The White Lotus season four: Laura Dern checks in as last-minute replacement after Helena Bonham Carter’s exit

It’s not quite an Enlightened revival but it’s pretty close.

Laura Dern will reunite with writer, producer and director Mike White on the fourth season of The White Lotus, replacing Helena Bonham Carter who abruptly left the production last week.

Bonham Carter had been one of the first starry cast members announced for the upcoming, France-set season, but HBO revealed on Friday that the character created for the actor “did not align once on set”.

The decision was made to quickly rewrite the character and recast the role as filming had already begun.

Dern and White’s professional collaborations stretch back to 2007 on Year of the Dog, a film he wrote and directed. They also worked together on Enlightened, the two-season 2011 HBO black comedy about a self-destructive woman who has a breakdown.

Dern has even appeared on The White Lotus previously, albeit only as a voice on the other end of a combustible phone call in season two, as the estranged wife of Michael Imperioli’s character.

The pair are old friends, and according to the actor, White had encouraged her to be “as angry as you want” when they recorded that call.

Given White’s penchant for creating spiky characters, what he has previously said about wortking with Dern should bode well for her turn in The White Lotus.

“She’s definitely unlike most actresses I’ve worked with in the sense that she’s not consumed with the likeability of the character,” he told Buzzfeed in 2013. “In fact, she wants to play the edges, and is completely fearless about being unpleasant or unappealing in moments.”

Dern will join season four cast members Steve Coogan, Heather Graham, Kumail Nanjiani, Vincent Cassel, Sandra Bernhard, Chris Messina, Ari Graynor, Max Greenfield, Rosie Peretz, Chloe Bennet, Alexander Ludwig, AJ Michalka and Australian actor Caleb Jonte Edwards.

The White Lotus premiered in 2021 as a pandemic-era project because the whole production could be filmed in isolation at the Four Seasons resort in Maui, Hawaii. Subsequent seasons were set in Sicily and Phuket.

The general organising principle of the plot involves rich and privileged American guests checking into the resort for a week-long holiday, and clashing with their expectations, their hang-ups and the hotel staff. There is always at least one death.

The fourth season, which started filming in mid-April, will be largely set in the French Riviera, but will also shoot secondary scenes in Monaco and Paris.

White has said the story will examine celebrity, and is expected to include a plotline involving the famed Cannes Film Festival, which takes place every year in mid-May.

If the formerly Bonham Carter character and now Dern character intersects with the Cannes subplot, then there was a definite rush to recast with this year’s film festival set to start on May 12. It’s likely the production will attempt to film amid the glitz and glamour of the real-life event.

Cannes’ The Hotel Martinez will stand in as The White Lotus Cannes, but the majority of the action will be set at the fictional The White Lotus du Cap, which will be filmed at the Airelles Chateau de la Messadiere in St Tropez.

Airelles can reportedly cost up at $35,000 a night for its residences.

White told W magazine that the upcoming season is “a bit about fame, about who has the world’s attention, who is the plus-one, and how that can organise a relationship.

“Some people are satisfied with the love of just an intimate partner, and some people need the love of strangers and a bigger kind of attention.”

A premiere date for the fourth season has not yet been set but is expected to be in 2027.