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

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When you're born, you are like a single drop of water flying upward, separated from the one giant consciousness. You get older.
You descend back down. You die.
You land back into the water, become one with the ocean again. No more separated.

No more suffering.

One consciousness.

Death is a happy return.

Like coming home.

Thank you. Hello and welcome to the White Lotus official podcast companion to season three.

I'm Gia Tolentino.

And I'm Josh Bearman.

And I have a question for you about episode six. Who's in the most trouble right now? Who's in the worst place? Right.
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.
Yes. Well, it's like up till the full moon party, everyone was sowing.
And now they have to reap. Now they're reaping.
Now they have to reap. They're in the reaping phase.
The show is in its reaping phase. Right.
I would have said at the beginning that Tim is in the most trouble. Yeah.
But now, Saxon. It's definitely Saxon.
He's in trouble. His world has been rocked.
But he was the one that rocked it. He was the one that was telling his little brother that he needed to...
Get laid, get everything. That's what he says at the very beginning.
Get laid, get everything. All right, so let's get into this episode, which is called Denials.
And as always, it's written and directed by Mike White. And later in this episode, we'll be talking to Patrick Schwarzenegger, a.k.a.
Saxon, and Leslie Vibb, who plays Kate. In general, the episode sort of gets into, that's the morning after.
It's the morning after episode. Yeah.
It's the morning after episode. It's like the 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, 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 feel – What, you mean just like in general? In general, like the morning – well, because I was so caught up in episode five where I'm like, they're at the party.
The party will last forever. 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. 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.
And I felt like I was like I had like duped myself like yet again into believing I was going to live forever because I was like at this awesome party. 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? And I was kind of stirred into the belief that the ecstatic 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, I that was not what was intended for that party.
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.
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. 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.
We have to have sex with our brothers. We have to, you know what I mean? Like we, our desire for more.
We have to become an Asian woman. We have to become an Asian woman.
But you know what I mean? It's like there there could be places where pleasure could be contentment.

And yet the message of specifically Buddhism, right? It's like if you are not mindful of what pleasure is, it will it will hurt you. Your relationship to it will hurt you.
we see well there's a little moment with belinda. She wakes up in the arms of Pornshy.
Her son catches them in bed. Sweet, funny little moment.
I don't know how it happened. One minute he was helping me get this lizard out of my room, and the next minute we were in bed.
God. I'm happy for you, okay? Unfortunately, one feels that Belinda is marked for death because of how good this episode has been for her.
Right, 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.
That's all she wanted. He seems impossibly handsome.
Her son's proud of her. Yeah.
Yeah, he's proud of her. Hot son is proud of her.
They have an adult relationship, it seems like, from the little interactions we get. And then, yeah, and then Poin 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 billionaire-esque who might abandon her and the idea at the drop of a hat, like what happens with Tanya, where she still feels burned by.
So she's like, aha, maybe this was all meant to be, which then leaves us thinking maybe it's meant not to be. Right.
And when she encounters Greg, when Greg forcibly encounters her, she's shaking. 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. My Occam's 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. He just 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.
I want to have people over tonight. Like a party or something? I need to deal with something, and I need your help.
Yeah, I mean, I was thinking about him also in relation to this idea of death as it relates to the Buddhist notion of death that we hear from the monk 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 victim, but maybe she's not a victim. Maybe he's the victim because now he's trapped here still in a state of anhedonia.
He has everything he wanted. He has all this money.
He has this boat and he's this 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 that he can maybe redeem somehow. He just is a person who's incapable of joy in any way.
Right. With the gals, Kate sees Valentin sneaking out of Jacqueline's room.
What do you mean? I mean... He slept over with Jacqueline.
I thought this was played really well and funnily. So Kate tells Laurie, you know, what happened last night? Like, you know, I think I had a sleepover, you know, and breaks this news.
Obviously, Kate at some level knows that this will be devastating to Lori, right? She has been talking shit with Jacqueline about how, 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 that is, you know, the third wheel, the friend that's not chosen first.
And she knows how much it would mean. And kind of the charity case.
The charity case. And they've both been sort of talking up this Laurie possibility, although Jacqueline more so than Kate.
Like she knows when she says, actually, Jacqueline fucked Valentin. 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, I thought you would think this was funny. Like you're getting mad.
Why are you getting mad? 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. 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— Because someone's going to confront. It's like throwing a grenade into the foxhole.
I didn't think you were going to care so much. I don't care.
I know. 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.
Talking about how I'm the only single one, how I should hook up with them. That's demented.
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.
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.
And I also thought that the way that Carrie Coon plays her own response, which is like, oh, I just think it's interesting. I just think it's really interesting, Jacqueline.
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. 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 Jacqueline as if she is superior to her.

