Murray Bartlett can make a man losing control funny without letting us forget what it costs him. His work in The White Lotus is excellent, and more sympathetic to its hotel manager than the writing sometimes allows.
Fi1m perspective
In The White Lotus (2021), Murray Bartlett’s Armond is still trying to manage a hotel while its guests make the work intolerable. Bartlett keeps that effort visible: the man can be funny and hostile without ceasing to look worn down. It is an excellent performance because the strain remains convincing even when the comedy grows broad. We laughed at his hostility, then felt ashamed of ourselves when Bartlett showed how much it cost him to keep doing the job.
The long soap runs, including Guiding Light (2007–2009), preceded Dom in Looking (2014–2016) and Mouse in Tales of the City (2019). Intimacy between men recurs in his work, alongside the pressure of serving demanding customers. That makes it worth resisting the idea that his chief use is to play men coming apart. After his breakthrough as Armond came Welcome to Chippendales (2022) and the role of Frank in The Last of Us (2023). The resort manager remains our clearest reason to recommend him.
Writer-director Mike White does not always give the performance enough help on the page. The guests in The White Lotus have more fully explored troubles than the staff, who too often exist to show what working for the rich costs. Bartlett gives Armond enough distress and resentment to resist being reduced to an illustration, but he cannot supply all the attention the writing withholds. We can believe in this manager and still wish the programme were more interested in its workers.
It would be a waste to keep casting Bartlett merely for another unravelling. His interest in intimacy between men deserves as much attention as his ability to make distress funny. Start with The White Lotus, with the caveat that its manager gets more care from his actor than from the writing.
Biography
Murray Bartlett is an Australian actor. Born on 20 March 1971 in Sydney, he trained at the National Institute of Dramatic Art, graduating in 1991. He began his career in Australian television and theatre before relocating to the United States around 2000.
Bartlett is best known for his role as Armond, the resort manager, in the first season of the HBO series The White Lotus (2021), for which he won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie. He has also appeared in Looking (2014–2015), Tales of the City (2019), Physical (2021–2023), Welcome to Chippendales (2022), The Last of Us (2023) as Frank, and Nine Perfect Strangers (2025).
