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Will it be a fatal attack with a pétanque boule under the parasol palms? Some skulduggery in the swimming pool of a €21,000-a-night private villa? Perhaps a poisoned cocktail on the terrace overlooking the luxury yachts in the Mediterranean?
Bienvenue to season four of The White Lotus on the Côte d’Azur; judging by past series, someone is not making it out of the French Riviera alive.
Saint-Tropez is preparing to roll out the red carpet for perhaps the most dysfunctional group of wealthy visitors it has ever seen. After Hawaii, Sicily and Thailand, a new all-star cast including Helena Bonham Carter, Steve Coogan and Marissa Long will be heading to the south of France in April to shoot the next instalment of the hugely successful HBO series.
The American film-maker and actor Mike White, who created the series, is still reportedly in the middle of writing the next instalment, but luxury hotspots along the Mediterranean coast are expected to feature as well as Paris and possibly the Cannes film festival, which runs from 13-26 May during shooting, according to leaked reports.
The main action will be shot at the 19th-century Château de la Messardière, set in 13 hectares (32 acres) of parasol pines, cypress trees and jasmine on a hilltop overlooking the Mediterranean. Now a palatial hotel, it is just over a mile from the town and its Pampelonne beach, where the director Roger Vadim shot the film And God Created Woman, launching Brigitte Bardot to stardom.
The property’s website states it was originally commissioned by the wealthy cognac trader Gabriel Dupuy d’Angeac as a wedding gift to his daughter Louise and her husband, Henry Brisson de la Messardière, a cavalry officer. It was later turned into a hotel and was the scene of high society parties in the 1920s until the money ran out and it was left to crumble.
Having changed hands several times since and undergone complete renovation, it is now part of the Airelles Collection of five-star hotels. For those who can afford one of its 86 rooms, suites or villas (the château’s website does not stoop to anything so vulgar as room rates but these are reported to range from €1,350 to €21,000 (£18,200) a night) there is a spa, with steam bath and sauna, a fitness centre, indoor and outdoor swimming pools, a children’s activity club, Michelin-star restaurant and trips to the beach by chauffeur-driven Rolls Royce.
The hotel is currently closed, but will open a few days before shooting begins in April. The production is expected to last for six months. Other cast members include AJ Michalka, Alexander Ludwig and the Australian actor Caleb Jonte Edwards. HBO has not confirmed a release date, but it is unlikely to be before 2027.
White’s research for the new series will surely have uncovered a useful plot device: the Messardière family motto, dating back to the 8th-century Carolingian dynasty, is said to be victor et inermis or “victorious and unarmed”.
