Sex, drugs and spirituality: Jason Isaacs opens up on the wild new season of The White Lotus
Jason Isaacs was already feeling the pressure of living up to the first two seasons of The White Lotus – and then his own family upped the ante even more.
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Jason Isaacs likes to do “that pretentious thing” where an actor stays in character on set. At home though, he dare not bring whatever accent he is playing on a given day in the door.
“Only on set, my wife wouldn’t put up with this shit for two seconds, are you joking?” Isaacs tells Stellar on Friday.
“I do it on set because then when they say action, you’re not thinking, ‘oh I’ve got to put the accent on as well’, you’re just thinking about what’s the character going through. I did it with Jason Clarke, your countryman, when we did Brotherhood … I just find it easier and it doesn’t feel that pretentious with other people. When you meet strangers, it feels really stupid but I can’t get out of it now.”
Isaacs is sitting down with journalists on the Thailand set of The White Lotus season three at Phuket’s luxurious Rosewood Hotel.
The series was shot mostly in Koh Samui though, where the Four Seasons Hotel is transformed into The White Lotus, for the third season of Mike White’s Emmy-winning black comedy anthology.
It’s 1am and we’re in a tent with fans, sprayed to the max with mosquito repellent, watching the action unfold through small screens.
The scenes on this night feature Isaacs as Timothy Ratliff alongside on-screen wife, veteran indie American cult favourite, Parker Posey, as Victoria.
The pair, Isaacs says, have very different approaches to their characters.
“She’s a very different actress, we have a completely different attitude as to how to be on a set and how to bring a script to life,” he explains in an American southern accent.
“So it’s good that our characters are, you know, we’re married, but we’re locked into a very opposite journey.
“On camera, we do not get each other at all. She’s a very idiosyncratic individual, there’s no one like her and we are from very different schools of acting. Some people like to improvise non-stop. Some people like go through lines. Some people don’t. And Parker and I just have different ways to bring scenes to life but when they go action, we’re married and we find hopefully something that is going to work because we don’t quite get each other and the characters don’t quite see or hear each other – and there are some drugs involved.”
Isaacs keeps checking himself so as not to give too much of the storyline away.
With creator White at the helm, The White Lotus is undoubtedly one of the big TV phenomena of the past few years and is largely credited with reigniting Jennifer Coolidge’s career.
Coolidge’s iconic character, Tanya McQuoid, died at the end of the last season and Natasha Rothwell is the only returning cast member this time round. She appeared as spa manager Belinda in the first season that was shot in Hawaii during Covid.
Season two was shot in Taormina, Italy.
This time round, in Thailand, White brings a mixture of familiar faces with up-and-comers.
The cast includes Leslie Bibb, Carrie Coon, Walton Goggins, Michelle Monaghan, Lalisa Manobal, Tayme Thapthimthong and Patrick Schwarzenegger.
“We’re in Thailand, there’s a lot of discussions of Buddha and there’s stuff around spirituality and temples and stuff, but it’s a Mike White show,” Isaacs says.
“There’s some twisted people and there’s some sex and there’s all the things you would hope to have. There’s a lot of people who talk about spirituality and try to find it, maybe some people who have some but its filtered through the prism of a bunch of entitled people in a very fancy hotel and a lot of it is their version of what that would be. Whatever makes Mike shriek with joy and mischief behind the camera is as close to spirituality as I’ve seen a lot of the time. I don’t think anyone is going to be using this show to meditate to.”
Isaacs, 61, is one of the most recognisable names on board for season three thanks to a career spanning more than three decades and such memorable roles as Lucius Malfoy in the Harry Potter films.
His other credits include Peter Pan, Black Hawk Down, Fury and the Adelaide-shot Hotel Mumbai.
Isaacs and his wife, documentary film maker Emma Hewitt, have two daughters together.
The White Lotus is his family’s favourite show, and so while he doesn’t normally get nervous going into auditions, that added pressure was felt for this.
He was in New York promoting the release of his then TV show, Archie, at the time of the audition and had to put down a self tape – the process whereby an actor prerecords a video audition to submit to a casting director or creative team.
Isaacs recalls walking across bustling Times Square to a small studio space, seeing his face on billboards for Archie as he made his way. It felt like his early days out of drama school.
“Frankly, I could take anything in my life, I’ve had a good run and if everything turned sour, I’m okay,” he says when asked whether being a father in real life helped with the role.
“But I’ve got kids. I’m invested in the future and their future. That, I brought to this. What did I learn from this guy? Well, how not to dress and don’t spend all your money on hotels.”
Isaacs also felt an unusual sense of fear going into this project.
“Fear was a big part of it because the first two seasons are so incredible and it is a very difficult part, we all have difficult parts,” he says.
“Mike writes these incredible people in awful situations that terrible things are happening to.
“Nobody wants to watch rich people have a good time. So I was like, ‘I hope I don’t f--- this up and I hope that I can make it half as good as the other seasons’. I couldn’t wait to get to see what the process was that came up with those first two seasons because I’d read the scripts when I was offered the part and I knew they were great but he adds some magic sauce to it. Mike is a huge ingredient in the show and writing is a massive part in casting it but the way his puckishness, like he’s mischievous on set, his ability to help you cause trouble and surprise and shock and dig something, dig that irreverence out of yourself and surprise yourself is what makes the show work.”
He adds: “The scripts are great, but by themselves they wouldn’t have been a success and so I was both scared and excited to get on set and see what did he bring to the mix. And he didn’t disappoint. You know, he’s trouble.”
* The White Lotus season three streams on BINGE from February 17.
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