Could 'The White Lotus' Décor Hold Clues to This Season's Finale? Production Designer Cristina Onori Shares Her Inside Look

Some 16 minutes into The Meaning of Dreams, the third episode of The White Lotus Season 3, Lochlan Ratliff, the painfully awkward, heartwarming teenager portrayed by Sam Nivola, turns to his father, Timothy (Jason Isaacs), with an iPad in his hands: "Dad look," he exclaims, aghast. "He didn't even run, he just stood there. That happened here, like the next beach over." Playing on the screen is a YouTube video that depicts a man's helpless final moments before being washed away by a tsunami that, based on the series' storyline, had previously hit the island where Lochlan, his older siblings Saxon (Patrick Schwarzenegger) and Piper (Sarah Catherine Hook), and his mother, Victoria (Parker Posey), are now vacationing off the east coast of Thailand alongside dozens of equally affluent, appearance-obsessed, and often arrogant, characters. "Do you want to keep giving us nightmares?" the latter promptly talks back. "Not really," says a mortified Lochlan. "Then put that down, please."

It's an apt reminder that not even the most lavish of the world's best design hotels — including the Four Seasons Resort Koh Samui where the latest instalment of The White Lotus was largely shot, can spare spendy holidayers from nature's fury, should they find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time. A living example of how, when stripped of glitz and glam, we all look the same to Mother Earth.

It was "the dichotomy between darkness and light, the sinister and the naturally beautiful" that helped Emmy-winning production designer Cristina Onori craft the eerily hypnotic atmosphere at the heart of season three. "Sometimes what appears gorgeous in the daytime can morph into something much more dangerous when night comes," she tells me over an email exchange. "Finding that balance was important this season, and nature is really everywhere in the design."

Towering, monkeys-inhabited coconut trees, luscious, tangled-up branches, coruscating bodies of water, and unruly wildlife both adorn and intrude into the picture-perfect wellness retreat that offers the backdrop to the mixed bag of entertainment and drama that is The White Lotus. Whether appearing in their live or sculptural form, or as timeless modern interior design additions, these elements are omnipresent across the resort's exterior and rooms, and occasionally even resurface as tropical prints on the protagonists' clothing. Such recurring references aren't coincidental: "The countless animals relate to the characters' deepest hopes and fatal flaws throughout the story," explains the production designer. "This is all inextricable from the reality of Thailand, where the wonder of the natural world finds its way into people's souls." Throughout the filming process, the surrounding environment wasn't just another prop, "but a living presence," Onori continues. "Sometimes unsettling, sometimes reassuring." The same is true of the spiritual aura that, albeit at odds with the protagonists' flamboyant lifestyle and narcissism, pervades the set in its entirety, starting with the colossal Buddha statues scattered across its hazy gardens.

For the production designer, who came off the record-smashing success of the Taormina-based The White Lotus Season 2, being confronted with a culture as multifaceted as that of Thailand made research an even more essential, and demanding, aspect of her contribution, she confesses. To render its richly intricate symbolism and aesthetic without falling victim to generalizations, Onori "aimed for a full immersion" in the Southeast Asian country. She let her first-hand sensory impressions of Thailand guide her along the journey, collecting ideas as she explored places physically before backing them up with information retrieved from multiple books and visual guides.

Despite the project's mammoth undertaking, her outsider perspective was what "allowed me and the Thai team to complement each other's approaches, ultimately crafting a design that truly represented Thailand as a whole," shares Onori. Below, the production designer tells us about how she got started in this world before delving into her greatest inspirations, her collaboration with The White Lotus director Mike White, and how she brought his Season 3 script to life through design — all in her own words.

"My first projects as an architect were in the late 80s. I was working with a big company on international commissions that, not observant of any of the geoclimatic and cultural characteristics of specific places, clashed with my values. It was an approach that made me feel as if I couldn't express myself in that field. So when some friends asked me to oversee the construction for Fantozzi alla riscossa (1990), a famous Italian comedy, I was excited to try something new. They knew I had skills in design and architecture, so they trusted me with the large-scale construction sets on stage. Because Fantozzi was a comedy, there was this wonderful element of fantasy to work with. Suddenly, I was able to lean into my sense of creativity and play, and the entire experience aligned so much more with my sensibilities, as it combined my architectural knowledge with my two passions: cinema and theater.

