Ep. 6: “Denials” with Patrick Schwarzenegger and Leslie Bibb

Speaker 1 When you're born, you are like a single drop of water flying upward, separated from the one giant consciousness.

Speaker 1 You get older, you descend back down, you die, you land back into the water, become one with the ocean again.

Speaker 1 No more separated, no more suffering,

Speaker 1 one consciousness.

Speaker 1 Death is a happy return.

Speaker 1 Like

Speaker 1 coming home.

Speaker 1 Thank you.

Speaker 2 Hello and welcome to the White Lotus official podcast companion to season three. I'm Gia Talentino.

Speaker 1 And I'm Josh Bearman.

Speaker 2 And I have a question for you about episode six.

Speaker 2 Who's in the most trouble right now?

Speaker 2 Hmm.

Speaker 2 Who's in the worst place? Right.

Speaker 1 Okay, good question. This episode is doing a good job of like everybody could want to kill somebody else or be in trouble or be desperate or be the mark of somebody who's desperate.

Speaker 2 Yes. Well, it's like up till the full moon party, everyone was sowing and now they have to reap.

Speaker 1 Now they're reaping. Now they have to reap.

Speaker 2 They're in the reaping phase. The show is in its reaping phase.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 1 I would have said at the beginning that Tim is in the most trouble. Yeah.

Speaker 1 But now

Speaker 1 Saxon. It's definitely sex.

Speaker 1 He's in trouble. His world is in rock.
He's in his world has been rocked.

Speaker 2 But he was the one that rocked it.

Speaker 2 He was the one that was telling his little brother that he needed to

Speaker 1 get laid, get everything.

Speaker 3 That's what he says at the very beginning.

Speaker 1 All right, so let's get into this episode, which is called Denials. And as always, it's written and directed by Mike White.

Speaker 1 And later in this episode, we'll be talking to Patrick Schwarzenegger, aka Saxon, and Leslie Bibb, who plays Kate.

Speaker 1 In general, the episode sort of gets into

Speaker 1 that's the morning after it's the morning after episode yeah it's the morning after episode many walks of shame right that intersect and then throw these sets of relationships into some tumult this is like Saturday night Sunday morning and a little you know to some degree it's like the ecstasy of Saturday night and then the reckoning of Sunday morning which by the way I feel even just watching it I was like oh yeah right the morning always comes and I what you mean just like in general?

Speaker 1 In general, like the morning. Well, because I was so caught up in episode five where I'm like, they're at the party.

Speaker 1 They're actually, yeah, the party's going to last forever. They're like, you know, Piper's over there studying Buddhism, but they're transcending and experiencing a new reality at the party.

Speaker 1 And then I was like, oh, no, like. You get your hangover.
Like, the next day comes, the morning after happens. There's no way out of it.

Speaker 1 And I felt like I was like, I had like duped myself like yet again

Speaker 1 into believing I was going to live forever because I was like at this awesome party.

Speaker 1 I mean, in some way, all the characters are looking for transcendence in different forms and there's drugs and sex or there are people that come from this background of money offers happiness or where do you find your happiness?

Speaker 1 And I was kind of stirred into the belief that the ecstatic, you know, revelry can also be transcendent, which I do think it can, but I was like, I was really feeling it and now I'm like, oh,

Speaker 1 that was not what was intended for that party.

Speaker 2 The monk says to Timothy, you know, he's like, people run towards pleasure and they get there and they just find more pain, right?

Speaker 2 They could have had just a wonderful sort of skinny dipping time in the pool and watching the fireworks and making out on the full moon party.

Speaker 2 But it's like, you know, the message that is coming through the screen is that we as humans are not content with that. We have to take it one step farther.
We have to cheat on our partners.

Speaker 2 We have to have sex with our brothers. We have to, you know what I mean? Like we, our, our desire for more.

Speaker 1 We have to become an Asian woman.

Speaker 2 We have to become an Asian woman. You know what I mean? It's like there could be places where pleasure could be contentment.
And yet the message of specifically Buddhism, right?

Speaker 2 It's like, if you are not mindful of what pleasure is,

Speaker 2 it will hurt you. Your relationship to it will hurt you.

Speaker 1 We see, well, there's a little moment with Belinda. She wakes up in the arms of pornshai.
Her son catches them in bed. Sweet, funny little moment.
I don't know how it happened.

Speaker 1 one minute he was helping me get this lizard out my room and the next minute you were in bed and god I'm happy for you okay

Speaker 2 unfortunately one feels that Belinda is marked for death because of how good this episode is everything's going well for her so something must be off yeah like she had this hot sweet night with this guy that's so nice and like so respectful but like you know is like snuggled up close to her in the morning and he starts this conversation about you know maybe we could start our own spa yeah her son has shown up he that's all she wanted he seems impossibly proud of her yeah yeah he's proud of her godson is proud of her for they have an adult relationship it seems like from the little interactions we get and then yeah and he and then porn chai asks her about oh maybe we could in fact open up such a place here and that seems intriguing to her because it's a dream and then it's also coming from somebody who's not like a solipsistic billionaires who might just like abandon her and the idea at the drop drop of a hat like what happens with Tanya where she still feels burned by so she's like aha maybe there is this was all meant for to be and right which then leaves us thinking maybe it's meant not to be right we and and and she when she encounters Greg when Greg forcibly encounters her you know she's she's just shaking you know she's shaking because Greg is now he's made a full transformation into murderer murderer vibes it's hard to get a clear read on what he's doing you know like my occams racer for his behavior towards Chloe is that he's in a profound case of sort of anhedonia, you know, where he's incapable of experiencing any pleasure whatsoever and cannot like he's not really interested in having sex with his incredibly hot 28-year-old girlfriend or whatever.

Speaker 2 He just

Speaker 2 he can only like process increasingly sort of violent versions of it, you know, like he's interested now in harm in some way. Like he's just he's radiating like interested in harm.

Speaker 1 I want to to have people over tonight.

