‘The White Lotus’ interview: Star Morgana O’Reilly on digital detox in Season 3

Morgana O’Reilly, who plays wellness mentor Pam in Mike White’s hugely successful social satire, ‘The White Lotus’, says she was delighted at the chance to tell people to get off their devices on the show 

Morgana O’Reilly had the role of a lifetime playing the cheerful Pam in the third season of Mike White’s social satire, The White Lotus. After Hawaii and Sicily, Season 3 was set in a luxury resort in Thailand. As the wellness mentor to the wealthy Ratliffs played by Jason Isaacs and Parker Posey with Patrick Schwarzenegger, Sarah Catherine Hook and Sam Nivola playing their children, Morgana gets to take away their devices for a digital detox.

“Oh, look at me. I’m so judgmental when I see kids on devices,” Morgana says with a laugh over a video call from Sydney, Australia. “’Get off the device’, I can say on the show and that’s my whole thing. I’m a bit holier than thou about the fact that I charge my phone away from my bed now. I feel like that changed my life (laughs).”

Distance from her phone, ensured Morgana started reading again. “Remember books? They’re these crazy rectangle things, filled with paper and the words.” You should try it,” the 39-year-old New Zealander says with a twinkle in her eye. “Everyone should give them a go. Sometimes when the phone is taking too much of my life, I feel there is just a lot of reactivity.”

ALSO READ:A glimpse into some of the filming locations of the third season of ‘The White Lotus’

Historically, there were times, Morgana says, when sugar or alcohol was introduced to certain populations. “You can see how it decimated people if you’re not able to keep it under control. In the future, we would be talking of people who are addicted to their devices, especially if they’ve been brought up on them.”

The White Lotus experience, Morgana says, was amazing. “It’s very big and overwhelming and a dream come true.” The White Lotus is prestige anthology television at its gorgeous and glossy best. Set in luxury resorts across the globe, White uses a death to frame a week in the life of the privileged as it comes apart. There is an upstairs-downstairs dynamic going on with the staff at the hotels having to keep their faces on for the guests irrespective of what is going on in their personal lives.

Remember the brilliant Murray Bartlett as the resort manager, Armond, telling a trainee to be a “pleasant interchangeable helper,” in Season 1? Morgana auditioned and got the role of Pam. “I loved Season 1 and 2. When I saw that the role was that of a staff member, I wanted to give her the layers of somebody who was fighting her own demons underneath, and had a firmly placed mask of civility over the top.”