Chloe’s Boredom Made That White Lotus Kiss Happen

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Spoilers follow for The White Lotus season three episode five, “Full Moon Party.”

Five episodes into The White Lotus’s third season and we’ve finally arrived at another fateful night on a yacht. Rather than a group of murderous gays with a mysterious connection to Greg Hunt, the initiator of the debauchery this time is Chloe — a hot party girl with an ambiguous past and a slightly less mysterious connection to Greg Hunt (now going by Gary). Played by French Canadian actress and model Charlotte Le Bon, Chloe is Gary’s girlfriend and an alleged escort who quickly bonds with Aimee Lou Wood’s Chelsea over their curmudgeonly older boyfriends.

Unlike Chelsea and Rick, however, Chloe has been mostly indifferent to Gary’s questionable behavior and shrouded past. In this week’s episode, Chloe reveals to Chelsea that she isn’t completely blind to her situation, admitting that she believes Gary to be capable of murder. The moment confirms that she’s harboring suspicions about him and fuels the theory that her carefree demeanor is a disguise for a more calculated and discerning character. But the rest of the night — during which she gives a high schooler drugs, encourages a friend to cheat on her partner, and goads a pair of brothers into kissing one another — may call into question just how much weight her words and actions carry. “She’s so detached from everything she’s doing and saying all the time,” says Le Bon. “She’s so bored.

At the end of episode 5, Chloe tells Chelsea, “Gary might kill me— I honestly think he’s capable of it.” Do you think she believes that?
This is the beauty of Mike’s writing. You never really know if the characters are speaking their minds or not. We don’t know if it’s just a joke or if she’s actually telling the truth. Even when we’re shooting it, it’s finding that fine line where both options could be valid. Maybe Chloe’s saying something true or maybe she’s just saying it like that because she thinks it’s funny.

She then says “that’s a chance I’m willing to take.”
She’s just so detached from everything she’s doing and saying all the time. That’s the way I approached her: detached and always a little bit bored. She’s so bored.

What makes her want to tell Chelsea?
Oh man, I don’t know. I don’t think it’s to attract attention. She probably forgets about it one minute after she said it. It’s not even heavy — I mean, it’s a very heavy sentence — but that’s just Chloe. She said it as if she was telling Chelsea what she ate last night.

There’s a moment in episode five where Chelsea is really down because she’s so worried about Rick. Chloe looks at her and says, “You’re so beautiful. You’re gorgeous.” What’s her goal with that response?
Chloe has figured it out. She’s with someone older and that gives her a lot of freedom, especially because of the money he has. It’s kind of an agreement she has with Greg. She doesn’t want to be bothered with the heaviness of life. She sees Chelsea going into this darkness with heaviness that’s not hers, it’s her boyfriend’s, and she wants her to get rid of it. She wants her to be as free as Chloe thinks she is, so it’s a sincere moment when she looks at her and tells her she’s beautiful. For Chloe, embracing beauty is also about making love and having sex, and she’s thinking, Let’s just do it. It’s fun. We’re just having fun and partying. It’s two different ways of seeing life.

Chloe is such an instigator in episode five. It feels like we’re starting to see her true colors. How did you approach bringing the character more into the center of that mischief?
On paper, she’s the life of the party, but I’m playing her and I’m not a party animal in real life. It’s kind of annoying in movies when the party animals are screaming all the time. I didn’t want to go into this as a very bold type of character. I wanted her to be very subtle and chill about everything. Nothing she does is dramatic, so she can get away with everything.

Why is she so interested in the Ratliff boys, and what does she get from encouraging them to kiss?
I think Chloe is deeply, deeply bored. There’s a void inside of her. She fills that void with partying, sex, and chaos. This kiss between the two brothers for her is just pure entertainment, which is obviously really evil when you think about it. She’s not attached to life — I don’t know how to say it. She’s just there. She’s just incarnated in this body to live the experience of life and she doesn’t really care about the rest.

Right, she’s not very focused on consequences.
Oh, not at all. She’s the kind of person who’s never thought about that, or else she was just always able to manage her way through it. She’s probably smart like that. It is really chaotic and dark.

The tension has been building between these two brothers, so obviously the kiss scene in this episode is kind of a big moment. What was the vibe leading up to that scene and on set when that was being filmed?
Well obviously they’re not brothers by blood, so that made it easier. I think for Patrick it was really difficult. For Sam, he was kind of like, it’s whatever, let’s just do it well one time and it will be over. You know? Because if you don’t do it well the first time then you have to do it over and over again. But Patrick’s reaction in the episode is his genuine reaction. We all thought he was going to throw up. And Sam was like, “It’s fine, it’s just a kiss, calm down!”