Now she has the moral high ground.

For the first time.

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.

Right.

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 not be... It would not be the same as...
Not even close. You know, it's not even cheating.
No, it's like psychological chess game that Laurie 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.
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 Laurie has.

Yeah.

I don't think Jacqueline was scheming.

Well, at what point in the night you think she got his number, his personal cell?

Oh, right. Did they not have it the whole time? Right.

You never saw her texting him before.

And so at some point of the night, she made a decision.

Look at you reading between the lines.

Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Between in this deleted scenes. When did this even happen? Yeah, I think that Jacqueline, I read her as the type of person that does a lot of this hierarchical assertion of dominance just purely on instinct.
Yeah. 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.

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.

This is what you always did.

Nevermind.

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 some people are changing in this episode.

And we've seen, I mean, Frank surely changed from last, you know, according to his monologue.

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.

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

Then you have the two Ratliff boys.

So they wake up on the boat.

Saxon is barfing.

And the thing is, you know, a walk of shame is walk of shame.

You know, 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. I can't remember the last night at all.
We both blacked out. It's sort of being revealed slowly.
And then he 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 gets seasick and runs and barfs. You guys forced us to.
I didn't force him to jerk you off. What do you mean that never happened? I don't remember that.
You know, we're laughing at it because it's extremely funny, but it is a really sort of dark, like Saxon is acting as if he were assaulted. You know what I mean? Like they're in this strange position where Saxon is having the morning after trauma like genuinely, you know, like of someone.
He did not offer 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 that Lachlan has in his body.
You know, maybe I'm projecting here, but it feels very recognizable. When he thinks about this, he gets nauseated.
You know, like he's giving like there has been a power reversal 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.
He's giving hungover. 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. I don't think that he took advantage.
But there is, you know, I don't think what he did was something I would ever want to participate in personally. But I don't think he was deliberately exploiting his brother sexually, whatever.
But they have that dynamic. Like, Lachlan is at ease.
Like, Patrick Schwarzenegger is, you know, he is sweating. He's gulping things.
He's slapping bugs off his body. He's profoundly uncomfortable in his own skin.
He's no longer, yeah, the confident man who kind of like swishes through life with ease, right? All of a sudden he's not himself. So then the kids are all at the pool.
And Saxon is trying to blame his bad mood on the fact that Chelsea wouldn't fuck him. Right.
And Chelsea's like so sincerely, like, I could never because you don't have a soul. Once you've connected with someone on a spiritual level, you can't go back to cheap sex.
Hooking up with you would be an empty experience. And then she whispers to herself, she's like, so sad.
Yeah. But she like, 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, she's a 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. So all of a sudden, it's like the grain of sand that becomes the pearl.
Like there's an agita that's going to turn into something. 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. Tim and Saxon, they go off together for a year and they come back, new people, and dad does his time.
And then they get out and do have to 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.
Yes. 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.
She sees the monk, and 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.
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 this that the monk does and when 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 but yeah so she's 21 but as if she's 12 or something she monk, like, can you just tell my parents that it's okay that I stay here?

Bring in your parents.

I can answer their questions.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

So Timothy goes in and asks, what do you think happens after you die?

Yeah.

So I found this whole scene to be, I mean, first of all, it hits him so hard.

