my experience of trap with this sense of having sort of situation where everyone's
of going to Thailand, some of the to live, think and be a certain looking inward and nobody is
expats I saw there, I thought, way and how that isolates these looking outward and so it creates
‘what's the deal with that guy?’ guys. Jason Isaacs’ character and a little bit of a dysfunction. She's
Like ‘where is he from?’ There Walton's character are both such a snob that she doesn't
were a lot of people who were guys caught in this isolating think nobody is worthy of her
being very vague about who they drama that they can't get out of. I children.
were, where they came from or felt like that was something that Then, you have a brother, Saxon,
what they did. Usually, I write was worth exploring. and a sister, Piper, who are both

98 METROPOLIS FEBRUARY 2025