I like that she makes them go back in and do another one. Was it scripted that way?
Yes, it was two. And then she just laughs, like an evil bitch.

In prior episodes, we learn that Chloe knows about Tanya, or at least a version of it. Chloe was also there when Belinda approached Gary/Greg at dinner. Is she getting suspicious of Greg?
I really wonder what Mike thinks about it. In my head, she knows more than we think she does. Even if Greg didn’t tell her the truth, she’s smart enough to read through him. That’s why the scene in episode four where she talks about Tanya is interesting. It raises a lot of questions. Is Greg telling her lies and she believes the lies? Is Greg telling her the truth and just telling her what to say to disguise it? Does she know the truth and she decides to disguise it? These things are all really nice to play with.

Did you use Tanya or her character to inform how you were going to play Chloe?
Being on The White Lotus is already so stressful, if I had to compare myself to Jennifer Coolidge I would probably die. So I decided not to do that and just to focus on my character and the relationship between me and Jon.

Do you think Chloe and Tanya would’ve liked each other?
I really don’t think so. Tanya is a character that needed to be loved so much and was looking for validation in everyone. It probably would have the opposite effect on Chloe. She would probably completely ignore Tanya.

How did you and Jon approach the relationship between your characters?
We were inspired by the friendship we built on and off set. Jon was the first person I met when I arrived in Thailand and we bonded instantly. He’s a wonderful human being and a great actor to work with. On paper, it’s not really inspiring to play that typical relationship between a young girl and an older, wealthy man with no affection. I felt like we needed to have a little something more to it. When we were talking about it, we thought of ourselves as a team. It helped us on all the scenes we had together.

There’s a moment in episode two when Gary tells the table that Chloe is French but she corrects him that she’s actually French Canadian. I’m guessing your background informed how that was written, but how did that come to life?
In the beginning, Mike was like, “Maybe she should be French, since your English isn’t perfect.” And I said, “Well, French Canadian would be even better.” It’s rare that we see French Canadians on American TV. Mike is so welcoming to all those singularities, so he wrote a scene about it, which I thought was really smart.

Chloe and Chelsea were fast friends because of their parallel situations at the resort. How did you and Aimee Lou Wood develop the dynamic between your characters?
I think we were quite inspired by our own real dynamic in real life. If you don’t mind, I’m going to bring up astrology here.

Please!
She’s an aquarius, which is an air sign, very bubbly. And I’m a virgo, so I’m really grounded and I’m analyzing all the time. It was an instant crush between the two of us. Actually the first line I say to her in the show, which is, “I love your teeth,” is the actual first thing I said to her when I saw her because I thought she was so beautiful. I just love seeing faces like that. I said, “Oh my god, I love your teeth,” and she looked at mine — I’ve got bad teeth as well — and said, “Oh my god, I love yours!” And then I was like, OK, we need to put this in a scene. It was an instant connection.

What do you think is most similar and most different about your characters?
I think they’re actually really different, and that’s what attracts them to each other. Chelsea is very close to her feelings and Chloe’s more calculating, looking at things and analyzing before acting. She’s more cerebral. This makes for a pretty interesting pair. They also both like girly things like shopping for beautiful things and shiny bright stuff. They really complete each other.

Chloe gets to wear some great clothes. Did you build the character off of those looks?
The first scenes we shot for my character were the scenes on the yacht, so we needed that look first. French designer Jacquemus had designed some clothes for The White Lotus, but he didn’t know which character they were for. He’d sent that look to Alex Bovaird, the costume designer, and it ended up looking pretty cool. That first look was already a statement for her, the pink bikini and hat. Every other moment had to be built around that look. It was interesting to start with it and then look at other dresses and say, “Well, if she wore that, she would never wear this other dress.” We found the character like that. She was also a model who “walked the Paris runways” — I don’t know if she’s lying, but that’s what Chelsea says — so she definitely has a sense of fashion.

I’m glad you mentioned that pink outfit. Have you seen the fan conspiracies circulating about that look?
No, what are they?

A lot of them are drawing connections between Tanya’s iconic pink “Peppa Pig” look and this pink statement by Chloe. The idea is that it might allude to bigger parallels between their characters.
I love it. The fans are so smart.