You’ll have to wait for more of The White Lotus, creator Mike White is competing on Survivor first

When The White Lotus wrapped up its third season in April, its creator Mike White gave an interview in which he talked about the pressure to start pre-production for a fourth season.

“We were supposed to start scouting in April, and I was like, ‘You guys, I haven’t been home in three years’,” he told The Hollywood Reporter.

Maybe White doesn’t like to be home, because the writer and director has just joined the 50th season of Survivor as a contestant, which is sure to pack him off to some locale far from Los Angeles.

It might seem like a surprising and rogue move, but it’s actually classic White. He competed on the show’s 37th season, and was runner-up, and with his dad Mel was twice on The Amazing Race, in 2009 and 2011. The man loves reality TV.

Survivor host Jeff Probst announced White’s casting on CBS Mornings, revealing, “Mike, after he finished playing, said, ‘I want to play again’.

“When The White Lotus hit, and I thought, ‘Well, he’ll never play again’. But he kept texting and saying, ‘Look, I’m serious. If you ever do anything where you have returning players, I want to play again’. So, we’re happy to have Mike.”

As you can glean from his spiky, uncomfortable and comedy-forward shows and movies, White is not a conventional Hollywood type. Who else could’ve gone from a writers room to a Survivor set, and come in second place?

When he joined Survivor in 2018, he already had a successful career with credits on Dawson’s Creek, Freaks and Geeks, created Enlightened and wrote the screenplays for School of Rock, Beatriz at Dinner, and a raft of other comedies.

In 2021, he recalled to The New Yorker when he joined The Amazing Race for the first time. “I remember I was at a party at Courteney Cox’s house – I’m not really good friends with her, but I was there. And I was just about to go on Amazing Race, and Jennifer Aniston was there, and I was so proud and excited.

“I was like, ‘I’m going on Amazing Race with my dad’. I could see Jennifer Aniston’s eyes being like, ‘Why the f—k’. That’s not anything that anyone aspire to, to be a reality contestant.”

On that season of Amazing Race, the 18th, White and dad Mel finished sixth when they were eliminated on a leg in Thailand. White said one of his initial hesitations about shooting the third season of The White Lotus there was because of those elimination memories from Amazing Race.

The pair returned two years later but was eliminated on the third leg and finished in 10th.

Like White, Mel was also a writer but his involvement in the performing arts was different. He was a prominent clergyman in the Evangelical movement and had written and ghost-written projects for the likes of conservative firebrands Pat Robertson, Billy Graham and Jerry Falwell.

In 1993, Mel came out publicly as gay and published a memoir, Stranger at the Gate: To Be Gay and Christian in America, but was essentially cut off by his former friends in the church.

Because of his family history, White grew up attending Christian churches and camps, but turned to eastern philosophies, which he put to use in The White Lotus, during a stressful period while showrunning his series, Cracking Up in the mid-2000s.

A devoted Survivor fan – “(It’s) the only show I really devotedly watch” – White looks to the drama of Survivor to fuel his own TV writing.

He told The New Yorker in 2021, “Part of my job and my way of life is studying people and analysing motivation and character. I still feel like, even on the most contrived reality show, the people are human, and they’re more interesting than some of the most well-scripted drama.

“For me, as a writer of drama, I aspire to do what reality television already does. To create characters that are surprising and dimensional and do weird sh-t and capture your attention.”

With another season of Survivor soon-to-be under his belt, White will have plenty of more inspiration for the next season of The White Lotus.