Gazing out from his Philippe Starck–“inspired” home in a gated compound.
Photo: Fabio Lovino/HBO
It looks like Greg-Gary’s little party on next week’s White Lotus will be taking the action out of the hotel and bringing it to his over-the-top villa — a spread we’ve so far only glimpsed here and there. The production has shared that the house is actually two locations masquerading as one, a choice that tracks for a guy with an assumed identity.
First, there’s Samujana Villa 12, a modern spread on Koh Samu. It has seven bedrooms and a wide pool stacked like white shoe boxes on the face of a hill. If we’ve seen inside this one yet, I couldn’t figure it out. (Spottings welcome in the comments.)
Most of what has been shown of the mansion so far — a living room with a peaked roof where Greg-Gary did some Belinda-Googling and where Chloe strolls through to look for him as he does laps in an infinity pool — come from a second location on Phuket, in the Amaravida, where seven bedrooms, seven full-time staffers, two pools, a hot tub on the roof, a wine room, golf course, and private beach go for $5,698 to $13,650 a night. (One continuity issue spotted by fans: So far, the show has done little to hide that the mansion is not in the hills, as Chloe described it, with redditors even screengrabbing a drone shot that shows it pressed up against the sand.)
The Amaravida is one of the 26 villas that make up a 60-acre gated compound on Cape Yamu, a peninsula that reaches into the gulf. It opened in 2008, and went into construction at a perilous time for Thailand (tsunami in 2004, military coup in 2006). The development was created by the man behind the Amanpuri, Adrian Zecha, who bragged in 2008 that he was regularly courted by governments desperate for their own Amanpuri knockoffs. The resort was the “development of the moment,” per the South China Morning Post in 2007, which dropped the names of both Zecha and his hotshot designer, Philippe Starck. Better known for his iconic chairs and spidery juicers, Starck has been steadily designing five-star hotels (and even the odd superyacht), and told the press in 2008 that he signed on with the Cape Yamu team for the chance to build something “beyond mere homes” that would be for “intelligent people; the smart tribe.” (Would we call Greg-Gary particularly smart? We may be about to learn.)
If you’re so smart, why are you eating at hotel restaurants?
Photo: Fabio Lovino/HBO
Putting aside the question of high IQ, it’s clear these villas suit those with a high net worth. The 2008 design still looks like textbook Succession-y influencer luxe: sliding glass doors open to infinity pools, with views of private coastlines and tropical splendor. The largest of the Amaravida’s villas is currently on the market for $18 million.
But Starck didn’t seem to be involved with all of the homes in the compound. A website advertising rentals at 17 of them calls them “inspired by Starck,” and the page where you can click through to rent the Amaravida doesn’t name him, only saying that it was “inspired by Scandinavian architecture incorporated with Thai’s traditional roots.” The Thai features seem to show up in nearly identical living areas, villa to villa, with peaked roofs and horizontal slats framing views of the bay.
Where every remote employee imagines their CEO is zooming from.
Photo: Fabio Lovino/HBO
Social-media shots tagged at the villa show it’s popular with “Blonde blob-esque” girls trips and Piper-style wellness retreats. There’s also the odd influencer-model.
The other location for the Greg-Gary abode has a crunchier vibe. There are zero televisions, which seems to be part of its “wellness” sales-pitch, according to a reviewer who said there’s a “yoga deck” where a teacher can guide you in acro yoga. The gym is so intense that famous boxers stay here to train and Idris Elba came when beefing up for a role. The design matches this “wellness” vibe, with planted green roofs, rattan-wrapped columns, and walls of chunky raw stone.
The Starck-ian villa, on the other hand, leans into screens. There’s a home cinema, a golf simulator, and a pool that seems designed for the iPhone, with a wall of glass that’s become a favorite for influencers trying to both show off their location and their bikini bods. Saxon would approve.