Speaker 1 Like a party or something? I need to deal with something and I need your help.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean I was thinking about him also in relation to this

Speaker 1 idea of death as it relates to the Buddhist notion of death that we hear from the monk

Speaker 1 and over the course of the seasons, right? Like Armand is trapped and he is released by his death at the end of season one. And then we think like, oh, poor Tanya, she died.
And you read that as

Speaker 1 victim. But maybe she's not a victim.
Maybe he's the victim because now he's trapped here still

Speaker 1 in a state of Anhedonia. He has everything he wanted.
He has all this money. He has this boat.
And he's this

Speaker 1 completely miserable person. He doesn't even have a revenge fantasy.
He doesn't even have some like burning, you know, like wounds like Rick Walton Goggins then that he can maybe redeem somehow.

Speaker 1 He just is a person who's incapable of joy in any way. Right.

Speaker 1 With the gals, Kate sees Valentin sneaking out of Jacqueline's room. What do you mean?

Speaker 1 I mean

Speaker 1 he slept over

Speaker 1 with Jacqueline.

Speaker 2 I thought this was played really well and

Speaker 2 funnily. So Kate tells Lori, you know, what happened last night? Like, you know, I think had a sleepover, you know, and breaks this news.

Speaker 2 Obviously, Kate at some level knows that this will be devastating to Lori, right? She has been talking shit with Jacqueline about how,

Speaker 2 you know, how hard the divorce has been for Lori and how unbelievably single she is. And they treat her as if she is someone

Speaker 2 that is, you know, the third wheel, the, the friend that's not chosen first. And she knows how much it would mean.

Speaker 1 And kind of the charity case.

Speaker 2 The charity case. Like, and she, they have both been sort of talking up this Laurie possibility, although Jacqueline more so than Kate.

Speaker 2 Like she knows when she says, actually, Jacqueline fucked Valentine. Like, she knows it's not going to be received neutrally.
But when Laurie also tries ostensibly to play it cool, Kate's like, oh,

Speaker 2 I thought you would think this was funny. Like, you're getting mad.
Why are you getting mad?

Speaker 1 I was wondering about that. I was not of certain mind about whether Kate was just daft.
I was wondering if she thought, oh, maybe we're just doing more two girls gossiping about the third.

Speaker 1 But I did know, what I knew for sure was that this is going to be different than all the other gossip sessions. This is going to

Speaker 2 confront us.

Speaker 1 It's like throwing a grenade into the, you know, into the foxhole.

Speaker 3 I didn't think you were going to care so much.

Speaker 1 I don't care. I don't.
It's not like I was into him. She just kept pushing the idea.
Do you remember all the time she did that? I do.

Speaker 1 Talking about how I'm the only single one, how I should hook up with them. That's dementic.

Speaker 2 Well, I think that Kate is having it both ways, where she truly believes that she's just engaging in little girl talk, but deep down underneath, she knows that she has an upper hand because she has this information that one person desperately wants but doesn't know, and the other person desperately doesn't want her to share.

Speaker 2 But she doesn't want to believe herself to be a person that would do this kind of thing. Like she's just like, I thought we were having fun.

Speaker 2 And I also thought that the way that Carrie Kuhn plays her own response, which is like, oh, I just think it's interesting.

Speaker 2 I just think it's really interesting, Jacqueline, You know, like she, um, like she now has the opportunity, which is, I think the character is experiencing as unpleasant because it is coming out of a place of being like profoundly slighted and put back on the bottom.

Speaker 2 But the way she handles that information gives her the ability to kind of be on the top here. Like she gets to speak to Jaclyn as if she is superior to her.

Speaker 1 Now she has the moral high ground.

Speaker 2 For the first time.

Speaker 2 And I was thinking, you know, when they were having this discussion at breakfast, it was like, okay, now we're going to see which is worse in their eyes, being a Trump voter or a cheater.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 2 You know, like, or even not really just a cheater. It's like a cheater who fucks over your best friend.
If Jacqueline had just hooked up with a rando at the club, this would be a good thing.

Speaker 1 It would not be the same. It's not even close.

Speaker 2 You know, it's not even cheating.

Speaker 1 It's the psychological chess game that Lori thinks Jacqueline was playing. I sort of felt sympathetic to Jacqueline, who was like, I didn't have any plan.
And I don't think she did have a plan.

Speaker 1 It did just happen. But of course, she is the one who always was able to be in that position to make it happen.
And that's the eternal grievance, right, that Lori has.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I don't think Jacqueline was scheming.

Speaker 2 Well, at what point in the night you think she got his number, his personal self. Oh, right.

Speaker 1 Did they not have it the whole time, right?

Speaker 2 This is you never saw her texting him before. Right.
And so at some point of the night, she made a decision.

Speaker 1 Look at you reading between the lines. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Like between in the deleted scenes. When did this even happen?

Speaker 2 Yeah. I think that Jacqueline,

Speaker 2 I read her as the type of person that does a lot of this hierarchical assertion of dominance just purely on instinct.

Speaker 2 You know, like I don't think she, I don't think she knew she was going to do it until she was doing it and then she was doing it. Lori says at some point, it's like nobody ever changes.

Speaker 1 We're still the same people we were in the 10th grade. It's just funny.
It's funny. Not sure what that means, but okay.

Speaker 1 This is what you always did.

Speaker 1 Never mind. Forget it.
It doesn't matter. But that statement also exists in this other context of what's going on in the show in general, where

Speaker 1 some people are changing in this episode. And we've seen, I mean, Frank surely changed from last, you know, according to his monologue.

Speaker 1 And so it's interesting, like, the truth of that statement is also in some kind of conflict or tension with the truth that people are transformed.

Speaker 1 The tension between those two things is probably what is going on in this whole season.

Speaker 1 Then you have the two Ratliff boys. So they wake wake up on the boat.
They like Saxon is

Speaker 2 barving. And the thing is, you know,

Speaker 2 a walk of shame is walk of shame. You know, I like the concept itself feels very sort of Bush era American pie.
You know, it's like we're past that as a culture. And yet, if it's your own brother,

Speaker 1 I can't remember last night at all.

Speaker 1 We both blacked out.

