Cristóbal Tapia de Veer is cutting his stay at “The White Lotus” short.
The composer behind the HBO dramedy’s widely praised score has quit ahead of the show’s fourth season, telling The New York Times Wednesday that the current third season is “for sure” his last.
Tapia de Veer explained that his sudden departure is due to alleged creative disagreements between himself and “White Lotus” creator Mike White. The composer, 51, further claimed that his conversations with producers of the show sometimes became “hysterical.”
“I feel like this was, you know, a rock ’n’ roll band story,” Tapia de Veer told the outlet. “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.’”
Tapia de Veer, who has won three Emmy awards for his work on “The White Lotus,” claimed that creative disputes between himself and White began as early as Season 1.
Tapia de Veer told the NYT that the show’s creative team allegedly “requested music that was more upbeat and less experimental” than the work he wanted to produce.
He claimed he even had to fight for the “edgy” and “weird” theme song fans have come to love after disagreeing with 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,” Tapia de Veer recalled. “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.”
Tapia de Veer went on to allege that the fighting with White continued while discussing whether they could release the longer, “uncut” version of the theme song he remixed for Season 3 after people were “furious” he had changed it.
“I texted the producer and I told him that it would be great to, at some point, give [fans] the longer version with the ‘ooh-loo-loo-loos,’ because people will explode if they realize that it was going there anyway. He thought it was a good idea. But then Mike cut that — he wasn’t happy about that,” he alleged.
“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.”
Tapia de Veer admitted, however, that maybe he was “unprofessional” during those creative conflicts, and while he didn’t “give [White] what he wanted,” he still contributed to the show’s massive success.
Ultimately, the composer said, everything “was worth all the tension.”
“I treasure that more than something else I did that was just a success, and it works and that’s that, with less struggle,” he said. “This was a good struggle.”
Page Six has reached out to HBO and White for comment.
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