Extreme measures were taken to protect the White Lotus‘ finale.
Executive producer David Bernad has revealed in a new interview the efforts that went into pre-production of HBO hit series “just in case” of future leaks.
“We have fake endings to the scripts,” Bernad spilled to People Magazine ahead of the April 6 finale of season 3.
“So we wrote up — we have six different endings — and we kind of distributed fake endings to people just in case someone leaked anything, and then we could say there’s different fake endings.”
The showrunners went through similar lengths during the production phase as well.
“And then when we shot the ending scene, it’s a locked down set,” he continues. “So no one really has access to what we were shooting and there would be no non-White Lotus participants ever seeing what we’re doing.”
By the time they started shooting season 3, there were “three secrets:” how the season 3 ends, Jon Gries’ return—after possibly killing Jennifer Coolidge’s Tanya in season 2—and Sam Rockwell’s multi-episode arc.
Bernad went on to detail how they upheld those standards through all phases in fact.
“Jon was really committed to keeping the secret,” he told the publication. “And when we were traveling and entered Thailand, he, one time, rode with the equipment in a bus, instead of flying the 45 minutes or whatever it was. I think he drove like, 12 hours from Phuket to Bangkok.”
“But we were shooting at the Four Seasons, a scene with Jon Gries, and there was people looking and filming from a room,” he recalled, noting that the crew immediately hopped on damage control.
“They didn’t know that what they were filming was sensitive, and I was really scared they were going to post it. So I had the hotel manager go and bring them over to the set and I kind of schmoozed them and got them on my side.”
Bernad said his first suggestion was deleting the video—but to ensure confidentiality, he also brought them to “hang on set.”
“[We] were like, ‘We got to make them part of the experience,’ so that I could get them to delete all the footage they had,” he recalls. “They unknowingly didn’t realise they were filming something that was very sensitive.”
