Toward the end of the season, the price of getting with the woman he's obsessed with gets steep. In fact, he does so much drinking and drugs, he accidentally hooks up with her and his brother at the time time, steering us into a full incest three-way.
As I said, Mike White's writing is fearless.
Well, Schwarzenegger sat down with Indiewire to discuss his role in the show and the twists and turns many viewers found shocking.
Let's dive into a couple of quotes I think are really revealing.
When it came to working with White in general, Schwarzenegger praised the writer-director, saying, "I don’t know if this will answer your question, but I think what’s so great about [working with him] is that he’s an actor. I mean, he’s the writer and the director and the showrunner and the creator, but he also has an acting background. So when he comes to you with notes, he starts to reenact the scene, like, literally redoes it in his head and plays all the characters. And then, if you’re not sure how to fully understand it, he kind of redoes it and shows you again.And he also comes up with ideas right in the moment. You’ll be mid-scene and all of a sudden you’ll hear him shout, and he’ll say something you didn’t think of. He’ll just be, like, “Try this! Try this! Try this! Try this!”"
That level of understanding gives actors on set a lot of agency and can keep long days in hot places fun.
And it bonds you with the performers because there's a mutual level of trust.
Of course, the relationship between the brothers in the show came up.
'The White Lotus'CREDIT: HBO
Schwarzenegger expanded on the written dynamic, saying, "Mike doesn’t write things to just write things. I think that he’s smart enough that he uses things as a marketing tool — whether it’s how Parker [Posey] delivers certain lines or how sincerely Saxon talks about his sister being hot. There are outlandish things throughout, but it all plays toward the overall arc of the story and the characters. This moment that happens between the brothers, how I see it, is kind of like in this Buddhist ideology of both of them getting reborn into different people, into different levels of power in their relationship and in the family dynamic. Saxon becomes a new person after this. He’s now at the lower half of the totem pole, and he no longer exerts this power over Lochlan. Everything that he stood for, everything that he’s been talking about, has now been flipped on its head, and he really is internalizing and questioning everything. So that’s how I see it, but I can just tell you how I started to interpret things. You’d have to ask Mike why he did what he did. I think he would probably give you the best answer."
That explanation was awesome, and I do think the power dynamic of the show shifts after those scenes. And that also raises the tension inside the family and gives us more suspects of who would be firing the gun and why.
These kinds of layers allow actors to eat up every scene and allow them to build the arc in their performances as the writer does on the page.
Let me know what you think in the comments.
'The White Lotus'CREDIT: HBO
