Anthem Magazine

Photography: Reto Sterchi
Styling: Gareth Scourfield
Grooming: Sussy Campos

Since its debut in the summer of 2021, HBO’s hit series The White Lotus has become a pop-cultural touchstone for its fairly novel central theme—peeling back the layers on class anxieties while ensnaring viewers in its web of opulence and dysfunction—and for the sneering yet humane sensibility of the show’s brilliant mastermind, Mike White. From Maui to Sicily, the series has also spotlighted its destinations with such allure that they have become central characters in their own right, sparking real-life travel booms as viewers seek out filming locations. This phenomenon, dubbed “The White Lotus Effect,” underscores the power of media as a catalyst for wanderlust and in reshaping travel trends. On the heels of the Emmy-fêted success of its previous two seasons, all eyes are now on Thailand in The White Lotus anthology, featuring a renewed ensemble cast.

Among the assemblage of this season’s new players is Jason Isaacs, who has clocked up an impressive array of roles over the course of his decades-long career. Be it Harry Potter’s odious Lucius Malfoy, Star Trek: Discovery’s calculating Captain Gabriel Lorca or The OA’s creepy Dr. Hunter Aloysius Percy, there are few facets of pop culture the English actor hasn’t managed to sink his teeth into as well. On The White Lotus, Isaacs plays Timothy Ratliff, a successful businessman vacationing in Thailand with his family, which includes his wife Victoria (Parker Posey) and their three children: Saxon (Patrick Schwarzenegger), Piper (Sarah Catherine Hook), and Lochlan (Sam Nivola). On this paradisal getaway, an unraveling secret could upend all of their lives forever.

Anthem connected with Isaacs for a chat, and a photoshoot at the Four Seasons Beverly Hills.

The White Lotus season three debuts on Max on February 16th.

Hi, Jason. How are you doing, sir?

Oh, you know, I’m just slightly hysterical. [laughs] It’s not a normal day for me, talking to a million people about myself and trying to talk about a project that you can’t talk about at all.

No kidding. This show is incredibly difficult to talk about. It’s a landmine for spoilers.

They all try to get details out of you, but I know they don’t really want them because they couldn’t write about ‘em anyway. So this whole thing has been an interesting linguistic tightrope.

Are you enjoying Los Angeles? You don’t live here, do you?

No, but I’ve lived here a lot and I have many friends here. Los Angeles has been suffering recently… Terribly, obviously. There’s a shadow of tragedy and loss hanging over everything. It is the city of a million smiles and a lot of people are having to fake them bigger than ever before. So I’m aware of what this is, this little bubble of love and hype for a much-loved TV show. I think work is necessary and people are glad to be working, but they don’t have to pretend for me that life is going great because that’s clearly not the case.

I’d been missing out. I hadn’t watched The White Lotus until I knew I’d be sitting down with you. I binged the first two seasons in one go, and then I was able to preview season three.

Mike [White] knows how to tell a story at the perfect pace. He’s like one of those great old-fashioned storytellers. A great torch song. He delivers just enough so you start to lean in, and when the boulder starts to roll downhill, it is unstoppable chaos and carnage. You’re in for a wild ride.

I’m curious about your introduction to the series.

My wife and children are huge White Lotus fans, and I had missed the chance to begin with them. I’m often washing up dinner when they start watching TV shows. They go, “No, don’t watch it now. Dad, you’ve gotta start from the beginning!” I think I’d been away working when they were watching White Lotus. They were loving it so much. I was three or four episodes behind and never caught up with them. When White Lotus two came along, they were all excited to sit down and watch it together. They banned me from the room ‘cause they said I have to watch one first. So I hadn’t watched it, although it was one of those things on my must-see list. Then I got this audition. First of all, it was an odd thing for me to audition. And I like auditioning. I know actors shouldn’t say that when they get to a certain age or status, but I like it because it means, on the first day of shooting, you’re not anxious that someone’s gonna come over and go, “Really? That’s what you’re doing?” and huddle in the corner and discuss firing you. [laughs] So they at least know what they’re gonna get. When I had an audition and I had to speak to Mike, I think I bluffed and told Dave [Bernad], the producer, that it was my favorite show. I told him about Mike’s brilliance, and I’d never seen it. Then I saw both seasons, I think, in a day. I sat down and just immersed myself in that world a bit and emerged slightly stunned. I was both inspired and terrified. Could I ever do anything to match it? So I did that thing that actors do: I lied. When you’re asked if you can horse ride or sword fight, you pretend that you’ve been doing it all your life.

