The trio of blonde mates vacationing at The White Lotus this season might really feel a tad acquainted to Bravo followers. Jaclyn, Laurie, and Kate—performed by Michelle Monaghan, Carrie Coon, and Leslie Bibb, respectively—are longtime friends on a very good old style ladies journey to Thailand. Their dynamic is difficult from the beginning: At each alternative, two of the ladies will cut up off to gossip concerning the third. Things take an much more dramatic flip within the present’s most up-to-date episode, when Jaclyn—a married tv actress who has spent the journey attempting to persuade Laurie, a latest divorcée, to have a fling with good-looking, flirty lodge employee Valentin (Arnas Fedaravicius)—winds up hooking up with Valentin herself.
If a bunch of middle-aged ladies partying at a resort and inflicting chaos by bringing males again to their lodge rooms feels a bit like déjà vu, that’s as a result of this exact same plot is a trademark of one other TV collection: The Real Housewives of New York City. And since White Lotus creator Mike White is an avowed fan of the Housewives franchise—“You watch stuff like The Real Housewives and you start to think, ‘We’re all so vacuous! Is there any nobility to any of these people?’” he advised The New York Times in 2011—wanting again on the most infamous Housewives area journeys might assist us predict the place Jaclyn, Laurie, and Kate’s storyline goes.
Michelle Monaghan, Carrie Coon, and Leslie Bibb on The White Lotus.Fabio Lovino/HBO
Girls’ journeys in unique locales occur on each iteration of The Real Housewives; we’ve seen casts journey all over the place from Amsterdam to Cartagena. But Jaclyn, Kate, and Laurie’s Thailand journey bears the closest resemblance to 2 particular journeys undertaken on the unique Real Housewives of New York City, which ran from 2008 to 2022 earlier than being rebooted with a model new forged. (The much less mentioned about the brand new RHONY, the higher).
The first got here throughout the fifth season, when the present’s major forged—then comprised of Heather Thomson, Carole Radziwill, Sonja Morgan, Ramona Singer, Aviva Drescher, and ex-countess Luann de Lesseps—takes a ladies journey to St. Barts. (In typical Aviva vogue, she exhibits up late, together with her husband in tow.) In the thirteenth episode of that season, “Pirate Booty Call,” the women hit the most well liked membership in St. Barts: Le Ti. At the membership, a lot fuss is remodeled good-looking Tomas Ribiero, a maitre d’ and “artistic director” who naturally is dressed up like a pirate.
“It’s Johnny Depp,” says de Lesseps. (Being in comparison with Depp was thought of a praise at the moment.) “You might as well surround yourself with fabulous looking guys, why not?” But in a confessional interview, Morgan is fast to level out that she was the one who noticed Tomas first, implying a little bit of competitors for the pirate’s consideration. Soon sufficient, the RHONY women, led by Luann, are dancing on tables in pirate outfits offered by the Frenchmen. “I’m not just any pirate woman,” Luann says to Tomas, flirtingly.
Carole Radziwill, Sonja Morgan, Ramona Singer, Heather Thomson, Aviva Drescher, Luann de Lesseps in St. Barts in “Pirate Booty Call” from RHONY.Xavier Merchet-Thau/Bravo/Getty Images