He's a, never heard basically anybody say anything like this to him, right? 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 of like

patriarch of the Southern family that you know so well. 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 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 they are unable basically to sort of see through the forest until they get to Thailand. And that's what brings so many people here.
Yeah, I feel especially conscious of the fact that like, you know, this monk is not saying anything about and here they will find it. Right? Right.
Right. Like the point is just about what people believe that they're going to get here.
It also kind of goes back to the way that Piper, ostensibly what she wants is meaning, but she put it as happiness. And, you know, there's the way in which this entire framework has been imported as a 90 minute wellness seminars at AI companies in Silicon Valley, you know what I mean? Where the reconnection with your soul, the visit to Thailand, the, you know, the 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. And ready to get back into the hamster wheel of American consumer capitalism.
You know? Right. Yeah.
Like it's like you're either – unless you're off of it, you're still on it. Right.
I mean what he's suggesting, the monk, to Timothy is that Piper's right. You can't just go for a week and go back and you're changed.
You do have to stay there for a year. You do have to work at it.
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.
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. But it's really kind of beautiful the way that it's played here because 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.
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.
Like this idea that you just go back, you just go back into the great universal and that's it. And all of life is just you come up and you go back down.
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? 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.
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...
Right. I mean, I think he becomes less afraid to die, right? So at the beginning, he's afraid.
End of the last episode, he's got the gun to his head, then he gets interrupted. 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. 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

death is a happy return

and that and to Tim like that feeling of like oh right it's just that simple like I don't need to be afraid

death is a happy return

and that seems

to be like how he leaves the

monastery kind of in this new frame of mind

yeah but the way he puts it to his family

you know like Parker Posey's like

how was it or whatever and he's like

he's legit

you know like whatever he says

well what was it like

what did he say

I walked him

Thank you. He's like, he's legit.
You know, like whatever he says. Well, what was it like? What did he say? I liked him.
He seemed legitimate, you know? He's the real deal. He's the real deal, yeah.
Like as if, like, you know, he's just job interviewed an intern or something, you know? Another thing that happens with the Ratliff's towards the end is that, you know, Victoria's worried Piper is not going to have the creature comforts that she's used to. What's next? You wanted to shave her head and start banging a bongo in Times Square? And in fact, she should never get used to anything but those creature comforts.
She needs to be afraid of poverty, like me and everyone else I know I know because otherwise how will she make good decisions? And Timothy's like, well, we want her to be resilient. You know, what if, you know, we want our children to be able to handle whatever comes their way.
And Victoria is basically like, if I'm not rich, I'd rather be dead. Yeah.
Like that is functionally what she says. She says, I don't know if I'd want to live, which is the fantasy that bookends the episode on the other side is a new version.
Compassion, murder, suicide. Yes.
Yeah. Right.
Where he's no longer afraid. He's like, it's a mercy killing.
And then I'm out. It's coming home.
Yeah, exactly. We didn't talk about Rick at all.
Yeah, I will say. So I'm wondering now, I'm feeling this incredible kinship with Rick in general.
But I don't quite understand. Now that the mission is getting closer, like what could possibly happen that would resolve this for him, that would make him different? Yeah.
And one of the main things I think we can expect to see in the next episode, you know, Walden 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 Srutala's house. 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.
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. 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.

He's trying to old boy this guy.

Right. He doesn't have enough time to old boy this guy.

Right.

Right.

He's only going to have his 10 minutes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But so he's going to so Rick is going to do a 10 minute old boy next episode.

And I can't wait to see what it looks like.

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, you know, 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 because now he's there and he's in the house and he's going to go talk to the guy. I've kind of had some uptake of Rick's fantasy as I imagine it.
Like I, I think he thinks he will have this confrontation and he will look this guy in the face and say, I never got to meet my father because of you. 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, and 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. I think he just wants a recognition.
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.
And then he can leave it behind as his beautiful therapist has been telling him to do. Right.
I'm really with this idea, but it's like, 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. I was like, oh, my God, that would be so beautiful if that happens.
I feel like Frank is going to do something, too. Frank might get crazy somehow.
Frank's like, I'm out of this life. But you're like, are you? Are you Frank? To what extent are you out of this life? Oh, no.
What if he falls off the wagon? You know, you know. The other thing that might happen is Rick could die.
Right. Chelsea's been like, it comes in threes.
I have a really bad feeling. I have bad feelings.
Like Rick could also die. Right.
And then thus be released from the prison of the identity that this man gave him, which was fatherless orphan.

