-Our first guest tonight is an Emmy-nominated actress
you know from "Friday Night Lights,"
"Nashville," and "Dirty John."
She stars in the critically acclaimed show
"The White Lotus."
The first full season is streaming on HBO Max.
Let's take a look.
-Just lift it. -Push it. Tilt.
Oh, oh. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!
-Ohh.
-Oh, God.
-Are you okay, Paula? -No.
-Alright, I'm gonna start my Zoom,
and, you guys, if you're gonna stay in here,
you have to be totally silent.
Okay? And stay out of the frame.
-Mom, you look deranged.
-It's alright. I have a filter for that.
Oh [bleep]
-Please welcome back to the show Connie Britton.
How are you, Connie?
-Hi, Seth. I'm so good.
How are you? -I'm wonderful.
Congratulations for being in the show of the summer,
the most talked-about show of the summer.
It must be exciting because, you know, I feel like I --
You know, I'm such a fan of your work on "Friday Night Lights,"
which I feel like is a show that people just kind of discovered
maybe a little bit after the fact.
It must be so fun to be in something
that everybody is watching in real time.
-It is.
It's a fascinating experience
because, you know, particularly in the world now,
we're all bingers now and it's all --
you know, it's all --
There's so much conversation around the shows,
the shows of the season, the shows of the season.
And to be -- Now I'm the conversation.
We're the conversation, "The White Lotus."
I mean, honestly, it's really Mike White.
Mike White is the brilliant creator of "The White Lotus."
And this is all his brainchild.
We're just like little pawns,
little robots in his crazy, crazy world.
But it's fascinating to think about
what it is that hits the zeitgeist.
You know, like, why are people so interested in this show?
You know, I mean, like, what do you like about it, Seth?
I think it just hits home in a way where it makes it okay
for people to see themselves in a not-very-nice light.
-Well, there's a lot of -- It ticks a lot of boxes for me.
Let's just start with, in today's world,
where things move really fast,
if you give me a six-episode season, I'm super psyched.
Right off the bat, I know I'm gonna have the time for it.
I mean, for people who haven't watched,
I'm not giving anything away.
The first five minutes of the show,
they basically tell you that someone dies at this resort.
So there now you got me on the hook.
And, you know, the cast is so fantastic.
But you are right -- Like, there's this singular
Mike White writing style
that complete-- reveals itself immediately.
And it is just so much fun to watch you all
play around with those scripts.
-And, you know, I think, like, right now in the culture,
there's so much conversation going on.
We really are assessing ourselves as a culture,
as you know, because you're at the forefront of that.
And so to be able to do that in a satirical way
where it takes --
We can clearly look at these characters
and see that they are, for the most part, hideous.
And yet -- And so we can freely, you know, look at ourselves
because we have to be better than they are.
And yet -- And we can laugh,
and, you know, that's a really good way
to make a little commentary
about what's happening in the world.
-Hideous people in pretty fantastic surroundings.
You got to shoot this at the Four Seasons in Maui
in the middle of a pandemic.
This strikes me as maybe the best possible place
to go to work.
-You know what? I have to agree with you.
-Yeah. -The Four Seasons --
I mean, Maui is the best possible place to go to work
and particularly in the middle of a pandemic.
I was already -- You know, I'm such a huge fan of Mike White's.
I was already on board, you know, minute one.
But then he said, "We're shooting in Maui."
And I said, "Oh, you're so brilliant.
You're more brilliant than I even thought you were.
Yes, I will come, happily and gladly."
And then we got there, and it's like "Ahhh!"
You know, we'd all been in quarantine
for however many months.
And it's so beautiful and magical,
and we had the whole hotel to ourselves for a while,
and that was really amazing.
And then we realized we couldn't leave.
-Yeah. -It was weird.
And I was like, "COVID, you're making this weird.
How are you making Maui weird for us?
What is that about?"
And it's like,
"I can't go to the waterfall if I have a day off?"
"No, no, you can't go to the waterfall on the day off."