Everyone wants to be on this show. This is the perennial big-get show for actors.

Although that’s true, it’s the reason that’s missing. It’s not because it’s popular or because people watch it. It’s because you follow good writing. Over the 37 years or something that I’ve been an actor, it’s been clear that the half dozen times the thing I’ve been in, or even myself, was being showered in praise is because the writing was brilliant to start with. So anything Mike writes, I would run out and crash through walls to be part of. I thought his series Enlightened was brilliant. He’s just a guy who knows how to excavate the human condition, and how to entertain and shock and move people all at the same time, and sometimes within the same scene. That’s a rare quality. We so often talk about The White Lotus being an “eat the rich” themed show because that’s something you see across the zeitgeist, but that’s not why it’s brilliant or why it’s got the audience it has. It’s Mike entirely. It’s his ability to weave a story and peel layers back on human behavior and make you empathize with some of the most grotesque people and charm you and all those things in the same package, which is incredibly rare. So while it’s true that actors wanna be on this show, it’s not to be in a hit. It’s to be able to somehow walk in the shoes of his characters.

How much of season three have you watched?

I’ve seen most of it now. I think he’s upped his game. I think it’s easily the best one yet. It’s extraordinary. He’s really remarkable. I’m talking about Mike, not me, obviously. [laughs]

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You’re prolific. You have a robust filmography. You’ve done everything under the sun.

I’m old! Of course I’ve done a lot. [laughs]

While that’s true, I would argue more than most. And consistently.

I’ve made a living acting, which is bizarre and rare and just nothing but luck. Over the years, in 37 years, if you haven’t put together a whole bunch of things, then you haven’t really been an actor. This is how I support my family ‘cause I have no real skills in life. I have to pay for my children and keep food in the fridge. Beyond that, why am I drawn to it? What do I love about it? I like being on set. I like the social aspect. It’s fun. I love the research. I absolutely love hanging out with politicians and priests and truck drivers and soldiers and all that stuff. I love getting to see behind closed doors. Sometimes, incredibly rarely, when it all works well, everything comes together. It’s like when sportsmen are in the zone. You’re going, “I’m in the right place at the right time.” And telling the right story with the right people doesn’t always, by any means, reach an audience or please the critics. But that’s not my job. My job is when we’re making it. I learned many years ago to let go of any expectations or investment in the result. For me, it’s all about the process.

So it is quite a rare thing that something like The White Lotus comes along.

Every now and again, something wonderful comes along. I try and do the very best things I get offered. Very often, I will pass on things because I’m waiting for something wonderful. Normally, I’m after brilliant projects and I don’t work for quite a long time because I keep thinking that something else will come in that’s good. Then, after a while, I go, “What the fuck am I waiting for?” [laughs] “I’m really bored sitting at home. I better take a job.” It is a very rare thing. There’s a few artistic highlights of my career. They may not be the things that the public knows me for, but there are times when all the ley lines come together and I remember why I’m an actor. 

I understand that The White Lotus was your first time filming in Thailand. So despite your vast experience, you can still find something new in all of this. There is newness out there.

Oh god, there’s always new stuff to do. Also, everybody’s new. Every human engagement is new. Mike was new. I knew his writing, but I had no idea what he’d be like directing. Turns out, he’s unlike anybody else I’ve ever worked with. He sits behind the monitor and, every now and again, there will be demonic shrieks of laughter. [laughs] Very often, at something really dark. Then he’ll start throwing out suggestions and you better be on your toes ‘cause you need to incorporate them into the scene as you’re doing ‘em. He lets you go off-piste as much as you like, as long as he likes it. The scenes are alive, even though this is a very big-budget production. It’s also slow moving because there’s hundreds of extras sometimes in amazing locations. It feels incredibly nimble because Mike can make everything up on the spot. He’ll walk out from behind the monitor and play your character better than—well, certainly better than I can play Timothy. He will come up with a bunch of lines and let you go rambling off down cul-de-sacs. Sometimes, there were things I don’t think I would do for other directors. I mean, one of the reasons you get hired as an actor is for your taste and discretion. It’s for your take on a character and the decisions you make. You are inside that person’s life throughout the arc of the story, and you pretty much know where you want this person to be at the beginning and the end. Mike has so many different story strands going on at the same time and his plate’s spinning, and he will ask for a huge variety of things in the scenes that he will decide on later. I wouldn’t do that for most people because I’m thinking, “No, no. That’s my bit. My contribution to this story is what happens to me and where I am in the storyline. You do the other things.” Somehow, all those rules went out the window. All those safeguards and my self-defense mechanism went out the window. I threw myself into his arms and said, “I’ll give you anything you want. You decide on them later.” That was an entirely new experience for me.