Speaker 1 It's sort of being revealed slowly, and then he

Speaker 1 realizes that he's, well, he doesn't quite know what the full extent of what happened is, but even just the thought of he's jerking off in bed while looking at his brother. Looking at his brother, he

Speaker 1 gets seasick and runs and barfs. You guys forced us to.
I didn't force him to jerk you off.

Speaker 1 That never happened.

Speaker 1 But I don't remember that.

Speaker 2 You know, we're laughing at it because it's extremely funny, but it is, it is a really sort of dark, like Saxon is acting as if he were assaulted. You know what I mean?

Speaker 2 Like they're in this strange position where like Saxon is having the morning after trauma, like genuinely, you know, like of someone who's not a person who's not

Speaker 2 for consent. Yeah, like of someone that did not consent to something.
And the look that he gives Lachlan, the posture that he has, the way he holds himself when Lachlan is around, and the ease.

Speaker 2 that Lachlan has in his body,

Speaker 2 you know, maybe I'm projecting here, but it, it feels very recognizable. Like when he thinks about this, he gets nauseated.
You know, like he's giving like there has been a power reversal.

Speaker 2 This entire time, he's had the upper hand. He's been telling Lachlan what to do.
And didn't you think there was a palpable shift? Like Lachlan comes up, he's more or less at ease. Right.

Speaker 2 He's giving hungover, but he's more or less at ease and he's like, I blacked out. And I'm not saying that I think Lachlan did.
I mean, like, I don't think that Lachlan assaulted Saxon.

Speaker 2 I don't think that he took advantage, but there is,

Speaker 2 you know, I'm not, I don't think what he did was something I would ever want want to participate in personally,

Speaker 2 but I don't think he was deliberately exploiting his brother sexually, whatever. But they have that dynamic.
Like, Lachlan is at ease.

Speaker 2 Like, he, like, Patrick Schwerzeneger is, you know, he is sweating, he's gulping things, he's

Speaker 2 slapping bugs off his body, he's profoundly uncomfortable in his own skin.

Speaker 1 He's no longer, yeah, the confident man who kind of like

Speaker 1 swishes through life with ease, right? All of a sudden, he's not, he's, he's not himself.

Speaker 1 So then the kids are all at the pool

Speaker 2 trying to blame his bad mood on the fact that Chelsea wouldn't fuck him.

Speaker 2 And Chelsea's like, so sincerely, like, I could never because you don't have a soul.

Speaker 1 Once you've connected with someone on a spiritual level, you can't go back to cheap sex. Pucking up with you would be an empty experience.
And then she whispers to herself, she's like, so sad. Yeah.

Speaker 2 But she, like,

Speaker 2 I loved this Chelsea moment. And she's, you know, to a certain extent, like, she's completely right.
Like, hooking up with Saxon would 100% be an empty experience, you know?

Speaker 1 She's a lover. She wants to connect with somebody's soul.
And maybe we're going to, even that'll happen in another life. And she's like, he has no soul.
But now... I wonder, he's troubled.

Speaker 1 So all of a sudden, it's like the grain of sand that becomes the pearl. Like, there's an ajita that's going to turn into something.

Speaker 2 No, I mean, Saxon is the one that needs to spend a year at the meditation retreat. Like, I mean, if we're talking about what should happen, you know,

Speaker 1 Tim and Saxon they go off together for a year and they come back, new people.

Speaker 1 And dad does his time and then they get out and do have start some kind of like habitat for humanity type of you know philanthropic work and they're reborn as the true pillars of the community that they always thought they were.

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 1 And so the boys come back to the family. Piper wants to go to the monastery.
And then there's this kind of astonishing encounter because Piper goes in,

Speaker 1 she sees the monk, and

Speaker 1 she's crying. She finally has a real emotional moment where you kind of see, like, for all of her sweater set, perfectly kind of a bejeweled southern daughter self.

Speaker 1 She's a person that is troubled, and there's nobody in her world that would ever be able to speak to her the way that this that the monk does.

Speaker 2 And in the conversation with the monk, there's like a strong insinuation that she has had a moral problem with her family's way of life for a long and perhaps unarticulated time, and she's maybe coming here to make sense of it.

Speaker 2 But yeah, so she's 21, but as if she's 12 or something,

Speaker 2 she asks the monk, like, Can you just tell my parents that it's okay that I stay here? Right.

Speaker 1 Bring in your parents.

Speaker 1 I can answer their questions.

Speaker 1 Thank you. Thank you so much.

Speaker 2 So Timothy goes in and asks, what do you think happens after you die? Yeah.

Speaker 1 So I found this whole scene to be. I mean, first of all, it hits him so hard.
He's like,

Speaker 1 never heard basically anybody say anything like this to him, right?

Speaker 1 There's nobody in his world that could ever articulate anything outside of the expectations and judgment and the values and all the stuff that he's grown up with and that the life of the sort sort of like patriarch of the southern family that you know so well.

Speaker 1 And so suddenly a new set of words arrives, like a new, completely new idea, and he's shaken basically by this notion. And it's like a monk talks about how

Speaker 1 people come from America and the West in general, presumably, and their sort of way of life is built around indulging the self and ego and self-preservation and so on. And so

Speaker 1 they

Speaker 1 unable basically to sort of see through the forest until they get to Thailand. And that's what brings so many people here.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I feel especially conscious of the fact that like,

Speaker 2 you know,

Speaker 2 this monk is not saying anything about, and here they will find it.

Speaker 2 Right? Right, right. Like the point is just about what people believe that they're going to get here.

Speaker 2 It also kind of goes back to the way that Piper,

Speaker 2 ostensibly what she wants is meaning, but she put it as happiness.

Speaker 2 And,

Speaker 2 you know, there's the way in which this entire framework has been imported as 90-minute wellness seminars at AI companies in Silicon Valley. You know what I mean?

Speaker 2 Where the reconnection with your soul, the visit to Thailand, the, you know, this detox, the digital detox, the communing with the macaques or whatever, this is a type of soul reconnection that is presented as something that can contribute to you then going back rested, reconnected, and ready to crush it another day.

Speaker 1 Back into the hamster wheel of American consumer capitalism. You know? Right, yeah.

