The White Lotus Season 3: Who Voices Kenny?

This article contains spoilers for season 3, episode 2 of “The White Lotus” — “Special Treatments” — so turn back now if you’re not caught up on the first two installments.

It’s clear from the very beginning of the third season of “The White Lotus” (read our review here) that Timothy Ratliff (Jason Isaacs), a businessman from North Carolina, is having some professional troubles. When he’s asked to lock up his cell phone for the duration of his time in Thailand by the resort’s friendly staff, he absolutely refuses — though, luckily, the rest of his family also forces the issue. Alongside his wife Victoria (Parker Posey) and children Saxon (Patrick Schwarzenegger), Piper (Sarah Catherine Hook), and Lochlan (Sam Nivola), Timothy is trying to enjoy his vacation in a tropical paradise, but in the season’s second episode “Special Treatments,” Timothy finally makes contact with his business associate Kenny, and it sure seems like he’s pretty cooked (as his Gen Z kids might say). 

When Timothy talks to Kenny after trying to get ahold of him in the season premiere “Same Spirits, New Forms,” you might recognize the voice on the other end of the call … and it’s because that voice belongs to Academy Award-winning actor and Marvel Cinematic Universe newcomer Ke Huy Quan. Whether or not we’ll see Quan in person on “The White Lotus” remains to be seen, but it’s definitely him on the other end of the phone, and he doesn’t have good news for Timothy.

So what happens during Timothy’s phone call with Kenny? First, Timothy asks why the Wall Street Journal has been trying to get in touch with him, but unfortunately for him, Kenny is irate. He doesn’t care about some stupid news story; apparently, there are federal agents at their financial company in Durham, North Carolina raiding Kenny’s office for evidence of some kind. Kenny is obviously desperate and completely freaked out, and Timothy barely tries to calm him down, saying very little at all until turning it back on Kenny by mumbling, “You told me this couldn’t happen. Remember that?! You f***ing swore that this could not happen!”

Kenny, somewhat reasonably, spends a lot of the call crying over his probably legitimate concern that he’s going to go to prison over whatever stunt he and Timothy have pulled together. After Timothy asks, Kenny confirms that the agents have “everything,” including account details and emails, and tells Timothy he lawyered up to try and protect himself. This makes Timothy visibly angry on the other end of the phone while Kenny continues talking, saying, “I should have never gone to Brunei. I should have never taken that position. Everyone was making a killing.” Timothy then asks if he’s also implicated, and Kenny says that he is; that’s why Kenny bought a burner phone to contact his associate in the first place. “You need to get a good lawyer like yesterday,” Kenny urges Timothy before the latter makes a huge reveal: the two were involved with money laundering and bribery and it was Kenny’s idea, and it “only” made Timothy $10 million. Timothy also threatens to kill Kenny over this, which, since this is “The White Lotus,” feels pretty ominous.

This isn’t the first time that the writer, director, and creator of “The White Lotus,” Mike White, has enlisted a very famous person — or an Oscar winner! — to do something as quick and dirty as a voice cameo during an in-universe phone call. In season 2, which was set in Sicily, we spend time with the Di Grasso men: the elderly, lecherous Bert (F. Murray Abraham), the Hollywood producer with a troubled marriage Dominic (Michael Imperioli), and the naive recent college graduate Albie (Adam DiMarco). During the very first episode of the season, Dominic reaches out to his estranged wife Abby only for her to deliver a furious, profanity-laden rant, and Imperioli himself confirmed that Laura Dern — who worked with White on “Enlightened” and won an Oscar in 2020 for “Marriage Story” — lent her voice to the role of Abby.

“The absolutely magnificent Laura Dern plays my wife in the new season of ‘The White Lotus.’ Although (so far) she has only been heard on the phone and not seen, her performance is a standout among many great ones in the ‘White Lotus’ troupe,” Imperioli wrote in a caption for an Instagram post in November 2022, while season 2 was still airing. “LaDern can do more with voice alone than most can do with everything else. She’s genius.” Dern never did show up in person in “The White Lotus,” so again, we don’t know about Ke Huy Quan, but his appearance might be limited to a voice role as well because that guy is busy.

For a guy who struggled to book roles for a few decades, Ke Huy Quan is more booked and busy than ever, so whether or not he was even able to show up on set in Thailand to shoot any more scenes for “The White Lotus” remains to be seen. After getting his start as a child actor in “The Goonies” and “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” (playing the sidekick Short Round in the latter), Quan quit acting as an adult, went back to school, and spent some time working in stunt and fight choreography. In 2018, Quan felt inspired by the overwhelming success of Jon M. Chu’s blockbuster romantic comedy “Crazy Rich Asians,” which features an entirely Asian cast … just a few years after returning to acting, Quan starred alongside “Crazy Rich Asians” standout Michelle Yeoh in “Everything Everywhere All At Once,” a multiversal action movie created by the directing duo known as “The Daniels” (Kwan and Scheinert, respectively).

Quan and Yeoh both went on to win Oscars for their supporting and lead roles and “Everything Everywhere All At Once” even won Best Picture, giving Quan one of the best comeback stories in Hollywood’s storied history. Since then, Quan has appeared in the MCU and Disney+ series “Loki” and “American Born Chinese” (available on the same platform), as well as the action comedy “Love Hurts” in 2025. As for “The White Lotus,” it airs new episodes every Sunday night at 9 P.M. EST on HBO and Max … and even if it’s only a voice cameo, it’s pretty cool that Ke Huy Quan found a way to get involved with the award-winning series.