Mike White is taking aim at Emmy-winning composer Cristóbal Tapia de Veer for claiming he exited “The White Lotus” after clashing with White over changes to the show’s theme song.
While appearing on Tuesday’s episode of “The Howard Stern Show,” White, 54, addressed Tapia de Veer’s pointed words, telling host Stern that the composer’s decision to “shit on me and the show three days before the finale” was a “bitch move.”
“I honestly don’t know what happened, except now I’m reading his interviews because he decides to do some PR campaign about him leaving the show,” White explained. “I don’t think he respected me. He wants people to know that he’s edgy and dark.”
The director went on to claim that he and Tapia de Veer “never really even fought” despite the latter’s allegation that the two were at odds while working on the show, which first aired in 2021.
“I don’t think I ever had a fight with him — except for maybe some emails,” White said. “I knew he wasn’t a team player and that he wanted to do it his way. I was thrown that he would go to The New York Times to shit on me and the show three days before the finale.”
He added: “It was kind of a bitch move.”
White then alleged that Tapia de Veer snubbed him during the show’s production and has been “making a big deal out of a creative difference.”
“By the time the third season came around, he’d won Emmys and he had his song go viral, he didn’t want to go through the process with me, he didn’t want to go to sessions,” White shared. “He would always look at me with this contemptuous smirk on his face like he thought I was a chimp or something.”
Despite the pair’s differences, White later told Stern that Tapia de Veer is “very talented.”
White’s comments came after the Chilean-Canadian musician told the New York Times in a recent interview that he decided to leave the HBO series after beefing with White over the show’s score for Season 3.
“I texted the producer and I told him that it would be great to, at some point, give [audiences] the longer version [of the score] with the ‘ooh-loo-loo-loos,’ because people will explode if they realize that it was going there anyway,” Tapia de Veer told the Times. “He thought it was a good idea. But then Mike cut that — he wasn’t happy about that.”
Tapia de Veer told the outlet that the altered theme song left fans “furious.”
“I mean, at that point, we already had our last fight forever, I think. So he was just saying no to anything,” he added of White.
Check out White’s comments on “The Howard Stern Show” below.
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