I just want to also note that in our many, many iterations now of Chekhov's gun,

Guy Tuck has snuck back in the villa and retrieved the gun.

It's like 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. 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?

And that's sort of culminating in what is actually happening at the very end of the

episode where Gary, who has told Chloe that he knows that she fucked one of the brothers

and he's maybe into it or he's Or he's just, he's like, 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? 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.

And so he's basically invited everybody to come to his insane dope pad

up there on the hilltop.

Oh my God, that pool.

And so that's sort of,

the episode ends on this,

the clockworks, you know,

chiming another, you know,

another hour forward

as they are some kind of, they're going to, something's going to happen when they all go to this dinner party. And now I'll be sitting down with Patrick Schwarzenegger to talk Saxon Ratliff.
I love a good challenge, you know? It's better to go for what you want in life and get rejected than have the shot and not take it. We have one life lock.
All right, thanks Patrick Schwarzenegger for joining us on the White Lotus Season 3 official podcast. Thank you for having me.
I'm excited. Yeah, indeed.
I think the last time I saw you was at the full moon party. I know.
Well, the aftermath. It was the days after, the morning after we went and got some food.
Yeah, right. That's right.
Yeah, I went to that I was in search of protein. Oh, that's right.
You were looking for your protein. I know.
Well, the aftermath, it was the days after, the morning after we went and got some food. Yeah, right.
That's right. Yeah, I went to that cafe.
I was in search of protein. Oh, that's right.
You were looking for your protein. And good coffee.
Yeah. Well, that's actually also where we are in the show, sort of in the aftermath of the full moon party.
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, it seemed to me almost like as Mike deals with his archetypes

and then subverts them, like this one is like Saxon's

kind of unrestrained American male id,

which is fun to see on screen.

And so I was curious, was that fun to play?

How did you think about that?

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 logline.

I think the sentence was like,

he's a Southern finance bro that loves to flirt or something like that. And when I got the scenes and, you know, after I booked the audition and I started to talk with Mike and kind of, you know, put my interpretation of his words that were on the page, you know, it was evident that he was this 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. They wanted him to be fun, laughable, 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. But at the same time, which I thought was so genius by Mike, was when we get into some later episodes, I was so focused on how is this character changing? What is his big moments? What are like, how is he going to be different? And I started to play this one scene we had and I played it in a certain way and he came over and he was like, what are you doing? 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. 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? 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. And so I thought that was really interesting.
You forget that this whole thing takes place over six days or seven days. Yeah, it's kind of funny.
I mean, even in the show in episode one when everybody lands off the boat, Fabio and the hotel manager is like, oh, here you will be changed going home. And of course, in real life, nobody wants to change.
They want to go back home like who they were, except all the characters here are like sort of forced to change by all the circumstances. Yeah.
And it's really fun in particular with Saxon because at first you're like, oh, OK, I know exactly what this is. But you're like, well, how is everybody going to like come out of their identity? Yeah.
And the way it happens for Saxon is like particularly dramatic. Right.
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.
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.
It's all about pussy money and freedom. That's it.
And I think the interesting thing is over the course of the season, especially at episode six, he goes into the show as the most confident and comfortable 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.
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. Like, who am I? What am I? Who do I like? What just happened? That power trip that just changed is a lot for him.
Yeah, you feel real pity for him. And even there's a 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.
Yeah, but that's part of the overall arching theme, I think, here is like, that's all that all of them are. Really, I mean, Timothy and Victoria and like, there's those scenes where they're just like like, what's gonna happen? What am I supposed to say to my kids? Like, daddy's poor now? Like, everything is fucked.
Or Victoria says, like, I don't even wanna live without the money. Or, you know, it's that these material items are identifying who they are, and they're going in conjunction.
And it's what happens is when all that's stripped away, who are you? Yeah. And that's a tough identity crisis for them.
Yeah. I mean, it's very profound throughout the show.
And then the Ratliff family, 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, like on the boat on the way to the full moon party, Lothman says something sort of like, one of these days I'm going to own you, right? And then Saxon is sort of like, attaboy, yeah, does not know what that is going to turn out to be.
Neither of them do, right? Did you know that that was coming with the character when you signed on to the show? I didn't know anything. 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.