And so then it became this really hilarious thing
where we were sort of like,
"We're in the most beautiful place in the world,"
and also, "I want to go to the waterfall,"
and then, "Am I becoming
the actual character that I'm playing?"
It became very meta.
It was very like, what's happening?
Who am I?
-Who would want to hear you complain
about being trapped in Maui,
at the Four Seasons in Maui, no less?
-Right, right. Turns out nobody. Nobody.
-You play the mother of teenagers,
who are mortified by everything you do on the show.
I believe your son is 10 now.
Is that an age where --
Is he capable of being mortified by you yet?
-He's not there yet, thank goodness.
10 is a really cute, good age.
But I will tell you -- Here's what they don't tell you
about where that sort of mortification comes from,
and the answer is, particularly during a pandemic, television,
specifically the Disney Channel.
-No! -Oh, yeah.
Seth, there are shows on the Disney Channel --
Like, they're always called people's names,
like "Jessie" or "Ricky -- Ricky, Dicky, & Dawn."
And there might be another one in there, too.
-Okay. -And these are like --
They are these shows that, like, the kids love,
for whatever reason.
Eyob will watch them on a loop.
The same --
And I said, "Are you watching that show again?"
And he's like, "Yeah, I mean, I already watched the full season.
So I'm just rewatching it."
But the thing is, then he starts, you know,
when we're talking, he starts talking to me
in these kind of quippy ways
that I can tell he's now emulating
Disney Channel characters.
And I'm like, "This is the beginning.
This is the beginning of him being --"
-This is on you, Ricky, Dicky, and Dawn.
-This is on you, Ricky, Dicky, and Dawn, and Mickey Mouse.
-Real quick before we go,
you worked with one of my favorite people in the world,
Jennifer Coolidge.
And it just must have been a dream.
-Jennifer Coolidge is a national treasure,
and I'm so glad that we now can all just acknowledge that fully
when we see her brilliant work in this show.
And I'm obsessed with her,
and I was recently down in New Orleans.
And she has a house in New Orleans
and she invited me over.
And I was like, "There's no way I'm missing
going to Jennifer Coolidge's house in New Orleans."
And I was sort of doing other things all day.
And she texted me. She goes, "You have to --
No matter what, even if it's late, you have to come
because I feel like the spirits are really strong tonight."
And I was like, "You are right, Jennifer Coolidge.
Of course I have to come
if the spirits are really strong at your house."
So I went to her house,
and she has the most unbelievably gorgeous house
in New Orleans.
I mean, it feels like it's like a full city block.
And so I get there and I'm waiting at the gate
and I text her and I'm like, "I'm here."
And I think a full five minutes passed,
and then she finally texted me back,
and she's like, "Oh, great!"
And then another five minutes passed
when she finally came out to the gate to let me in,
because there was no way actually in
and there was a big, brooding gate.
And so then I walked into the house, and everything --
There is no electrical light on.
It is all candlelight.
And it is the most beautiful,
perfectly, perfectly decorated Victorian house,
completely candlelit.
I mean, the candelabras were candlelit.
Everything was candlelight.
And it was like walking into a house from like the 1800s
but also a haunted house.
Like, I couldn't decide what the vibe was.
And then her dining room table had all these wine bottles on it
and she was like, "Do you want wine?"
And I'm like, "Of course I want wine."
And she goes, "And we have pizza."
And so we went back to her back terrace
and ate pizza and drank wine until 1:00 in the morning
waiting for the spirits to show up,
which they didn't quite do,
but it really didn't matter, because I got to, like,
be at Jennifer Coolidge's amazing house.
-Maybe she was the spirit the whole time.
-She is the spirit. -She is the spirit.
She's a good spirit.
-She is the spirit, and that's the answer to the question, yes.
-Congratulations so much on the show.
It's always so lovely to see you,
and hopefully next time you can be here in person.
-I know. I can't wait. I really can't wait for that.
Thanks, Seth.
-The full first season of "The White Lotus"
is streaming on HBO Max.
We'll be right back with more "Late Night."