How “The White Lotus” Found Frisky Inspiration in a Real-Life Sicilian Villa

Generally you simply want a trip out of your trip. That’s actually the case on this week’s episode of The White Lotus (Season 2, Episode 3), when Daphne (Meghann Fahy) hijacks a women’ journey to Noto, Sicily, stunning Harper (Aubrey Plaza) with an surprising in a single day keep in a stunning Italian palazzo she noticed on-line. There, the gals swim, snack, and get stoned—not essentially in that order—finally discovering widespread floor of their shared humanity. (Little do they know, nevertheless, that their husbands are moving into a complete heap of hassle again on the Lotus.)  

The three-story Sicilian palazzo the place the women spend the night time is thought in actual life as Villa Tasca, and truly sits within the coastal capital, Palermo, removed from the southern metropolis of Noto. First inbuilt 1565 by the Baron de Montefalco as a summer season looking lodge, the historic home underwent varied renovations till the 1700s, when it assumed its present type. The neoclassical villa sits on a big plot of land proper smack in the midst of city, close to the highway to the Norman city of Monreale. A lot of the present backyard has been in place because the 1800s, making the bay fig, cypress, and stone fir bushes a few of the most mature within the area. There are a number of synthetic lakes and ponds located throughout the property’s 20 acres—together with one inhabited by three swans—in addition to a grotto, a synthetic mountain, and a round temple devoted to Ceres, the Roman god of agriculture. The property additionally boasts each a Romantic and “Irregolare” gardens, the latter of which takes John Claudius Loudon’s conventional English gardenesque fashion and flips it on its head a bit, filling within the plant beds and pots with extra climate-appropriate crops like palms, cycads, and an enormous Norfolk Island Pine. 

Quite a few luminaries have graced the property through the years, together with Italian violinist Niccolò Paganini, German aristocrat Otto Von Bismarck, former U.S. first girl Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and, most notably, German opera composer Richard Wagner, who stayed on the property whereas he was writing the third act of Parsifal. That elite visitor record extends to Hollywood productions, as nicely: The White Lotus is just the second manufacturing to ever shoot on the non-public villa, in keeping with proprietor Giuseppe Tasca, who mentioned the primary was 1974’s Il viaggio, starring Sophia Loren and Richard Burton. (“I used to be very younger, so I don’t keep in mind a lot,” Tasca says. “I do know it was solely a few days, they usually needed to ship me me out of my room as a result of Sophia Loren needed to get in.”)  

The hit TV collection landed at Tasca’s villa due to his friendship with journey knowledgeable Emily Fitzroy, who was enlisted by HBO to assist scout areas for the present’s second season. She’d beforehand helped the community craft Succession’s extravagant Tuscany getaway and says that when she heard The White Lotus was in search of websites in Italy, she instantly considered Sicily. “Sicily is so completely different from the remainder of Italy,” she says. “It’s obtained this magic spell and you may completely fall in love with this bizarre, intoxicating island and the individuals which can be on it.” She says she additionally favored the concept Sicily is “one other wild, volcanic, barely savage place,” very similar to Hawaii, the setting for The White Lotus’s first season. 

FitzRoy herself was married on the Italian island some years in the past, and that’s when she met Tasca. She’s been placing vacationers up in his villa ever since (the non-public residence might be booked for occasions and vacation leases), sitting down with the proprietor just a few occasions a 12 months for a drink. In the summertime of 2021, she introduced The White Lotus creator Mike White alongside for a type of drinks, and he and Tasca hit it off. Tasca invited White to his palazzo, and White determined it might be an ideal location to make use of sooner or later within the present.  

FitzRoy says that convincing Tasca to let White and the present into the villa wasn’t all that sophisticated. “Having carried out Succession, I knew that HBO has enormous respect for the areas they work in, so there was by no means a fear about something being trashed,” she says. “These are very a lot homes that aren’t open to most of the people that may usually by no means say sure to a giant movie crew coming in and spending weeks, if not months, with them, however I can maintain their arms and say to the house owners, ‘It’s my neck on the road if something goes mistaken.’”  

“It was fairly scary at first, however they have been very skilled,” Tasca says. “Mike White was virtually like a soccer supervisor, cheering, ‘Let’s go!’” I didn’t anticipate everyone to be working arduous whereas additionally in a unbelievable temper. All people was smiling.”

Whereas on the palatial dwelling, White additionally fell in love with the muted frescoes depicting whimsical revelers and gods. Tasca calls the pastoral work barely “anthropocentric,” explaining, “the person [in the drawings] is at all times in the midst of a sin.” These considerably suggestive frescoes have been so inspiring to White that their affect truly prolonged past the boundaries of the “Bull Elephants” episode, even changing into the inspiration for the season’s opening credit, although each FitzRoy and Tasca say the manufacturing staff took some liberties when it got here to creating the drawings somewhat extra racy. “I feel they’ve tweaked a few of the ones to make them a bit ruder than they’re, though they’re fairly impolite,” FitzRoy says. “After I noticed the start of the present, I used to be like, ‘Oh, I’ve by no means seen that earlier than,’” Tasca provides. “Once you reside someplace, you don’t at all times see the main points. I solely later realized they added completely different components to the designs.”  

As is at all times the case in The White Lotus, Villa Tasca isn’t only a fairly background for the episode, however an integral a part of the inside workings of the characters. The women take full benefit of the house’s grand sun-soaked pure pool, with a half-submerged Daphne telling Harper she actually simply desires her husband to imagine the pair didn’t come again to the resort as a result of they’re “residing it up in some sick palazzo,” making the villa not only a residence, but additionally a pawn in an extended recreation of relationship chess. Later, in a little bit of naughty foreshadowing within the episode, Plaza’s Harper will get wacked out of her thoughts on a weed edible and stares on the Piano Nobile room’s intricate frescoes as in the event that they’re a window right into a parallel dimension or time, and a really stoned Harper and snack-happy Daphne make the most of the room’s comfortable couches to have a revealing chat about whether or not their husbands cheat. 

Villa Tasca and its luxe particulars ended up not being the one factor that made an impression on White, both: The director additionally ended up casting its proprietor within the collection. Viewers can see the amiable Sicilian in his factor within the “Bull Elephants” episode giving Fahy and Plaza’s characters a tour of his beloved villa. It’s one thing that comes pure to Tasca, who says he’s each pleased with the house’s historical past and enthusiastic about its future: “It’s a really previous dwelling, however it’s very good to maintain it alive in a dynamic method.”  

High photograph courtesy of Mondadori Portfolio Editorial / Getty Pictures.

Associated Studying:

How ‘Don’t Fear Darling’ Grew to become the First Film to Movie at Richard Neutra’s Kaufmann Home

How the Caterpillar Home Set the Stage for Zendaya’s Secret Film Filmed Below Lockdown