Maybe Grandpa was a power bottom
White Lotus Season 3 Fantasy Draft
Surprise! It’s a Wednesday edition of Uncultured, per the Thursday holiday. Hopefully I’m catching you as you ease into slacking off for the rest of the day if you aren’t already on PTO.
I typically prefer the day before a holiday more than the actual holiday itself. Performative overtones always seem to accompany the holiday milieu, whereas the eve is a lawless free-for-all: crack open a Stella at 11AM, promise to “circle back” to work deliverables after the long weekend, blow your paycheck on the Skims biannual sale, hit up the one local bar in your hometown that stays open past 9pm. . .it’s unified chaos blended with cheerful possibility.
Anyway, I don’t have a full-blown issue this week, but I did see on TikTok that people are doing their own fantasy drafts for season 3 of The White Lotus, so that’s what this is. If you haven’t watched seasons 1 & 2, that’s what you should spend your Thanksgiving break doing!
White Lotus Season 3 Fantasy Draft
What you’re about to see is chaotic, but how else am I supposed to maintain my reputation as the loose cannon of pop culture Substack?!
BJ Novak & Maya Hawke
They’re an uncomfortably age-gapped couple on their Babymoon.
BJ plays a Hollywood talent manager feeling down in the dumps because the Bieber-esque child pop star he discovered dropped him after reaching a heightened caliber of fame. Now, he only reps some B-List DJs and a washed-up 90s sitcom actress, and he’s making it everyone else’s problem. If you saw him in Vengeance this year, you’d know why he’s perfect for the White Lotus universe, but based on the box office it looks like it was only me.
Maya Hawke plays his 20-something wife — she was initially just a post-divorce fling for BJ, but she stopped taking her birth control without telling him and successfully manipulated him into a marriage. She’s 7 months pregnant and everyone at the resort keeps asking her husband if he’s excited to be a grandfather.
Shailene Woodley, Leighton Meester, and Adrian Grenier
They’re adult siblings celebrating their brother’s 40th birthday.
They’ve always had money, but after their mom passed, they inherited a bunch more — and we know more money means more problems!!!
Leighton is a Vicodin-addicted housewife, Adrian resents that he was the only one of his siblings to be present during their parents’ final years, and Shailene is a social justice warrior who posts Instagram infographics about Ukrainian refugees to combat her white guilt, but still only shops at Erewhon because the cucumbers at Whole Foods just don’t have the same crunch.
Lashana Lynch & Anna Delvey
They’re influencers on a brand trip for a luxury kaftan company.
Lashana Lynch was IMO the most memorable part of the Viola Davis vehicle The Woman King which came out earlier this year — she plays a successful print model who hits it off with Anna Delvey’s character, a boss babe influencer who’s not not part of a pyramid scheme.
Is this stunt casting? Yes, but I’m a businesswoman first and my season of The White Lotus would be a ratings bombshell.
I view them as being like, the bad girls of the brand trip — one night they sneak away from the boring dinner with the VP of Global Merchandising to smoke weed, and inadvertently uncover a dark secret that could have them fighting for their lives!
Megan Stalter & Daryl McCormack
They’re the White Lotus front desk managers.
After their boss was unexpectedly fired for lacing the duck confit with ketamine, these green hospitality associates are forced to step into the front lines during the busiest week of the season.
If you haven’t seen Meg Stalter as the incompetent executive assistant in Hacks, you have to at least check out her deliciously off-putting TikTok character sketches. Her character gives “fake it till you make it” gone wrong, while Daryl’s character relies on his charm and 10-out-of-10 good looks to assuage the concerns of the hotel’s high-maintenance VIPs.
That’s it from me this week! I’ll be back in December with gift guides, year-in-review content, etc., so now is a good time for your friends, lovers, and cordial roommates to subscribe!
