When reactions from the 2022 Emmy nominations started flooding in, few appeared as raw and genuinely heartfelt as The White Lotus‘s Natasha Rothwell.
See for yourself. Grab some tissues, though.
View this post on Instagram
For Rothwell, a multi-talented creative force who grew from her 1-year stint on NBC’s Saturday Night Live to a writing/co-starring role on HBO’s Insecure to her Emmy-nominated performance on The White Lotus, the moment emerges as hard-fought and intensely rewarding. Rewarding not for the nomination itself but for the beauty inherent in being seen as a performance talent.
“Anytime you do work and you put your heart and soul into it, especially in this industry where success is not guaranteed, it takes a lot of work to even make it around. Even just to make it around the block once,” Rothwell shared. “So, it’s just such a joy to be in this moment. I’m really just trying to soak it all up.”
Rothwell’s role as Belinda, the White Lotus spa manager, immediately became a fan-favorite. In a way, she’s the beating heart of the satirical series where (mostly) well-intended wealthy, largely white hotel guests vacation at a luxury Hawaiian resort. Through the course of the series, several indigenous, minority voices express their frustrations and discomfort with their situation. Belinda, however, largely smiles and keeps things to herself, especially when wealthy guest Tanya McQuoid (fellow Emmy-nominee Jennifer Coolidge) offers to fund Belinda’s dream of her own wellness center.
But, by the end of the series, that dream slips through Belinda’s fingers, allowing Rothwell an unforgettable moment of raw emotion. Rothwell played the moment as a culmination of a lifetime of frustrations and betrayals.
“It’s kind of an amalgamation of all kinds of betrayal, right? It’s a betrayal of self because she’s not been able to be authentic and speak her truth and ask for what she needs. It’s the betrayal she feels by trusting that particular brand of white clientele at her job. She feels foolish and betrayed by the trust that she had given Tanya. It’s also this deep sadness of knowing that she can’t nurse or even begin healing the wounds that she’s encountered from this time with Tanya because she’s at work. It’s this really interesting intersection of pain, and it was really sort of devastating and heartbreaking to play. But it was really important, not only to the character development of Belinda over the course of the series, but also it really does speak to the heart of what the series is trying to do.”
To get to the core of Belinda, Rothwell relied on Mike White’s screenplay, something she refers to as “notes on a page like a score.” She effusively praises his uncanny knack for character development, particularly with a script written in the course over a handful of weeks some 3-4 months before filming started. She loves how he asks people, in a very subversive way, to have substantive conversations about sensitive topics in a satirical way but, as she puts it, “with a bit of sugar to help the medicine go down.”
The task of learning how to play Belinda required Rothwell to pull from her lived experience as a Black woman in a white-dominated world.
“For me, understanding resort culture, you are going to get a snapshot of diversity in a way where it looks like an anomaly, right? Where the truth of the matter is Hawaii is so rich in culture. It’s so diverse. For me, as just a person of color who has worked in very homogenous, all white environments, the Black people are aware that we’re more than how we’re viewed,” Rothwell explained. “So there was no mystery for me. I knew that she had a rich, diverse, vibrant life outside of this place. It was really digging into who she is, why she’s there, and her deep seated desire to just want to help people.”
In learning to play Belinda, though, Rothwell also opened White’s eyes to the world of code switching, the practice of minorities modulating their voice, tone, and pattern of speech to adapt to a white environment. For Rothwell, a quick phone conversation with Belinda’s son allowed that wall to come down, giving the audience a glimpse at who she really is outside of the White Lotus resort.
Sadly, that scene was also one of the only moments in the entire 6-episode series where Belinda truly laughs.
“It was an ‘aha moment’ for [White], I think, and an opportunity for me to show that kind of dexterity that we have to have as people of color in environments in which we have to code switch. We have to wear masks, and it was fun for me to show that. That’s one of the only time Belinda laughs when she’s talking to her son, which I think is a really important subtle thing. There’s this quiet storm that’s going on with her, and I think it speaks to the truth. When you’re in these vacation environments, we want to forget so often that ‘the help’ have issues or there’s something more important than the mai tai that I’m trying to order. To constantly put Belinda’s face in front of the audience, I think, was just an amazing reminder that the people that we interact with have more going on than your issues. So it was really fun to sort of play with all of those colors.”
At the end of the series, after Tanya crushingly denies Belinda’s dreams, she hands Belinda a large envelope filled with cash. It’s a well-intended gesture of good will that ultimately underscores the vast differences between the two women. To prepare for that moment, the team had a conversation about just how big the stack of money should be. If it was too large, then the audience could think that Tanya was making good on her promise. If it was too small, then it could appear that Tanya was just a very generous tipper.
But as Belinda quickly stashes that money in a drawer and moves on to answer the spa phone through tears, the audience wonders what exactly she did with that wad of cash.
The answer, to Rothwell, lies in practicality.
“This is another part of what made me cry in that moment. She needed it. It’s one of those things where I think pride and trying to have the upper hand it would force her to return it. But the fact is that, at the end of her workday, she’s gonna take that money, she’s gonna count it, and she’s gonna look at her bills. She’s gonna see where she can get some breathing room. She’s gonna send some to her son, and maybe she’ll treat herself to Postmates. That’s just her reality,” Rothwell remarked. “That’s so hard to stomach because it’s this chunk of money that she pulls from the purse like it’s nothing. To Tanya, it’s like finding change in couch cushions, and she tosses it to Belinda in a way where it just feels so dirty. It hurts to us, though, because she needs it.”
The White Lotus streams exclusively on HBO Max.
![2025 Oscars: Can a Late-Breaker Still Win Best Picture? [POLL]](https://www.awardsdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/gladiator-350x250.jpg)
