Mike White is checking into a war of words with former “The White Lotus” composer Cristóbal Tapia de Veer.
The filmmaker, 54, appeared on “The Howard Stern Show” Tuesday and addressed Tapia de Veer, 51, recently saying he quit the show because of creative differences with White.
“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 said.
“I don’t think he respected me,” White claimed. “He wants people to know that he’s edgy and dark and I’m… I don’t know, like I watch reality TV. We never really even fought. He says we feuded. I don’t think I ever had a fight with him — except for maybe some emails. It was basically me giving him notes.”
Tapia de Veer, who composed the theme song for the first three seasons of the show, told The New York Times last week that he and White “had our last fight forever” before he quit the series. He also claimed that White “was just saying no to anything” during the process of making the Season 3 theme song.
“I don’t think he liked to go through the process of getting notes from me, or wanting revisions, because he didn’t respect me,” White said about Tapia de Veer. “I knew he wasn’t a team player and that he wanted to do it his way.”
The “Survivor” alum explained that he “was thrown” that Tapia de Veer spoke to the press “to s–t on me and the show three days before the shocking finale. “It was kind of a bitch move.”
White further alleged that Tapia de Veer became defiant once they started working on the Thailand season.
“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 said. “He would always look at me with this contemptuous smirk on his face like he thought I was a chimp or something. He’s definitely making a big deal out of a creative difference.”
White also said that while Tapia de Veer “is very talented,” he’s “never kissed somebody’s ass so hard to just get him to lead that horse to water.”
“Have fun with whatever you’re doing next,” White concluded.
The Post has reached out to Tapia de Veer’s rep for comment.
In his NYT interview, Tapia de Veer said, “Maybe I was being unprofessional, and for sure Mike feels that I was always unprofessional to him because I didn’t give him what he wanted. But what I gave him did this, you know – did those Emmys, people going crazy. That is the main thing that I’m most happy about.”
“It was worth all the tension and almost forcing the music into the show, in a way, because I didn’t have that many allies in there,” the composer added.
Tapia de Veer will not be involved in “The White Lotus” Season 4, which has not started shooting.
On Stern’s radio show, White revealed that he’s currently “negotiating” his deal with HBO for the next season.
“I’m definitely curious to find out what that [amount] is,” White said. “I feel like I have financial security for sure… at a certain point with money, [you wonder]: ‘Is this going to make me worse?’ Is having more money just going to make me more dysfunctional?”