Speaker 2 Like it's like you're either

Speaker 2 unless you're off of it, unless you're off of it,

Speaker 2 you're still on it.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 1 I mean, what he's suggesting, the monk, to Timothy, is that Piper's right.

Speaker 1 You can't just go for a week and

Speaker 1 go back and you're changed. You do have to stay there for a year.
You do have to work at it.

Speaker 1 You do have to do what Lachlan suggests life is about, which is like it's like a test to become a better person. Like that is the whole point.

Speaker 2 Aaron Trevor Bowie, and we have the sort of classic, this visual of a drop of water kicking up in the sea spray and then melding back into the great consciousness.

Speaker 2 Right. But it's really kind of beautiful the way that it's played here because

Speaker 2 what does this mean to Timothy at this exact point in time? Like this is making him both want to die more. Right.
Right? Like it's making him want to die more.

Speaker 2 It's giving him some sort of access point. Some sort of ladder has dropped out of the nothingness to like find some sense of forgiveness or something, right? Like some sort of absolution.

Speaker 2 Like this idea that you just go back. You just go back into

Speaker 2 the great

Speaker 2 universal. And that's it.
And all of life is just you come up and you go back down.

Speaker 2 And there's a profound relief to him in thinking of that, that what's happening to him right now is not like the empire state building crumbling in front of everyone's eyes, right?

Speaker 2 Like it's actually just one more drop of water going back into the ocean. But then it makes him want to die a little more.

Speaker 2 You know, it makes him want to live more, and it also makes him want to die more. And I find that, I mean, I guess that's

Speaker 1 right. I mean, I think he becomes less afraid to die, right? So at the beginning, he's afraid.
End of last episode, he's got the gun to his head, then he gets interrupted.

Speaker 1 Then in this episode, he's imagining it, but he can't imagine it. It seems too difficult and it's painful.
And like, what happens afterwards? And then the monk tells him that death is a happy return.

Speaker 1 Right. When we die, there's no more suffering.
It's like coming home. And to Tim, like that feeling of like, oh, right, it's just that simple.
Like, I don't need to be afraid.

Speaker 1 Death is a happy return. And

Speaker 1 that seems to be like how he leaves the monastery kind of in this new frame of mind.

Speaker 2 Yeah, but the way he puts it to his family, you know, like Parker poses, like, how was it or whatever? And he's like, he's legit.

Speaker 1 You know, like, whatever he says.

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 1 what was it like? What did he say?

Speaker 1 I liked him.

Speaker 1 He seemed legitimate, you know.

Speaker 1 He's the real deal. He's the real deal, yeah.

Speaker 2 Like, as if, like, you know, he's just job interviewed an intern or something, you know.

Speaker 2 Another thing that happens with the rat lifts towards the end is that, you know, Victoria's worried Piper is not going to have the creature comforts that she's used to.

Speaker 1 What's next? You want her to shave her head and start making a bongo bongo in Times Square?

Speaker 2 And in fact, she should never get used to anything but those creature comforts.

Speaker 2 She needs to be afraid of poverty, like me and everyone else I know, because otherwise, how will she make good decisions?

Speaker 2 And Timothy's like, well, we want her to be resilient. You know, what if, you know, we want, we want our children to be able to handle whatever comes their way.

Speaker 2 And Victoria is basically like, if I'm not rich, I'd rather be dead. Yeah.
Like,

Speaker 2 that is functionally what she says. She says, I don't know if I'd want to live, which

Speaker 2 is the fantasy that bookends the episode on the other side is of

Speaker 1 compassion, murder, suicide. Yes, yeah.

Speaker 1 Right. Where he's.

Speaker 1 Now he's no longer afraid. He's like, it's a mercy killing, and then I'm out of here.
It's coming home. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 We didn't talk about Rick at all.

Speaker 1 Yeah. I will say, so I'm wondering now, I'm feeling this incredible kinship with Rick in general,

Speaker 1 but I don't quite understand

Speaker 1 now that the mission is getting closer, like what could possibly happen that would resolve this for him, that would make him different.

Speaker 2 Yeah, and one of the main things I think we can expect to see in the next episode, you know, Walton Goggins has a really good prolonged shot at the end of the episode when he and Frank, who's pretending to be director, director Frank, they have made it to Sritala's house.

Speaker 2 The husband has walked down the stairs. We don't have a clear look at him, but we look at Rick, look at him.
And he has assured Frank that he's not going to murder him.

Speaker 2 He just needs to have the gun for a reason that doesn't have anything to do with murdering him. He just needs to sit with him for 10 minutes and make him understand.
He just has to almost murder him.

Speaker 1 Right, right. I know.
It is a little bit of a strange mission that he has set out on and explained. I mean, I don't think he knows exactly what he wants to do.

Speaker 2 He's trying to old boy this guy. He doesn't have enough time to old boy this guy.

Speaker 1 Right. He's only going to have his 10 minutes.
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 But so he's going to, so Rick is gonna do a 10-minute old boy next episode, and I can't wait to see what it looks like.

Speaker 1 When it was sort of a little bit vague in the distance, I was like, oh, yeah, right. He just needs to go back and like confront what happened to him, and then he'll come through

Speaker 1 anew in some way, even though that's impossible. And the fact that it's a fool's errand is becoming, to me, more apparent the closer it gets.

Speaker 1 Because now he's there and he's in the house, and he's going to go talk to the guy like that.

Speaker 2 I've kind of had some uptake of Rick's fantasy as I imagine it. Like,

Speaker 2 I think he thinks he will have this confrontation

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 2 he will look this guy in the face and say, I never got to meet my father because of you.

Speaker 2 And there will be some recognition of the humanity within Rick that even Rick himself has been suppressing for 50 years or whatever it is. And

Speaker 2 that he will say sorry, you know, he thinks that he will get what he's looking for, which is a recognition from this man. Like, I think he, he just wants a recognition.

Speaker 2 He wants a moment of mutual recognition of you did this to me. I did this to you.
You should be sorry. I am so sorry.

Speaker 2 And then he can leave it behind as his beautiful therapist has been telling him to do. Right.