On the topic of trust, how much of this season’s arc were you privy to when you started?

Everybody got all the scripts. They’re not lent to you one by one. The amusing thing is that, when we were in Thailand, they were very tight-lipped about the scripts. They didn’t give people the last few pages, even though we’ve read it already. When we moved from location to location, they would hand you the scripts and we would hand them back. We had to keep reminding them, “You know we’ve read them all, right? We do know what happens.” [laughs] It reminded me of the Harry Potter days when they would deliver this huge NDA by courier. I mean, the non-disclosure agreement was larger than the books themselves, and those books got pretty fat by the end. So you’re telling them, “You do realize that the book’s been on sale for three years.” But I now understand the need for secrecy on White Lotus because all my relatives and friends think they’re desperate to know what happens, and who dies in particular. I could potentially ruin it for them. 

They don’t really want to know.

They really don’t. What they really want is to be teased and tortured in the way Mike’s gonna do it.

You filmed in Thailand for six and a half months?

Maybe seven. Yeah, I was there for a long time. And I didn’t come home. Some other people came home to see their families, but my family came to see me. My wife was with me most of the time. My kids were away at college so they visited once. I might’ve had the longest stint. But nowhere near as long as Mike and the crew. I was probably there the longest on the side of the actors.

At least you didn’t have to quarantine for Covid like they did on season one, right? 

I think it was a huge pleasure for them! [laughs]

How so?

At the time, nobody in the world was seeing friends or mixing with anybody. And they bubbled for much less time than we shot for. Season one had fewer episodes and it was shot quicker. And there were no locations. This season, we go to a number of different locations. Mike takes it outside the hotel a lot. In fact, although it looks like one hotel on the show, we shot in a number of different ones. And I shot during Covid as well. I was incredibly loathe to leave my house. Covid hit my family very hard. Two of my brothers and my dad were all in hospital, about to die, one night. They all lived, thank god. That was in March 2020.

That’s really scary. I’m sorry you had to go through that.

I took Covid more seriously than anyone I knew, including my wife and daughters. I was ultra-cautious—bleaching the groceries and all that stuff. And I was offered some jobs. I did bits in Peter the Great and Sex Education, and then I did Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris. Each time, I had to be persuaded that there would be an incredibly safe environment and that they were going to be very strict with protocols. And each time I went to work, I realized it was safer than my own house. My kids were meeting people in secret and my wife was having coffee with friends. So I know what that experience was like for them on the first season. I don’t think it was that hard. In fact, I think it was actually a real pleasure because the rest of the world was being deprived of social contact.

Jason, we’re treading tricky territory now because we don’t want to spoil anything. Let me ask you this: If we’re to say that the core theme of season one is money, and sex in season two, what is the core theme this season—the anchoring theme that money and sex is also circling?

Well, first of all, I’d say that there’s plenty of sex, drugs, and rock and roll in this one—with some tofu and meditation mixed in. [laughs] But the added layer from being in Thailand and being inspired by Thailand is the search for spirituality. What is the self? It’s questions of identity. It’s all the things that rich people go and dabble in, in Thailand, but in a horrendous and grotesque way because they think money’s a shortcut. Also, in a very profound way, Mike strips some of the characters right down and takes everything away. He threatens everything they are, or who they think they are, and wonders, “What is the essential self?” So, you know, you get the level of entertainment you expect, and plenty of raucous and gasp-worthy plot turns, but there’s also, I think, far more resonance and emotional scenes than you’ve ever seen before in The White Lotus.

You’re a family man yourself. You understand what it means to be a loving husband and a father. At the same time, every family has its own unique dynamics. Were there particulars about the Ratliffs that, for whatever reason, resonated with you deeply, or felt alien to you?

