Mike White Responds to ‘White Lotus’ Composer Leaving Show: ‘I Guess He Just Didn’t Respect Me’
Written by djfrosty on April 8, 2025
Speaking to Howard Stern on Tuesday morning (April 8) just two days after the controversial season three finale of his hit HBO series The White Lotus, Mike White said he doesn’t really know what the beef over the the show’s soundtrack was all about. Last week, show composer Cristóbal Tapia de Veer told the New York Times that he was permanently checking out of the gig after what he said were years of creative disputes with White over the Chilean musician’s unconventional musical style.
“Oh man… I honestly don’t know what happened, except now I’m reading his interviews because he decided to do some P.R. campaign about him leaving the show,” White nervously laughed while speaking to Stern on his SiriusXM morning radio show. “In reading the interviews I just realized he… I just don’t think he respected me. I think he basically, he wants people to know he’s edgy and dark and I’m… I watch reality TV,” added White, who, has, in fact, joyfully competed on both The Amazing Race (twice) and Survivor: David Vs. Goliath.
Trending on Billboard
In his chat with the Times, Tapia de Veer compared his collaboration with White as being akin to the kind of rock bands he’s been in before where, “the guitar player doesn’t understand the singer at all.” In fact, the composer who has won three Emmys for his work on the show said he’d had creative conflicts with White since the very first season of the show. He noted that he thought the show runner’s script for the first go-round was very “well-written,” but that he felt the comedic, “reality TV kind of vibe” did not fit with his “super dark and edgy” musical leanings.
“But when we had the talk with Mike, I just told him in a joke that I thought we could do some kind of ‘Hawaiian Hitchcock,’ and he really grabbed on that and he started laughing,” Tapia de Veer said, while also dinging White’s original temporary score as “nice background music” with a “chill, sexy” Ibiza club vibe but “literally no edge to it.”
Tapia de Veer also noted that after his divisive soundtrack for the just-concluded season received push-back from fans who missed the beloved melodies from the first two seasons, he planned to slyly bring back the “ool-loo-loo-loo” vocalizations they desired, but that White “wasn’t happy about that.”
White seemed perplexed by the apparent animus, telling Stern “we never even really fought… he said we feuded. I don’t think I ever had a fight with him, except maybe some emails. But it was just basically, like, me giving him notes. I don’t think he liked having to go through the process of getting notes from me or wanting revisions or ever. I guess he just didn’t respect me.”
In fact, White told Stern that he’s “never kissed somebody’s ass so hard” just to get them to be on board as he did with Tapia de Veer.
The show creator added that he knew Tapia de Veer was “not a team player and that he wanted to do it his way,” but that he was thrown that the musician would go to the Times to “s–t on me and the show three days before the finale. That was kind of a b–ch move.” Stern shot back that as the show’s writer and creator, White should have had the power to weigh in on the musical choices on the series that is his sole vision.
“Anyone that you hire, they gotta go with your vision, that’s it!” Stern suggested.
“Well that’s honestly why it did work the first couple seasons, because we did go through the process,” White explained. “But by the time the third season came around he’d won Emmys and had his song go viral, so he just did not want to go through the process anymore. He didn’t want to get notes from me… he always had this contemptuous smirk on his face whenever he was dealing with me. I think he thought I was just a chimp or something. I don’t know.”
In the end, White said he was confused by the ire over what he said was a pretty typical “creative difference” with the composer he readily praised as “really talented.”