Speaker 1 I'm really with this idea, but it's like,

Speaker 1 by the way, whatever happens, I'm going to be floored by it. I can already tell.
I was almost going to start crying when you were just describing what you think he thinks is going to happen.

Speaker 1 I was like, oh my God, that'd be so beautiful if that happens.

Speaker 2 I feel like Frank's going to do something too. Like, Frank is.

Speaker 1 Frank might get crazy somewhere.

Speaker 2 Like, Frank's like, I'm out of this life. But you're like, are you?

Speaker 3 Are you Frank?

Speaker 2 To what extent are you out of this life?

Speaker 4 What if he falls off the wagon?

Speaker 1 You know, you know?

Speaker 2 The other thing that might happen is Rick could die.

Speaker 2 Right? Chelsea's been like, it comes in threes.

Speaker 2 I have a really bad feeling. I have bad feelings.
Like, Rick could also die

Speaker 2 and then thus be released from the prison of the identity that this man gave him, which was fatherless orphan.

Speaker 1 I just want to also note that in our many, many iterations now of Chekhov's gun, Guy Talk has snuck back in the villa and retrieved the gun. It's like

Speaker 1 this gun has changed hands, it's appeared, it's reappeared, it's been hidden, and like all these different things have happened with the gun.

Speaker 1 And so, there is some kind of like incredible three-card monty going on with the plotting of like, well, where's this gun? How's it going to get used? How's it going to wind up? Who's after who?

Speaker 1 And that's sort of culminating in what is actually happening at the very end of the episode where Gary,

Speaker 1 who has told Chloe that he knows that she fucked one of the brothers. He's kind of into it.
And he's maybe into it.

Speaker 1 or he's just he's like

Speaker 1 so seems so sort of jaded and disconnected from life because he's not the guy that met Tanya in season one at all anymore. And so, like, what happened to him?

Speaker 1 And is he into it, or is he just plotting to kill somebody? Is he trying to get, I mean, he invites Belinda to come so that he can maybe kill her, right?

Speaker 1 And so, he's basically invited everybody to come to his insane dope pad up there on the hilltop. Oh, my God.

Speaker 1 And,

Speaker 1 so that's sort of the episode ends on this on this the clockworks, you know, chiming another, you know, another hour forward as they are some kind of they're gonna something's gonna happen when they all go to this dinner party.

Speaker 1 And now I'll be sitting down with Patrick Schwarzenegger to talk Saxon Ratliff.

Speaker 4 I love a good challenge, you know?

Speaker 4 But it's better to go for what you want in life and get rejected than have the shot and not take it.

Speaker 4 We have one life lock.

Speaker 1 All right. Thanks, Patrick Schwarzenegger, for joining us on the White Lotus Season 3 official podcast.

Speaker 4 Thank you for having me. I'm excited.

Speaker 1 Yeah, indeed. I think last time I saw you was at the full moon party.
I know.

Speaker 4 Well, the aftermath. It was the days after, the morning after we went and got some food.
Yeah, right.

Speaker 1 That's right. Yeah.

Speaker 4 I went to that cafe. I was in search of protein.

Speaker 1 Oh, that's right. You were looking for your protein.

Speaker 4 Yeah, and good coffee. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Well, that's actually also where we are in the show, sort of in in the aftermath of the full moon party.

Speaker 1 But before we kind of get to that, I just wanted to talk about the character in general, sort of watching it all the way through.

Speaker 1 It seemed to me like almost like as Mike deals with his archetypes and then subverts them, like this one is like Saxon is like a kind of unrestrained American male id, which is fun to see on screen.

Speaker 1 And so I was curious, was that fun to play? How did you think about that?

Speaker 4 Yeah, I think, you know, look, when I got the audition at first for Saxon, it was only a, I had like a one-sentence log line.

Speaker 4 I think the sentence was like, he's a southern finance bro that loves to flirt or something like that.

Speaker 4 And when I got the scenes and after I booked the audition and I started to talk with Mike and kind of

Speaker 4 put my interpretation of his words that were on the page,

Speaker 4 it was evident that he was this

Speaker 4 douche and he was this, you know, character from the outside. But for Mike, he really wanted it to be something that people didn't just hate.

Speaker 4 They wanted him to be fun and laughable and enjoyable and some elements of humanizing characteristics and vulnerability that made you want to continue to watch him. So that was something we worked on.

Speaker 4 But at the same time, which I thought was so genius by Mike, was

Speaker 4 when we get into some later episodes, I was so focused on how is this character changing? What is his big moments?

Speaker 4 How is he going to be different? And I started to play this one scene we had.

Speaker 4 And I played it in a certain way. And he came over and he was like, what are you doing?

Speaker 4 What the fuck was that? And I was like, what do you mean? He was like, dude, it's only been like six days. You know, you don't need to have like a huge change.

Speaker 4 Like, it's, we want the, we want, as like the viewer, we want to see like, we want to wonder, is he going to change after this?

Speaker 4 And we want to see little parts of, yes, there's, there's this internal crisis going on with him and he's starting to realize things, but I don't want to see like a full-blown 360 change, you know, and so I thought that was really interesting.

Speaker 4 You forget that this whole thing takes place over six days or seven days.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah it's kind of funny i mean even in the show in episode one when everybody lands off the boat fabian the hotel manager is like oh here you're you will be changed going home and of course in real life nobody wants to change they want to go back home

Speaker 1 like who they were except all the characters here are like sort of forced to change by the all the circumstances yeah and it's really fun and particularly with saxon because at first you're like oh okay i know exactly what this is but you're like well how is everybody gonna like come out of their identity yeah and the way it happens for Saxon is like particularly dramatic, right?

Speaker 4 Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think that he's, you know, one of the interesting things is, you know, Saxon shows up day one and he puts on this persona that he knows everything that he is.

Speaker 4 He is this powerful guy. He looks great.
He knows exactly what it is to be a man. And he tells his little brother, like, dude, getting what you want in life, that's happiness.

Speaker 4 It's all about pussy money

Speaker 4 and freedom. That's it.
And I think the interesting thing is over the course of. of the season, especially at episode six, he goes into the show as the most confident and comfortable.