"The production designer gives physical form to the script, working alongside the director and following their vision. A lot of the work involves enhancing what has been written by creating and organizing the visual pieces surrounding the characters. I develop the environment where the actions take place, helping tell the story visually. This involves historical, social, and psychological research — whether based on text, literature, photography, art, or personal experience. Through close collaboration with the director and the cinematographer, we find an overall style, look, and mood for the film. First, we create mood boards to establish the overall aesthetic and tone. Then, we produce sketches and models to visualize the sets. Once approved, we oversee the construction of the sets. Afterward, in collaboration with the set decorator, we dress the sets with carefully chosen colors, furniture, textures, and details. Finally, with the prop master, we select props to bring the characters to life.

"The film that inspires me most is Ridley Scott's Blade Runner. It tells the story of a dystopian world, which is both futuristic and decayed, and the production design is a monumentally crucial piece of bringing that world to life. The design blends neon-lit advertisements, noir-inspired shadows, and layered architecture, creating a dimension that, feeling oppressive, reinforces themes of alienation and the blurred line between human and machine. These richly textured environments and the strong choice of colors (a warm yellow/orange for richer quarters and blues for the cold city streets) tell a story on their own.

"The production design for The White Lotus takes shape from a long conversation with Mike about what moods and vibes we want to bring out from the story. He shares his thoughts, feelings, and intentions for the whole project before we start to build out an idea. The country we land in guides much of my work, as I strive to represent that country's culture through design as respectfully as comprehensively. When the first scripts arrive and the characters begin to form, it helps me shape their environments and bring out their personalities and styles. This all comes together to serve the story, and many more conversations with Mike help us combine all the pieces of the design into the cohesive show you see today.

"Plants and animals became symbols and motifs this season — each group of characters in the story is represented by particular animals. In this way, the animals you see throughout the season are not just decorative. There is a clear contrast between the environment of Thailand, where nature is constantly present, and the environments the characters come from, where nature is confined to very controlled spaces. Part of the story draws strength from the fact that these characters are immersed in nature and in such close proximity to animals for what feels like the first time, which provokes various emotions in them — fear, unease, and suffocation, to name a few. The animals in the design bring out a deeper resonance in the parts of the story that call upon the natural world to propel the characters toward conflict and emotion.

"Spirituality is one of Thailand's most ancient and intrinsic aspects, and it was a large inspiration and guide through my process. While visiting so many stunning temples with Mike, we had the privilege of seeing these ancient Buddhist murals. We felt it could be interesting for The White Lotus to link each character to a specific section of those murals, creating a visual and narrative connection between the painted story and the character's journey. We placed them in the bedrooms of the characters to bring the past into the present. The Buddhist frescoes represent human archetypes — similar to Greek myths in classical Western culture, these images represent the life of Buddha, conveying the country's history and mythology while evoking universal human experiences.

"Throughout this season, the luxurious décor, artwork, and architecture lure the characters into this world of exclusive opportunity and entitlement, exposing their shallow desires and dysfunctional relationships. The selected artworks reveal hardships and cracks in the façades that these characters put up to hide themselves from one another. Their relationships become clearer through the art that follows them throughout the hotel. With Mike, we came up with specific colors for the furniture and textiles that could relate to the different groups of characters. I focused on adding dimension to the hotel rooms by using natural materials, like local teak wood, in the wooden panels and screens that stand in each of the hotel rooms, inspired by northern Thai architecture, as well as rosewood furniture and mango wooden frames and screens.