And then I got a callback 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.

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 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. And then I started to read it and read it, and episode five came, and then six came, and I was like, what the fuck? God, this is just absurd.
This is nuts. So, no, I had no idea.
I mean, he puts Easter eggs. That's what Mike does.
does 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 and i'm with lachlan in the bed and i'm naked no regard for anybody else and i'm walking around i'm talking about how am i gonna jerk off and with him in the room 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.
It can't just be this one note character. But I did not know it was going there.
No, I didn't. I was shocked, actually, when it like that was the development.
But it is so satisfying because also it's not just for shock value. It is actually about like the sense of like self and meaning.
Like now what? Who am I? I think there's a mix. I don't think there's anything necessarily so negative or wrong with this sensationalism of a shock value.
But there's also way more. Mike's too smart for that.
He's way more in-depth and way more like there's such richer content than that. So I think that he, some know, some might say that.
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 Mike's pretty fucking smart. Yeah.
Well, thanks for being on the podcast and it was great talking to you. Awesome, man.
Thank you. I appreciate it.
All right, man. well I know you were jealous

not to be sitting beside me

talking to Patrick. For the record, I did see him at the hotel gym that morning.
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. I feel like maybe he just has to say that.
He can't say, this is why I took this role. Yeah, of course.
I campaigned for this. I have to play that guy.
But it was great interview. Yeah, it was great.
Okay, well, and now I get to talk to Leslie Bibb. Thanks.
Thanks for having me. 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 complex friendship dynamic on screen?

Honestly, if Mike had been like, you're the janitor who comes in and sweeps up a room, but you'll be there for six months and you'll just say, look over there, I would probably have done it. 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.
But I was like, because you just know. 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 like in it was just it was like you're on a cellular level you had something 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, or you're doing massive exposition and it's like complicated.
It's nothing. Mike's writing is so delicious and digestible that I just knew like I was like, oh, I'm already jumping on the end of a diving board.
Like I just knew that whatever was going to happen with these three women, that it was going to be intense, complex. And then you get all eight and you read them and you're like, whoa, okay.

And as I started to break down all eight and sort of fall in love with Kate and her quirkiness and 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.
And Kate's sort of, you know, I mean, it's really funny. My last name is Boar, Kate Boar.
I mean, she's probably not the most memorable of the three, but she desperately wants to be the most memorable of the three. And it felt for me that it was important for Kate that it's always that Kate is the one that talks to Lori and talks to Jacqueline and I'm the sort of connector of of the group over this time so even though Jacqueline has like paid for this trip which is so generous I feel like it's at the provocation of Kate because I think she feels the slipping of friendship between the three of these women.
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.
I think in her mind, she's made choices. Mike loves these Enneagram tests.
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. I was like, okay.
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? What does that represent? And to me, perfectionism is about control and a deep, 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 I made this weird choice with Kate every time you know you eat a lot at on you when you shoot the white lids dinner scenes breakfast scenes you know there's a lot of those scenes and I just you drink a lot I just made, I just knew that Kate and her perfectionism would have shown up on this vacation 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?

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 watt.

They don't go to like an elephant preserve. Totally.
She just wants to do yoga and not leave the lake. She's such a Westerner, you know, going, she's like the classic White Lotus hotel guests.
Like, you know, I'm going to go 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 she only eats fruit at breakfast it's like so weirdly controlled that's a wonderful detail um i never noticed so weird but i looking. Yeah.
No, never. I'm like, I will have a glass of rosé.
Yeah. Never will she have ice.
No cocktails. Never.
She's always like, you know, always a glass of rosé. It's funny.
I'm from Texas. I feel because the way you played her, because of the way Mike White writes his characters, I was like, I feel like I know this woman.
I think that she's the Jacqueline of her friend group in Austin, right? She moved from a coast. She's hot.
She's not from there. Her husband has this job.
I could picture she has this gorgeous, beautiful house, beautiful children. Orchestrating everything.

