Ukraine's Foreign Ministry and White Lotus fans forced HBO to remove Russian actor Miloš Biković from the cast: he called it a "triumph of absurdity"

The third season of White Lotus will not feature Serbian Miloš Biković, who has built a career in Russia, supports the war, and has a passport from a terrorist country. After the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry appealed to the studio and fans bombarded the official HBO page with angry comments, the Putinist was finally removed from the cast.

No one will be hired to take his place. According to the plot, Miloš was supposed to play a Russian yogi. However, the scenes mentioning Russia will be completely rewritten, Deadline writes.

The journalists said that the Russian was supposed to play a "flirty yoga instructor and life-improvement mentor" but now the script is being changed.

"Miloš Biković, the Serbian actor who has been supporting Russia since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, is now going to play the lead role in season 3 of HBO's White Lotus. HBO, is it okay for you to work with a person who supports genocide and violates international law?" read a tweet from the Foreign Ministry published a week ago.

It seems that HBO has since set a condition for the star: condemnation of the war or termination of the contract. Miloš made his choice. He mentioned the fighting not in Ukraine but in Yugoslavia.

Regarding the genocide of Ukrainians, he used the standart narrative that "not everything is so clear" and complained about the "triumph of absurdity."

"I grew up in a country torn apart by war. When I was 11 years old, I spent days and nights in shelters while my country and my hometown were being bombed. I don't want anyone to go through that. There are more and more active wars and conflicts in the world. Everyone has their own circumstances. Everyone has their own pain," the actor said cynically.

The Russian called the terminated contract with HBO a "targeted information campaign" and complained that external circumstances - i.e. murder, occupation, bombing of peaceful cities, ecocide, etc. - influence creative decisions and crowd out "freedom of creativity".

"The result of this narrative is the triumph of absurdity and the defeat of art. My participation in the project has become impossible for reasons that go beyond creativity. I am not ready to change my principles," the Serb said, not mentioning the fact that his "stance" is to support Russia in its intentions to destroy Ukraine.

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