Leslie Bibb Explained Partner Sam Rockwell’s White Lotus Cameo

The biggest surprise during a season of The White Lotus is usually who died and how, but the hit HBO series just pulled off another shocker. In Season 3, Episode 5, there was an unexpected cameo by Academy Award winner Sam Rockwell, the longtime partner of White Lotus star Leslie Bibb (Kate Bohr).

A Late Addition To The Show

Bibb shared details about Rockwell’s guest appearance during a CNN interview on March 18, and it turns out she had a big concern when show creator Mike White reached out to see if Rockwell would play Frank, the friend and former associate of Walter Goggins’ Rick Hatchett. The offer was made very last minute, and she didn’t want White to hold it against her if Rockwell turned it down.

Rockwell’s offer came “maybe two weeks before … they were going to film it,” Bibb told CNN. She added, “I said to them when they offered it to him, I was like, ‘If he doesn’t do it, don’t get mad at me.’ And they were like — Mike’s like, ‘I’m not going to get mad at you.’ I was like, ‘Please do not take it out on me. That guy has his own choice.’”

And Rockwell was seriously considering no, Bibb said during an episode of Watch What Happens Live! with Andy Cohen, also on March 18. He was shooting a project in South Africa, and he didn’t know if he could be ready for The White Lotus in time.

“He was not sure about it, about doing it, just because he didn’t have proper prep time,” she said, “so we went on safari in South Africa and I was like, ‘I’ll get you off book, I’ll get you off book.’ So I just, like, ran lines with him.”

His Key Monologue

In the end, Rockwell took the part, which included delivering an important monologue. Bibb shared her thoughts on his role during both her CNN and WWHL interviews, saying his character’s big moment conveys what the season is about.

Calling it “a very confronting monologue” to CNN, Bibb explained that it’s Frank sharing “fully, unapologetically his truth.” To her, that’s what Season 3 is about. “I feel like there’s something that Mike is really saying about living… I keep going back to, unapologetically and honestly,” she said.

Frank’s openness in that speech is a contrast to her character, Kate, and her friends, she noted. “Carrie [Coon] and Michelle [Monaghan] and I said if these women had just walked in in the very beginning and were really honest, which is very scary to do and very vulnerable to say, ‘Here’s my truth. My marriage isn’t this, or this is this. I just got laid off. I’m drinking.’ Whatever your truth is, to just say this with your friends, I think it would have been a very different trip,” she said.

On WWHL, she added, “I think that monologue is, like, iconic, and I think it’s really what the whole season is about, what Mike’s really saying there.”