Speaker 4 And he's like belittling and looking down on his siblings for not knowing what they're doing and exploring Buddhism and they're just completely lost. And they kind of change places.

Speaker 4 He becomes the one that is really lost, you know, and really the one that starts to have this internal like identity crisis of like every layer of him just got stripped off and he's so confused now.

Speaker 4 Like,

Speaker 4 who am I? What am I? What, who do I like? What is, what just happened? What, that power trip that just changed is

Speaker 4 a lot for him.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you feel real pity for him. And even there's the point where he goes to his father and says, like, this is all I am.
I am not anything else. And they're like, oh, no, I feel sad for this guy.

Speaker 4 Yeah, but that's part of the overall arching theme, I think, here is like, that's all that all of them are, really.

Speaker 4 I mean, Timothy and Victoria, and like, there's those scenes where they're just like, what's going to happen? What am I supposed to say to my kids? Like, daddy's poor now.

Speaker 4 Like, everything is, you know, fucked. Or Victoria says, like,

Speaker 4 I don't even want to live without the money. Or, you know, it's, it's that these material items are identifying who they are and they're going in conjunction.

Speaker 4 And it's what happens is when all that's stripped away, who, who

Speaker 1 are you? Yeah.

Speaker 4 And that's a tough identity crisis for them.

Speaker 1 Yeah. I mean, it's very profound throughout the show.

Speaker 1 And then this, the Ratliff family, the, and then the siblings, it's like at each of these different scales and then within Saxon, and it kind of unfolds in this interesting way.

Speaker 1 Like on the boat, on the way to the full moon party, Lothan says something sort of like,

Speaker 1 one of these days I'm going to own you, right? And then Saxon is sort of like, yeah, boy, yeah, does not know what that is going to turn out to be. Neither of them do, right?

Speaker 1 Did you know that that was coming with the character when you signed on to the show? I didn't know anything.

Speaker 4 I got the audition, like I said, I got the audition. It was a couple pages, you know, three different scenes.
I read it. I just did what I thought, you know, how I interpreted it.

Speaker 4 And then I got a call back saying it was great. Then they were like, you're going to meet with Mike White and he wants to do a director's read and give notes.

Speaker 4 so i did that and then when i booked it they were like you know here's the scripts you can read it now and uh i mean they asked me ahead of time are you comfortable with you know nudity are you comfortable with x y and z and yeah i said yeah of course you know i'm playing a character um and uh Then I started to read it and read it.

Speaker 4 And episode five came and then six came. And I was like, what the fuck?

Speaker 4 God, this is just absurd. This is nuts.

Speaker 4 So, no, I had no idea. I mean, he puts Easter eggs.
That's what Mike does.

Speaker 4 He puts, you know, these moments when you, in episode one, and I'm going and I'm tickling my sister, and I'm putting, sucking my finger and putting it in her ear.

Speaker 4 And I'm with Lachlan in the bed, and I'm naked, no regard for anybody else. And I'm walking around, and I'm talking about how am I going to jerk off with him in the room.

Speaker 4 And, you know, all these different weird things. And I hit on every single girl that walks by.
You know, there's Easter eggs of this guy is something's going to happen.

Speaker 4 It can't just be this one-note character. But I did not know it was going there.
No, I didn't.

Speaker 1 I was shocked actually when that was the development, but it is so satisfying because also it's not just for shock value. It is actually about the sense of like self and meaning.
And like, now what?

Speaker 1 Who am I?

Speaker 4 I think there's a mix.

Speaker 4 Like, I don't think there's anything necessarily so negative or wrong with this sensationalism of like, of a shock value, but there's also way more, like, Mike's too smart for that.

Speaker 4 He's way more in-depth and way more, like, there's such richer content than that. So, I think that he, you know, some might say that.

Speaker 4 And then once you start to understand it and see the shift of what happens to the character from these moments, then you start to understand, oh, wow, this is actually

Speaker 4 Mike's pretty fucking smart.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Well, thanks for being on the podcast.
And it was great talking to you.

Speaker 4 Awesome, man. Thank you.

Speaker 1 Appreciate it. All right, man.

Speaker 1 Well, I know you were jealous

Speaker 1 not to be sitting beside me talking to Patrick.

Speaker 2 For the record, I did see him at the hotel gym that morning.

Speaker 1 Oh, that's right. Really exciting for me.
Well, he had no idea when he signed on for the show what was going to happen to his character.

Speaker 2 I feel like maybe he just has to say that. He can't say, this is why.

Speaker 1 Yeah, of course.

Speaker 1 Exactly. I campaigned for this.

Speaker 1 I have to play that guy.

Speaker 1 Great interview. Yeah, it was great.

Speaker 2 Okay. Well, and now I get to talk to Leslie Bibb.

Speaker 3 Thanks. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Thank you, Leslie.
I wanted to start by asking you first, what attracted you to Kate as a character and to the opportunity to explore this

Speaker 2 complex friendship dynamic on screen.

Speaker 3 Honestly, if Mike had been like, you're the janitor who comes in and like sweeps up a room,

Speaker 3 but you'll be there for six months and you'll just say, look over there, I would probably have done it.

Speaker 3 So I feel like just Mike and the project, which is a strange thing to say as an actor, because it's always like the character and stuff.

Speaker 3 But I was like, because you just, you just know and and when you get the audition you don't have all the scripts you have this scene and i remember i read it like a few times and it was like

Speaker 3 like in it was just it was like you're on a cellular level you had something

Speaker 3 that would be able to go deep like you weren't gonna have to shine up a turd like sometimes you're making chicken salad out of chicken shit with some writing it just is you know or you're doing massive exposition and it's like complicated.

Speaker 3 It's nothing.

Speaker 3 Mike's writing is so delicious

Speaker 3 and

Speaker 3 digestible that I just knew, like, I was like, oh, I'm already jumping on the end of a diving board.

Speaker 3 Like, I just knew that whatever was going to happen with these three women, that it was going to be intense.

Speaker 3 complex. And then you get all eight and you read them and you're like, whoa, okay.

