Murdaugh, he wrote. Or did he?
Rumors are swirling “The White Lotus” creator Mike White based the dysfunctional Ratliff clan — headed by a nefarious patriarch who is a Duke University-educated financier in North Carolina in the show’s third season — on the infamous convicted murderer Alex Murdaugh and his doomed South Carolina family.
In March 2023, Murdaugh, the scion of a blue-blooded legal dynasty, was found guilty of fatally shooting his wife Maggie, 52, and son Paul, 22, at the family’s rural estate in Hampton County, SC, two years earlier.
Prosecutors alleged that Murdaugh, 56, who was sentenced to two life sentences and also found guilty of money laundering, fraud and breach of trust, shot his wife and son because the walls were closing in around him — and he hoped the deaths would distract from his financial crimes and possibly garner him sympathy.
In the HBO show, Tim Ratliff (played by Jason Isaacs) learns as soon as he and the family arrive at the White Lotus resort in Thailand, the feds are onto what is apparently a shady money laundering and bribery scheme cooked up with an old business associate.
Ratliff finds out a reporter from the Wall Street Journal is asking questions — and it’s soon clear his financial crimes are going to be exposed and the family almost certainly faces ruin.
Worse, he doubts his spoiled Southern belle wife Victoria, played by Parker Posey, and their three kids will be able to handle the news and as he panics, he starts taking his wife’s Lorazepam pills.(Similarly Murdaugh was in the grip of an opioid addiction at the time of his family’s murders.)
In fact, both Victoria and their son Saxon (Patrick Schwarzenegger) mention that they could never live without the family’s money and success.
Ratliff plots first to shoot them, then poison them all apart from his youngest son, before coming to his senses at the show’s dramatic climax.
“I had read stories about this aristocratic guy who killed his whole family because he had been blowing through their money and didn’t have the guts to tell them,” White told The Hollywood Reporter about his inspiration for the Ratliffs.
“The way Timothy’s family sees him is so crucial to his sense of self, so when that’s at risk, he’d rather burn the whole house than face the music.”
Murdaugh is currently languishing in state prison, held in a secure unit away from the general population, where he has been practicing his chess moves, according to NBC, and awaiting the outcome of an appeal of his conviction. The only remaining member of his immediate family, flame-haired son Buster, is currently suing Netflix for defamation over how he was portrayed in a documentary.
Some principals in the Murdaugh saga said they had never considered White might have borrowed from the case, which has become an international sensation and spawned a cottage industry of books and TV documentaries.
“Superficially, there might be some similarities,” Dick Harpootlian, Alex Murdaugh’s colorful lead attorney and the former chair of the South Carolina Democratic Party, told The Post.
Harpootlian, who watched every episode of the latest season of “The White Lotus,” is a fan of the show, but also a tough critic.
“The mother and father [in the show] went to Duke and Chapel Hill [colleges],” Harpootlian said. “Alex and Maggie went to the University of South Carolina. It’s a different vibe. The actor had more of a Tidewater Virginia accent. Parker Posey? I’m not sure what the accent was. I grew up in Charlotte, North Carolina, and spent a good deal of time in Chapel Hill and never once heard that accent.”
Much has been made of the Mississippi-bred Parker Posey’s accent, with some approving of it, while others have dissed it. Posey herself has said the Bravo reality show “Southern Charm” helped inspire her delivery.
Joe McCulloch, another Columbia, SC, attorney — who originally represented one of the victims of a fatal boat crash caused by the late Paul Murdaugh — has known Alex for years.
“In retrospect I can see that the Murdaugh case might inspire a truly fertile mind in the screenplay business to do a variation on the theme,” McCullough told The Post, after admitting he watched the whole show but didn’t connect the possible dots.
“The guy’s sweating bullets because of everything he’s done, his family facing ruination, so he plots their murders but then chickens out,” McCullough said.
“Alex didn’t chicken out but he and the guy on the series showed the same lack of concern about what impact their misconduct would have on their family. I never saw any genuine regret or genuine self-introspection with Alex either.”
In general, Harpootlian is a fan of “The White Lotus” but has a bone to pick with this year’s show.
“In case Mike White is reading this, let him know the ending this season sucked.”
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