"The communal areas of each hotel room were all redesigned by contemporary artists to reinterpret Thai craftsmanship through a modern lens. Much of the furniture was designed and built for this specific project in collaboration with set decorator Letizia Santucci. In the bedrooms, benches were positioned at the foot of the beds, and additional antique furniture pieces and objects were added as references to both spirituality and Thai architecture. The Four Seasons in Koh Samui is such a prime location — being so secluded, it allowed me to highlight the privilege of the characters who have the opportunity to stay there. The luxurious furnishings of the hotel contributed to that feeling of wealth and status, while the fact that vegetation is so woven into its architecture accentuated the importance of nature in the story. The crystal clear sea and the abundant greenery were characters of their own in this season of The White Lotus.

"Because the Four Seasons didn't provide certain visual elements essential for our show, we had to expand and link additional hotels, even on different islands. Anantara Bo Phut in Samui served as our main exterior entrance and reception area, Anantara Mai Khao in Phuket as the spa, and Rosewood Phuket as the dinner restaurant. All the locations we shot in were baselines that we expanded and modified. The hotels were adapted to fit the same aesthetics, also by building new sets inside the resorts themselves to expand the world of the story, like in the case of the guard's booth. Additionally, all the bedroom spaces were reconstructed and enlarged in a soundstage in Bangkok: this allowed for greater creative and technical freedom while ensuring the look would stay true to what was filmed on location.

"Buddhism and spirituality played a large part in my design this season. While travelling all over Thailand, I was struck by the spirit houses that you can find anywhere, from homes and sidewalks to religious sites. The tradition of spirit houses dates back centuries, long before the arrival of Buddhism in Thailand, and is related to animism, the belief that spirits inhabit all elements of the natural world — mountains, trees, rivers, etc. These shrines were added into each villa in the hotel set, as they serve as a home for spirits who guard the land. It was important to me to include these spirit houses on set because the Thai characters paid close attention to them, while the hotel guests never noticed them. It further illuminated the differences between the cultures within the story.

"The color orange is also woven through the entire season. This color palette was inspired by Thai monks' robes in all their different variations, based on monks' ranking and structure. I wanted to blend past and present into a cohesive aesthetic that spoke to this country's lush cultural and artistic history, such that this color is not only decorative on the sets we built but also a spiritual element. The artworks in the hotel lobby, common rooms, suites, and bedrooms are a specific section of ancient Buddhist murals, which create a visual and narrative connection between the painted story and the character's journey. We felt it could be interesting for The White Lotus to link each character with a specific scene in the Buddhist frescoes.

"The location that best reflected the atmosphere of my design was the floating, movable island with a large statue of Buddha in the middle of a pond that we built to serve the script. Because it was so big, we definitely had to put in the work to make it come to life, but it all came together to communicate a beautiful theme of spirituality and the importance of balance — it almost became a symbol of my own experience working on this season. I felt at peace knowing that all the work we did would create a place that was both new and exciting while remaining unmistakably White Lotus.

"I am proudest of the fact that this production blended five different hotels plus stages — each with its own specific design — into one cohesive product. We had the opportunity to transform and adapt the different hotels by bringing Thai character to them and peeling away the international sheen to create the White Lotus Thailand. It was extremely important to make it a unique experience while also making it recognizable. We couldn't lose what defines the White Lotus look/style, but we also got to reinvent pieces of it. We brought all of this together by incorporating Thai architectural and decorative elements into all of our design choices while working within a fully operational hotel.

"I would like my contribution to The White Lotus to stand on its own — I don't want it to be a simple backdrop or case, but at its core, something that tells the story visually through history, symbology, shape, and color. In the same way that a musician tells a story through music and a photographer through photos, I tell a story through my design.

"My main piece of advice to aspiring production designers is: be open to working with others, collaborate, and spend as much time as you can absorbing different cultures and history, history, and history! Finding a job or experience where you can come into close contact with as many different people as you can will yield incredible results in your creativity and design in the future. It's not just about traveling or finding new countries to explore — it's really about expanding your understanding of people and the stories we share with one another. The aspiration is to be open-minded; constraining yourself will do nothing for your creative expression. Production design is an all-encompassing experience, and we can't underestimate that."

The White Lotus Season 3 is available to stream via Sky Atlantic and Now TV

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