Speaker 3 And as I started to break down all eight

Speaker 3 and sort of fall in love with Kate and her quirkiness and

Speaker 3 her uncomfortableness with silence and her need to pull everybody together and her perfectionism and her insecurity. And I began to have such a softness for her.

Speaker 3 And Kate's sort of, you know, I mean, it's really funny. My last name is Bohr, Kate Bohr.
I mean, she's probably not the most

Speaker 3 memorable of the three, but she's

Speaker 3 desperately wants to be the most memorable of the three. And

Speaker 3 it felt for me that it was important for

Speaker 3 Kate that

Speaker 3 it's always that Kate is the one that talks to Lori and talks to Jacqueline

Speaker 3 and I'm the sort of connector of the group over this time. So

Speaker 3 even though Jacqueline has like paid for this trip, which is so generous, I feel like it's at the provocation

Speaker 3 of Kate because I think she feels the slipping of friendship between the three of these women.

Speaker 3 And I think it's important for her because these women are a mirror of who she used to be, this fearless person she used to be. And then by no means is she apologizing for the life that she's leading.

Speaker 3 I think in her mind, she's made choices. Mike loves these Enneagram tests.

Speaker 3 And when we were having our meeting about the show, and Kate, when they offered it to me, he was like, I'm very good at casting.

Speaker 1 I was like, okay.

Speaker 3 And he was like, I knew that you're a perfectionist. And I was like, yes, I am.
And he's like, but that's the essence of Kate, her perfectionism. And you then go, okay, but what is perfectionism?

Speaker 3 What does that represent? And to me, perfectionism is about control and a deep,

Speaker 3 like trying to keep something in its place because something can't come out of place because if it comes out of place, the house of cards will fall.

Speaker 3 I made this weird choice with Kate every time, you know, you eat a lot

Speaker 3 when you shoot the white leaves, dinner scenes, breakfast scenes, you know, there's a lot of those scenes.

Speaker 3 And I just,

Speaker 3 you drink a lot. Like, I just made, I just knew that Kate and her perfectionism would have shown up on this vacation

Speaker 3 with a whole new wardrobe that she would never wear again. But like, when I eat the food, it's always every meal, they're like, Leslie, are you sure you don't want any Thai food?

Speaker 3 I was like, Kate would never eat Thai food. That person doesn't, her lack of curiosity about, you know, they don't go to one Watts.
They don't. go to like an elephant preserve.

Speaker 3 Totally. She just wants to do yoga and not leave the like, She's such a westerner, you know, going.
She's like the classic

Speaker 3 white lotus hotel guest.

Speaker 2 Like, you know,

Speaker 3 I'm going to go say I went to Thailand and I didn't leave the hotel, you know. Totally.
So, you know, every meal I don't, you know, there's no ice cubes. There's boiled chicken.
There's rice.

Speaker 3 She only eats fruit at breakfast. It's like so weirdly controlled.

Speaker 2 That's a wonderful detail.

Speaker 1 I never noticed that. It's so weird, but I'm looking.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 No, never.

Speaker 3 I'm like, I will have a glass of rosé.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Never will she.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 3 No cocktails. Never.
She's always like, you know,

Speaker 3 always a glass of rose.

Speaker 1 It's funny. I'm a glass of rose.

Speaker 2 I'm from Texas. I feel

Speaker 2 because of the way you played her, because of the way Mike White writes his characters, I was like, I feel like I know this woman.

Speaker 2 I think that she's the jacqueline of her friend group in Austin, right? She moved from a coast. She's, you know, she's hot.
She's, you know, she's, she's not from there. She, her husband has this job.

Speaker 2 I could picture she has this gorgeous, beautiful house, beautiful children.

Speaker 3 Orchestrating everything.

Speaker 2 The boards of everything, the school fundraisers, the sheer whatever.

Speaker 3 She wants to feel important. You know, I imagine that she met her husband and they met in college and they got married after college in one of those like real housewives fashions, you know, like

Speaker 1 she

Speaker 3 was along the way when when he was nothing and feels very much a part of his success is because she has kept his shit together and she keeps the package together and keeps this glossy keeping up with the Joneses alive.

Speaker 3 And we have pickleball and we do this. And I think she's a good, I think she's a very good wife.
And I think she's a very good mother. Do I think she's the most curious person? No.

Speaker 3 Do I think that she's well-meaning? Yes.

Speaker 3 But do I think

Speaker 1 she

Speaker 3 doesn't leave her pocket 100%?

Speaker 3 And I think that like Jacqueline,

Speaker 3 she's really impressed with that thing. And she would love to be Jacqueline.
And I think there is

Speaker 3 like, why her? Why didn't, why not me?

Speaker 2 Their dynamic too, like, it made me think, you know, you're with the friends you've had for this long, you're both more secure with them, but you're also more insecure with them because the great thing is they know you so well, the dangerous thing is that they know you so well.

Speaker 2 And this really comes out with the Trump thing, right? And I was wondering,

Speaker 2 you know, like the sort of the a fracture, the thing that Kate does not want to appear has suddenly appeared when they have this conversation.

Speaker 3 Yeah, but then she also doesn't get nervous about, like, she's very like defiant. Like, I think when she broaches it,

Speaker 1 she's

Speaker 3 not backing down. She's like, this is my truth, but she's very nervous about it.

Speaker 2 That's what I wanted to say.

Speaker 3 And she knows that it, yeah, like I think she knows, but I think if she comes in and

Speaker 3 apologizes for anything, that's a sign of weakness. And she's living in her truth, which you don't even know because she says she's an independent.

Speaker 3 I mean, really, what she's saying is, I'm my own person.

Speaker 3 I'm not, you know, even though those women who are working women who aren't just moms, I know are judging me for just being a mom. You know, there's that subtle dig and that sort of thing.

Speaker 3 You know, I'm my own keeper. I don't, he doesn't sway me.
I can have my own choices. I make my own choices just because he makes the money.
You know,

Speaker 3 there's all this undercurrent underneath.

Speaker 3 And,

Speaker 3 but I think she's aware that, and she knows they're going to talk shit about her.

Speaker 1 Right. That's my other question.

