‘White Lotus’ musician opens up about huge fight with creator Mike White

Cristobal Tapia de Veer, who composed the much-loved theme song for The White Lotus, is quitting the show after this season.

The 51-year-old musician revealed that he had intense fights with Mike White and other producers of the show, throughout the production.

Opening up to The New York Times, Tapia de Veer shared that he had multiple creative disagreements with White, starting as far back as the start of season one, on Wednesday, April 2nd.

Explaining the “hysterical” fights they had, he continued, “I feel like this was, you know, a rock ’n’ roll band story. 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.'”

The three-time-Emmy award winner told the outlet that the producers “requested music that was more upbeat and less experimental” than what he wanted to produce.

Tapia de Veer added that he even had to fight for the “edgy” and “weird” theme song that won him three Emmy awards after he denied White’s request for a “chill, sexy vibe.”

“I thought we could do some kind of ‘Hawaiian Hitchcock,’ and [White] really grabbed on that and he started laughing. I was on the phone with [show producer Heather Persons] all the time, and she was trying to convince Mike about this theme, because he didn’t want the theme,” he recalled.

Tapia de Veer claimed that he texted the producer to release the uncut version of the theme song at some point to surprise fans but Mike wasn’t having it.

“I mean, at that point, we already had our last fight forever, I think. So he was just saying ‘no’ to anything. So I just uploaded that [track] to my YouTube.”

However, the composer is satisfied that the success of the show was “worth all the tension.”