The White Lotus has cemented its cast just days after having to replace Oscar nominee Helena Bonham-Carter.
The HBO drama has added Gandhi Oscar winner Ben Kingsley, The Handmaid Tale‘s Max Minghella, and Swedish actor Pekka Strang to its already star-studded cast.
The 16-time Emmy-winning show will venture to the French Riviera for its fourth season, which will reportedly follow two disparate groups of hotel guests and employees during the week-long Cannes Film Festival.
Bonham Carter, 59, reportedly signed on to play a washed-up star hoping to make her Hollywood comeback at the film festival before she abruptly exited the show late last month, despite filming for a week. At the time, the reported reason for the exit was “creative differences.”
Last week, Variety reported that “differences” arose out of show creator Mike White’s “demand for a boisterous performance.”
She was quickly replaced by Oscar and Emmy-winning actress Laura Dern, who previously collaborated with White, 55, on Year of the Dog and Enlightened, for which she won a Golden Globe.
Cast member Steve Coogan revealed new details about the actress’s surprise exit, noting that the part had been completely rewritten for Dern, 59.
“It just went in a different direction,” he told Deadline on Sunday. “It was like, sometimes you find that something isn’t working the way you want it to, in terms of, like, the character and the dynamic of the whole story. So that was just a mutual decision…The whole part was rewritten from scratch.”
HBO said in a statement at the time, “With filming just underway on season four of The White Lotus, it had become apparent that the character which Mike White created for Helena Bonham Carter did not align once on set,” adding, “HBO, the producers, and Mike White are saddened that they won’t get to work with her, but remain ardent fans and very much hope to work with the legendary actress on another project soon.”
While each of the previous three seasons of The White Lotus featured returning actors—Jennifer Coolidge in seasons one and two, and Natasha Rothwell in seasons one and three—it is unclear whether any previous cast members will appear in the fourth season.
Kingsley, 82, and the other new cast members join an all-star cast that already features Dern, Coogan, Oscar-nominated Kumail Nanjiani, and Black Swan‘s Vincent Cassel.
The White Lotus has not yet announced its HBO premiere date.