Speaker 3 She knows. She knows as soon as it happens.
You know, it's,

Speaker 3 can you still be so close with your friends if you have these differing opinions? Does it make you a bad person

Speaker 3 if you vote? Like, I think there's a lot of questions that he's

Speaker 3 starting, you know, he's such a provocative writer and he's such a confronting writer. He really puts it in your face and makes you feel uncomfortable.
And I feel like that's what he's doing.

Speaker 3 He's making you think that, like,

Speaker 3 is this the hill that you go, well, I can't be friends with her anymore.

Speaker 3 So it's a very interesting

Speaker 3 quandary that you start to go, like, do I throw an entire friendship out because of this?

Speaker 2 It's interesting because I don't think if it's someone you've known your whole life, you don't throw the friendship out because they voted for Trump or their husbands do, but it changes the friendship.

Speaker 2 And it's, and that's what shows up in the show. Like, it's just all these little revelations about who they are and how they've changed.
But okay, this is episode six.

Speaker 2 This is where the ladies are letting loose. And I loved watching your physicality in this episode because, you know, there's this slow tightening up.
And by the end, you can read her mind.

Speaker 2 She's sitting by the pool and she's like, I am honestly ready to like, I wouldn't mind if my flight was one day earlier.

Speaker 2 Like, I want to be at my kids in my house with a blanket and never ever speak to Vladigat.

Speaker 3 I made this choice too, because we were all dressed up. And the last minute, I went to Alex and I was like, I want to be in pajamas.
And she's like, what? And I was like, when people are at my house.

Speaker 2 And it's time for them to leave.

Speaker 3 My partner, Sam, always goes to bed. He like starts, he just puts, he goes to bed.
So I was like, I'm not that person, because that would be rude. I would think Kate would think that was rude.

Speaker 3 So I was like, a subtle passive aggressive way is to change into your pajamas and try to be clean and be clean faced.

Speaker 3 Like you've washed. And I very quickly just made this choice

Speaker 3 that I can't stand Valentin. I can't stand him because he is a distraction to my friend group.
And he is making this not about the three of us.

Speaker 3 Like all of a sudden, we're like chasing, you're never going to see him again.

Speaker 1 Like, right. He's.

Speaker 2 I don't like it. Like, why am I talking to Vlad? We should be going deep.

Speaker 3 Why are we talking?

Speaker 3 Like, right now, and now you've proven this. Like, this guy has showed up with these two,

Speaker 3 like Kate thinks, very weird guys who I

Speaker 2 can say they're weird.

Speaker 1 They're weird.

Speaker 3 They're weird, like to her, so weird and like dodgy.

Speaker 3 And like, I don't, she's not into it. And it's like, I just,

Speaker 3 every time I started to slowly, every time Valentin came to the table, I was like,

Speaker 3 like I wanted Kate to just be like, he's a thorn in my side. Which he's he's ruining my trip.

Speaker 3 Yeah, yeah, everything. And like your smile is like imprinted and it's just like a

Speaker 3 that the message is like I'm subliminally looking at you saying leave.

Speaker 2 Yeah, leave the clocks

Speaker 2 a countdown, honey.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Well, okay, I have a question about your partner, Sam Rockwell, about his surprise appearance and that monologue. I know, it's so secretive.

Speaker 3 It's so crazy that we've kept this secret.

Speaker 1 And I got it in my head that what I really wanted was to be one of these Asian girls getting fucked

Speaker 1 by me and to feel that.

Speaker 2 It's one of the highlights of the season. It's unbelievable to watch.
I wanted to ask you, how hard has it been to keep it under reps?

Speaker 3 It's crazy because we have friends in New York who are like, did you get to go visit? Right. And I'm like.

Speaker 3 Yeah, he came. He came to Bangkok.
Like, we really, and then sometimes we've told like a couple of our friends but like nobody knows yeah

Speaker 3 you know and it wasn't supposed to be him and it happened late just because our schedule pushed and

Speaker 3 Sam's schedule pushed on the movie he was doing in South Africa and

Speaker 3 it just aligned and I just knew I really wanted him to do it I remember when I read the monologue a long time ago, I was like, oh, there's, this monologue needs a really amazing actor because it feels to me if there were going to be one scene that sort of talks about ownership of self, which is essentially like,

Speaker 3 wouldn't it have been a different trip if these women had just gone in and been like, this is who I am.

Speaker 3 And sort of unapologetically had said this and said, I love you, but this is who I am. I'm still here for you.

Speaker 3 I'm still this, but this is, but so scared because the world has gotten so polarized that like,

Speaker 3 you're like, if I really say that will people still love me and i think that's such a deep fear

Speaker 3 but that monologue when i read it i was like oh this is this is the truth of this right stated plainly stated plainly unapologetically i just knew when i read that i was like oh somebody's got this has got to be a great great actor and then mike and dave were like we want sam to do it and i was like listen I can't tell you that guy makes,

Speaker 3 he makes his decisions, you know, that jet plane's is gonna fly whatever way it's gonna fly so don't get mad at me if he says no so and they're like no no no no no I was like great

Speaker 3 but

Speaker 3 Sam was just because he likes a lot of prep time was sort of on the fence about it he was like yes and no and yes and no and

Speaker 3 I remember saying I was like I think you'll regret not doing this

Speaker 2 because I think that monologue is special and it needs you completely it's so good Leslie thank you so much I'm so glad to get to talk to you.

Speaker 3 Thank you so much. Bye.
Okay, bye-bye.

Speaker 2 Well, that was lovely. Thank you to Leslie Bibb and Patrick Schwarzenegger for coming on the show.
And thank you to you all for listening.

Speaker 1 The White Lotus Podcast is a production of HBO and Campside Media. This episode was hosted by Gia Tolentino and Josh Bearman.
Natalia Winkleman is the managing producer.

Speaker 1 Our associate producers are Allison Haney, Anthony Puccio, and Aaliyah Papes. Sound design and mixed by Ewen Leitram Euen.
At Campside Media, our executive producer is Josh Dean.

Speaker 1 For the HBO podcast team, our executive producer is Michael Gluckstadt, senior producer Allison Cohen-Zorokoch, and producer Kenya Reyes. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time.