‘White Lotus’ composer leaves show over creative differences with Mike White

Just days ahead of The White Lotus‘ Season 3 finale (4/6), the show’s composer Cristóbal Tapia de Veer revealed that he won’t be returning for Season 4. The Season 3 theme song has already been divisive among fans, and Tapia de Veer revealed that he and show creator Mike White disagreed about how the music for this season should play out as well. So much so, that Tapia de Veer posted his own uncut version of the theme song that builds up to the more recognizable melody from the first two seasons. “At that point,” Tapia de Veer told The New York Times, “we already had our last fight forever.”

“I feel like this was, you know, a rock ’n’ roll band story,” he said. “I was like, OK, this is like a rock band I’ve been in before where the guitar player doesn’t understand the singer at all.”

Speaking about his decision to leave the show, Tapia de Veer said, “It’s kind of weird right now because I announced to the team a few months ago that I was not coming back, that I was leaving. I didn’t tell Mike for various reasons; I wanted to tell him just at the end for the shock and whatever. Except I told the whole editorial team and music editor and producer and all that, but I didn’t think that they were going to tell him. At some point he heard about that.”

He also compared his relationship with Mike to the classic French film La Cage Aux Folles. “You know how there’s Albin, which is like the star, and there’s Renato, who is the producer who is always taking care that Albin doesn’t lose his mind about something, because Albin is the diva and Renato is the guy who is trying to make everything work. To me, the show felt very much like that.”

Later in the interview, he added that Mike White initially wasn’t interested in the theme Tapia de Veer had come up with for the first season. “He had a temp score, a song that is more like something you would listen to in Ibiza, in some clubby place with a chill, sexy vibe,” he said. “And there’s literally no edge to it. It’s a good song; it’s nice music. There’s just absolutely no — whatever you find in the ‘White Lotus; music, the relationships with the characters — there’s none of that. It’s just nice background music.”

“I just stuck to what I was doing. And when I was giving versions, it was still the same thing: There were still crazy people and screaming and stuff like that. From there, it became this weird relationship of, How do I pass all this weird music into the show?”

Read more at The New York Times and listen to Cristóbal Tapia de Veer’s uncut version of the season 3 theme below. According to NYT, representatives for HBO declined to comment.

The White Lotus season 3 finale airs Sunday (4/6) on HBO and MAX.