You Won’t Believe Who Greg from ‘The White Lotus’ Really Is!

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So far, there is only one character who appears in every season of The White Lotus — Greg, who is now going by Gary in Season 3. We know Greg as the scheming and downright murderous former husband to the beloved Tanya McQuoid (the legendary Jennifer Coolidge). In Season 1, he weaseled his way into her heart. In Season 2, he bailed on her in Italy but secretly arranged for her murder. In Season 3, we find him living in Thailand at a house near the White Lotus resort, dating a “model” (the delightful Charlotte Le Bon). When another character from Season 1, Tanya’s potential business partner Belinda (the hilarious Natasha Rothwell), shows up at the Thailand White Lotus resort and recognizes Greg, she begins to fear for her own life.

Greg/Gary is a scary jerk, probably the most explicitly villainous character in Mike White’s show, but he’s played by an extremely funny man — Jon Gries. You may not recognize him from the jump, but if you add a toupee and a little moustache (along with a football), you might realize he’s Uncle Rico from the cult classic 2004 comedy, Napoleon Dynamite. That’s right, Greg is the goofy, lonely Uncle Rico. You may recognize Gries from a variety of other titles, too, especially some funny ones. Let’s take a look at them.

Jon Gries Before ‘The White Lotus’

Prior to his Napoleon Dynamite glory, Gries had a lengthy career in film and television, appearing in a variety of cult classics and as a supporting character in great TV shows. You might recognize him as Shawn McDermott, Martin Lawrence’s friend in the series Martin; the former Pacific Tech student Lazlo Hollyfeld opposite Val Kilmer in Real Genius; as Detective Tony Montoya opposite Gregory Hines and Billy Crystal in Running Scared; the computer expert Broots in the TV series The Pretender; Ben Linus’ father Roger in Lost; and many others.

Gries also played Casey, Liam Neeson’s friend in all three Taken movies, Ronnie Wingate in Get Shorty, and a werewolf in both The Monster Squad and Fright Night Part 2. But one of his greatest performances is also one of the only things Gries has ever led — the bizarre and frequently brilliant sci-fi comedy series, Dream Corp, LLC. The Adult Swim series by Daniel Stessen (executive produced by John Krasinski and Stephen Merchant) premiered in 2016, with Gries leading the show as Dr. Roberts, a kind of Doc Brown by way of Dr. Benway and Timothy Leary. He runs a dilapidated dream therapy clinic in a strip mall, with each episode diving into different characters’ dream-worlds using rotoscoped animation.

The bonkers, retro-futurist series combines the hallucinogenic style of Adult Swim’s trippiest shows with the DIY sci-fi in some of Terry Gilliam’s work (especially 12 Monkeys and Brazil). Season 2 aired in 2018 and Season 3 concluded the series in 2020. While the show was officially canceled, Gries would love to do more. As he told Newsweek:

“I loved doing that because it was local, and I was going back to work. I’d love to keep doing that show. We’re talking to people about the possibility of reviving it. It was an Adult Swim show that was sold to Hulu. But when Adult Swim was sold, everything went into a holding pattern, which really wasn’t a holding pattern at all. It was like, ‘Yeah, you’re done.'”

Jon Gries Was Nearly in Robert Redford’s ‘Ordinary People’

Finally, there’s one role we almost got to see Gries play, but he narrowly missed out for being too manly. He almost got the role of young Conrad Jarrett in the Academy Award-winning 1980 classic, Ordinary People. Gries explained during an ‘Ask Me Anything’ event for Reddit:

“When I first started out, I spent the day with Robert Redford for his film Ordinary People. He was matching me up with other potential cast members. I left the casting that day and he told me that I was his number one choice. He also admitted that he thought my walk was too manly. He wanted a gangly, more high school teen-looking kid (I was 19). It shows how specific his eye for detail was. He said he did not want to leave a stone unturned before making his decision. Eventually he found Timothy Hutton. Who went on to win an Oscar for the performance. That’s one of many, folks. Way it goes.”

Had he gotten that role, who knows what turn his career trajectory would’ve taken? With that butterfly effect in mind, we may have missed out on not just Uncle Rico in Napoleon Dynamite, but Gries’ incredible Greg/Gary in The White Lotus. Maybe everything’s in its right place.

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2025-03-17 06:33