So, we’ve been doing lots of interviews the last few days because that’s what happens when you’re launching a show. You’re forced to think about things you’ve not thought about before. And I’m embarrassed to say that I’m slowly beginning to realize I have no idea what I do when I’m acting. I’ve been listening to other people go, “You have this in common with your character.” And, sure, you’re always trying to find anything that helps you feel like the person you’re playing. But I’m not actually picking things off a shelf. I just try and clear my mind, my heart, and my history completely. I can’t think of a simpler or more clever way to say it. Timothy Ratliff is in this awful situation and he’s falling apart. So, I am a dad. I love my kids. I love my wife. But I’ve never had my entire universe threatened in the same way. Although illness has come into my life at different times, and although various potential tragedies hit everyone or threaten to hit everyone at different times, I have no idea. I don’t build a character like a LEGO piece. It’s a much less linear kind of thing. I watched a bunch of stuff. I spoke to a bunch of people. I thought about a bunch of stuff. I read things. I listened to music. I listened to podcasts. I tried to program his history and his needs and his status and his obsessions into my head. Then you just let it all go. When Mike says action, you think, “I hope Tim shows up.” ‘Cause I don’t know what would happen otherwise. I have no idea which bits are from my life, from watching documentaries, from the billionaires I’ve come across, or from just my imagination. I kind of blackout, actually. I think I go into a weird blackout zone. Sometimes the director will come up and go, “I love what you did in take three. Let’s maybe go back to that.” I’ll go, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” But I can’t imagine there not being pieces of me in everyone I play. I’m sorry I don’t have a better answer.

I had a good chuckle the other day because the story that’s been dominating your news cycle is the soundbite you gave about how everyone stunk, literally, filming the show in Thailand. 

[laughs] It’s one of the terrible pitfalls of trying to amuse a journalist when you’re talking to them. You put a little comic spin at the end of a sentence and it ends up going viral. You end up getting texts from Mike and every single member of the cast going, “So, it was me that stunk?” All I was trying to say is, it was insanely hot. Nobody would be jealous that we were in paradise. We were in a place that was lovely, but when you’re in a room shooting with forty people and the air conditioner is off and it’s 45 degrees centigrade outside and you’re trying to be emotional or present or intimate, it’s none of those things. It’s just a battle of the elements. And, sure, everyone’s very, very sweaty. I’m certainly not naming names about who smelled the most. I don’t think any of us felt like we were smelling of roses and fresh at the end of the day. But my god, if I could take back anything, I would take back that sentence ‘cause it’s gone everywhere.

I’m just glad I read that after watching the show. It would’ve been a real distraction for me.

People had ice packs down their pants. If there was an air-conditioned room, we ran into them between takes. ‘Cause it’s even hard to think. Luckily, the story is about people who are in a pressure cooker. And for me, more than anybody in the show possibly, I reached a boiling point, and that was the second I stepped outta my room in the morning. [laughs] We took it from there. And all these things, they’re not really challenging. I’ve been in worse conditions. I’ve been in the freezing cold. I’d rather be in the heat. I’ve done stunts that were painful and ended up in hospital. I’ve nearly drowned. It’s the fun of being an actor. On The White Lotus, the most challenging thing was reading the script and realizing that my character goes through this enormous emotional obstacle course. My job is to make those things truthful. I think there’s a misconception or a misunderstanding, even from people close to me in my family, that acting involves pretending to do something. They’re right to a certain extent, but the way that you’re pretending to do it is by making it as real as possible as you can for yourself. You can’t pretend to cry. You cry. I am in dire straits in this show. I face massive existential crisis. So as much as I can possibly take myself and my imagination and my soul to that place, that’s what acting is. That was the challenge, reading it and the fear coming up to it. Then you have to throw all that fear away. Shake it off. Otherwise, you’re paralyzed by tension and fear. You have to feel like anything’s possible. And the other challenge is, we were all crammed together. It’s a gilded cage. There were a lot of people there. There were a lot of personalities, and not everybody got on. Even though everybody meant well, that length of time away from home mixed with the heat and alcohol and everything else also meant that there were challenges to being in that group of people, for all of us at various points. You carry that in your cells slightly while pretending, for want of a better word, to have your life fall apart. Everyone’s playing these very high-octane scenes, whether that involves violence or anger or grief or whatever, and you’re sitting there and it’s hot and people are drinking wine. So the challenge has as much to do with the environment outside of the heat and the elements. It has to do with us all being there on top of each other all day, every day. Often, we were shooting all night, starting at six at night and finishing at six in the morning, for weeks at a time. You’re tired. You can’t get away from each other. You can’t get away from the world of The White Lotus. And I imagine part of that is schematic. I imagine part of that is something Dave and Mike found productive because it makes the work on screen that much richer and full of the extremities of human behavior. You feel it when you leave. There’s this sense of leaving a bubble where the air is more dense and things are bigger. It’s like being a teenager where you feel things more keenly.

