Woody Harrelson Sets The Record Straight About Why He Pulled Out Of The White Lotus Season 3

The Hunger Games star was initially cast as one of the season's most scene-stealing characters, but had to make an "extremely hard decision".

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Woody Harrelson has cleared up rumours about how he was initially in the running to appear in the most recent season of The White Lotus.

Halfway through season three, viewers were surprised to see Oscar winner Sam Rockwell join the cast as Frank, a long-time friend of Walton Goggins’ character, with whom he meets up in Bangkok.

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In the lead-up to the finale, The Hollywood Reporter published a wide-ranging interview with the cast and crew, in which it was revealed that at one point, Woody was due to play Frank instead.

In the article, executive producer David Bernad revealed that everyone who appears in The White Lotus receives the same non-negotiable fee, which has been the case since season one.

The piece cites “two sources” who claim that the Hunger Games star “went all the way to Warner Bros Discovery CEO David Zaslav to see if his salary could be negotiated”, only to find that it “couldn’t”.

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Several news outlets subsequently reported that Woody wound up dropping out of the season because of this issue, though he has now insisted this is not quite what happened.

Sam Rockwell and Walton Goggins in The White Lotus season three

HBO

The Hollywood Reporter’s piece has now been updated to include a statement from Woody himself, which reads: “I was set to do White Lotus and very excited. Unfortunately, their production schedule shifted, and conflicted with a pre-planned family vacation, forcing me to make an extremely hard decision.

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“Things must be meant to be though, because I couldn’t have done as fantastic a job as Sam, who is killing it.”

Meanwhile, the piece also now includes an extra line recalling how Woody “signed on, then later dropped out due to scheduling”.

Opening up about how Sam came to be cast, Walton told Vanity Fair last month: “I think initially there was someone else that was going to play [Frank], and so when that didn’t work out for whatever reason, it was really only one person – and that was Sam Rockwell.

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“We did a movie together like 14, 15 years ago [Cowboys & Aliens], and he has been one of my best and dearest friends over the last 15 years of my life. So that is both a positive and a negative in the sense that we haven’t worked together since then.

“Further complicating this collaboration is that Sam is my hero. He’s really one of the guys in my generation that I look up to, and he knows that. So coming into this experience, there was a certain amount of anxiety, meaning I didn’t want to let my friend down.”

Cast member Leslie Bibb – who is also Sam’s partner in real life – previously opened up to CNN about how he was a “last minute” addition to the cast, and was only given the role around “two weeks” before filming began.

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All eight episodes of The White Lotus season three are now available to stream on Sky and Now in the UK.

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