Mike White responds to ‘White Lotus’ composer quitting

Just two days after the Season 3 finale of “The White Lotus,” the hit HBO show’s creator Mike White responded to the series’ composer announcing he was quitting the show due to creative differences between him and White.

White, who also directed and executive produced the series, said in an interview with Howard Stern on April 8 that he didn’t know what happened with Cristobal Tapia de Veer, the composer behind the music for the series since Season 1.

“I honestly don’t know what happened, except now I’m reading his interviews because he decides to do some PR campaign about him leaving the show,” White said. “I don’t think he respected me.”

“He wants people to know that he’s edgy and dark and, I don’t know, like I watch reality TV,” he continued. “We never really even fought. He says we feuded. I don’t think I ever had a fight with him — except for maybe some emails. It was basically me giving him notes.”

White added that the thought Tapia de Veer didn’t like the process of getting notes or wanting revisions from him because “he didn’t respect me.”

“I knew he wasn’t a team player and that he wanted to do it his way. I was thrown that he would go to The New York Times to s— on me and the show three days before the finale,” he said. “It was kind of a b—- move.”

Stern replied that White was the director, and that the people on his team need to go along with his vision. He’s also the writer and executive producer of the series.

“Honestly, that’s why it did work the first couple of seasons, because we did go through the process,” White said. “But by the time the third season came around, he’d won Emmys, and I don’t know, he had this song go viral, and so he just did not want to go through the process anymore. He didn’t want to get notes from me.”

“He would just always look at me, like he always had this, like, contemptuous smirk on his face, and whenever he was dealing with me because I just think he thought I was just a chimp or something,” he continued.

White said Tapia de Veer was “definitely making a big deal out of just a creative difference of opinion,” and added that he thought the composer was “very talented.”

“I have never kissed somebody’s a– so hard to just get him to, you know, to lead that horse to water,” White said.

“He just didn’t respect me, I guess, so have fun doing whatever you’re doing next,” he added. “I don’t know, onwards for me.”

Just days before the finale aired on April 6, Tapia de Veer told The New York Times that he wouldn’t be returning for Season 4 of “The White Lotus” after experiencing creative differences with the show’s team.

“I announced to the team a few months ago that I was not coming back, that I was leaving. I didn’t tell Mike for various reasons; I wanted to tell him just at the end for the shock and whatever,” Tapia de Veer said. “Except I told the whole editorial team and music editor and producer and all that, but I didn’t think that they were going to tell him. At some point he heard about that.”

Tapia de Veer said there had been disagreements with the music since Season 1 of the show aired in 2021, and that he had not been given any direction for the theme song for Season 3.

“Enlightenment,” the Season 3 theme, was a departure from the beloved tracks from previous seasons — leaving viewers without the iconic vocals that devoted fans came to love in Season 2.

“I have, like, over 20 versions of that theme, with and without the ooh-loo-loo-loos. But of course, in the 1:45 titles that’s allowed, there’s nothing from the other ones,” he said. “That was kind of a risk, but we never talked about that. I don’t think everybody was really aware of how attached people were to the ooh-loo-loo-loos.”

When the first episode of the new season aired in February, Tapia de Veer said he began getting calls for a statement about the new theme song.

“People are furious about the change of the theme, and I thought that was interesting,” he said. “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.”

“I mean, at that point, we already had our last fight forever, I think. So he was just saying no to anything. So I just uploaded that to my YouTube,” he added, referring to a longer version of the song he posted on March 19.

While the backlash to the new theme song was immediate, as the season continued, the anger directed toward Tapia de Veer subsided, he said.

“At one point, people were like insulting me and sending me horrible things. And then I started seeing these videos: ‘You know what, I used to hate the theme but now I’m kind of dancing to it.’ It’s like they’re transformed,” he said. “I was really excited about that.”

Tapia de Veer reflected on his choice to leave the 15-time Emmy award-winning show.

“I mean, it is what it is. 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,” he said.

He added that he was happy with the risks he took for the series’ music.

“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,” he said.

“I treasure that more than something else I did that was just a success, and it works and that’s that, with less struggle,” he continued. “This was a good struggle.”