I’m sure you were totally game for whatever Mike had in mind for you. I say this, having learned now that your favorite character arc in season one was Armand’s [played by Murray Barlett]. He really went through it. That was insanity.

Funnily enough, a number of people the last few days have been like, “So who’s the new Jennifer [Coolidge]? Who’s the new Armand?” Mike is too sophisticated than to ever repeat himself. There’s only one Jennifer in the world. With everybody, whether or not they might seem like previous characters at first glance or in echoes or shadows, everyone is completely unique in this. The journeys are unique. Where they go is unique. Mike seems to have an endless reservoir to dip into for rich and realized characters. But you’re absolutely right. I did read it and think, “Okay, that’s an extreme journey. I have a pretty extreme journey in this.” That’s not too much of a spoiler.

The show was just renewed for a fourth season. Is that something that would interest you?

Well, first of all, that’s to presume that I’m still alive.

Hypothetically. We’re working in hypotheticals. 

Okay, let’s go binary on this. The forking paths. If I’m no longer alive, I would happily come back as my twin brother, or a ghost. [laughs] If I am alive, I would happily come back. And the truth is, I would follow Mike anywhere. If he wanted me to come and make tea on set, I’d do it. He’s just a remarkable talent. There are only a few of those around. There are people who are really at the higher end of mediocre. Then there are very few people who are sensational, and he’s one of them.

If it were up to you, to which destination would you take the fourth installment? 

My favorite destination would be North West London. Then I could visit the set and see my friends all the time. It’s glamorous enough for Mike, I think. Suburban North West London is, certainly. They’ve got so much glorious sunshine. I wonder if there’s somewhere equally as glorious, but not allied to the weather. Maybe Northern Europe somewhere. But that would mean most people would be dressed, and Mike does have a habit of liking people to be undressed. [laughs]

In your talk with SAG-AFTRA Foundation some years ago, you said the thing you love about acting is that what you love about it is constantly in flux. What is acting providing you today?

I’m rather terrified of the state of the world. I read the news a lot. I’m in various groups of people who share their anxieties. The world seems to be shifting to the right in an unstoppable way that I don’t understand. I’m horrified mostly for my children. Acting is a place where I can escape. In my mind, I’m a bit of a catastrophist. I try and take some action and be active in things that are making things better and do socially responsible things and philanthropy and lend my celebrity to things where I can. But it does seem Cnut-like, holding back a tide of darkness as we see, not just politically, but ecologically and in every other way, where the world is going. When I’m acting, all those other things evaporate and become soft focus in the periphery of my life. So that’s something I love about it at the moment.

What’s your approach to discussing politics and world events with the platform you have?

I’ve barely posted anything on social media. In which I had, to about a million followers on Instagram and hundreds of thousands on Twitter, it was October 7th, 2023, about the Hamas massacre of all those innocents and of taking all those people hostage, because I was horrified by the outpourings of instant antisemitism the day after they were justifying it, and my erstwhile fellow travelers on the center-left and on the left of politics having an utter lack of compassion for mass rape and mass slaughter because of whatever they thought their politics drove them to. Speaking out about politics, everything seems so polarized now. It seems almost impossible for there not to be a knee-jerk reaction from an entire community of people who aren’t really listening. There’s no dialogue, sense of nuance, or complexity in any situation. And how does it affect me? I can still campaign—will campaign—when people can actually make a difference, which is at election time. I can tell people who I think they might wanna vote for. And they don’t have to listen to me. They don’t have to go to my platforms. I’m just an actor. I mean, it seems off to me that there’s a reality star in the White House, but here we are. The rest of the time, I don’t engage on those binary, polarizing platforms. ‘Cause what’s the point? I try and get involved in philanthropic work for which no one can argue. I’ve worked for refugees. I’ve worked in children’s hospitals. I’ve worked for research charities in their fight against cancer and EB and numbers of other things that’s hard for anyone to find controversial. I don’t know how much I’ve persuaded anyone of anything, ever. So when I think I can have an effect on what people do that will have an effect on the world, that’s when I speak up. Otherwise, it’s just standing on a soapbox.

What are your highest hopes for 2025?

That peace breaks out everywhere. That we begin to see that there’s no moral relativism. There are rights and wrongs. There is justice. There are inalienable human and civil rights that should not be shifting in the wind.