Charlotte Le Bon is focused on directing, but has ideas for a ‘White Lotus’ return

Charlotte Le Bon is seen in season 3 of HBO's “White Lotus” in this handout photo. THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO - HBO

TORONTO — Since her breakout role in season 3 of HBO’s hit dramedy “White Lotus,” acting offers have been pouring in for Charlotte Le Bon.

But for now, the Montreal native is just not interested.

“Making films is my main focus more than acting, to be honest,” Le Bon said during a sit-down interview in Toronto Thursday.

Le Bon recently returned from the Cannes Film Festival, where she held meetings in search of a financing partner for her sophomore feature — a still-untitled Montreal-shot drama exploring themes of loss.

“It’s autobiographique,” says the bilingual actor, reluctant to reveal too much.

“It’s a very, very personal movie and I think the goal is to try to make a very light-hearted movie on grief. It’s a challenge, but that’s what I’m aiming for.”

The Montreal-based Le Bon was in town for Bell Media’s 2025/26 programming showcase, where Etalk hosts interviewed her during a splashy event for media buyers about the last season of “The White Lotus,” which streams on Crave.

In Mike White’s eat-the-rich anthology series she plays Chloe, a socially savvy French-Canadian expat living in Thailand with her much older boyfriend, and the series’ main antagonist, Greg, who now goes by “Gary.” She’s seemingly unaware of Greg’s history: in Season 2, he pulled off a plot to murder his wife Tanya, played by Jennifer Coolidge, in order to inherit her wealth.

Le Bon says she was ready to take a hiatus from acting when she was offered the “White Lotus” role. Though she’d built a successful career — with roles opposite Joseph Gordon-Levitt in the 2015 biographical drama “The Walk” and Christian Bale in the 2016 war epic “The Promise” — her passion had shifted to working behind the camera. Her 2023 horror-romance “Falcon Lake,” which she directed and co-wrote, premiered at Cannes to strong critical acclaim.

“I was thinking about taking a break from acting because I was like, ‘Oh, I don’t know if I still like it.’ I was just asking myself some questions about it... I sometimes played characters that were not really inspiring for me for some reason,” she says.

“And then ‘White Lotus’ arrived and I was like, ‘There’s no way I can not do this. It’s just an amazing opportunity’... Between the moment where I sent the self-tape and the moment I was in the plane flying to Thailand, there were probably like 10 days.”

Le Bon says the experience of being part of such a pop-culture juggernaut was hard to wrap her head around.

“It’s kind of overwhelming when you’re taking part in such an important thing in culture. Even when it started to come out, when I started to see memes on it on social media, it was really exciting,” she says.

While acting isn’t her current focus, Le Bon says she would be down to return for Season 4 — and has some ideas about how it could play out.

“If their relationship is based on true love, which I think it is, then maybe she’ll come back with Greg, because Greg has to come back, for sure,” she says.

Le Bon muses that Chloe could be Greg’s accomplice or even the one who serves him his inevitable comeuppance.

“She could either become Greg’s ally and they can be like a duo of villains, or she can maybe be the one who will create the karma for Greg. Maybe she’ll give it to him,” she says.

“He has to get it at some point, so we’ll see what happens.”

While Chloe’s relationship with Greg may seem transactional on the surface, Le Bon argues the two share a deeper “understanding” of one another.

“I think what she likes in this relationship is she thinks she’s found a way to be free… just by spending a lot of money and partying and having sex with whoever she wants,” Le Bon says.

“I think they find an agreement by the end of the season where it’s clear that’s her intention and maybe he can take part in this and have fun with it as well.”

If that setup sounds peculiar, Le Bon says that’s just the kind of thing that interests her.

“There needs to be a singular aspect to a part that really inspires me in order for me to move my butt and be an actress again,” she says.

“It needs to be weird.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 7, 2025.

Alex Nino Gheciu, The Canadian Press