The boards of everything, the school fundraisers, the sheer whatever. 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 she was along the way when he was nothing and 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. And we have pickleball and we do this.

And I think she's a good I think she's a very good 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. Do I think that she's well-meaning? Yes.
But do I think she's doesn't leave her pocket? 100% and think that, like, Jacqueline, she's really impressed with that thing. And she would love to be Jacqueline.
And I think there is, like, why her? Why didn't, why not me? Their dynamic, too. Like, it made me think, you know, 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. And this really comes out with the Trump thing.
Right. And I was wondering, you know, like the sort of a fracture, the thing that Kate does not want to appear has suddenly appeared when they have this conversation.
Yeah. But then she also doesn't get nervous about like she's very like defiant.

Like I think when she broaches it, she's not backing down.

She's like, this is my truth.

But she's very nervous about it.

That's what I wanted to ask.

And she knows that.

Yeah, like I think she knows.

But I think if she comes in and 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.
I think really what she's saying is I'm my own person. 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's that subtle dig in that sort of thing. I'm my own keeper.
He doesn't sway me. I can have my own choices.
I make my own choices just because he makes the money. There's all this undercurrent underneath.
But I think she's aware of that. And she knows they're going to

talk shit about her. Right.
That's my other question. She knows.
She knows as soon as it happens. You know, it's.
Can you still be so close with your friends if you have these differing opinions? Does it make you a bad person? if you vote like i think there's a lot of questions that he's he's starting you know he's such a provocative writer and he's such a confronting right he really puts it in your face and makes you feel uncomfortable and i feel like that's what he's doing he's making you think that like the hill that you go, well, I can't be friends with her anymore. So it's a very interesting quandary that you start to go like, do I throw an entire friendship out because of this? 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. And it's and that's what shows up in the show.
Like it it's just all these little revelations about who they are and how they've changed. But OK, this is episode six.
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. 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.
Like I want to be with my kids in my house with a blanket and never, ever speak to Vlad again. 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. pajamas and she's like what and I was like when people are at my house and it's time for them to leave 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 because that would be rude I would think Kate would think that was rude so I was like-aggressive way is to change into your pajamas and try to be clean-faced.
Like you washed. And I very quickly just made this choice 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. Like, all of a sudden, we're, like, chasing.
You're never going to see him again. Right.
Like, he's, I don't know. Like, why am I talking to Vlad? We should be going deep in my best friends.
Like, right now, and now you've proven this. Like this guy has shown up with these two like cape things.

Very weird guy. deep in my best friends like right now and now you've proven this like this guy has shown up with these two like cape things very weird guys who i they can say they're weird they're weird they're weird like to her so weird and like dodgy and like i don't she's not into it and it's like I just, every time I started to slowly, every time Valentin came to the table, I was like, I don't, she's not into it.
And it's like, I just, every time I started to slowly, every time Valentin came to the table, I was like, like I wanted Kate to just be like, he's a thorn in my side because he's ruining my trip. The jaw clenches a little harder, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, everything. And like your smile is like imprinted and it's just like a, the message is like subliminally looking at you saying leave.
Yeah, the clock's like there's a countdown, honey. Yeah.
Well, okay. I have a question about your partner, Sam Walkwell, about his surprise appearance and that monologue.
I know. It's so secretive.
It's so crazy that we've kept this secret. And I got in my head, what I really wanted was to be one of these Asian girls getting fucked by me and to feel that.
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 wraps? It's crazy because we have friends in New York who are like, did you get to go visit?

Right.

And I'm like, 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.

You know, and it wasn't supposed to be him.

And it happened late just because our schedule pushed and Sam's schedule pushed on the movie he was doing in South Africa. And 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, wouldn't it have been a different trip if these women had just gone in and been like, this is who I am.
And sort of unapologetically had said this and said, I love you, but this is who I am. I'm still here for you.
I'm still this, but this is, but so scared because the world has gotten so polarized that like, you're like, if I really say that, will people still love me? And I think that's such a deep fear. But that monologue, when I read it, I was like, oh, this is, this is the.
Right. Stated plainly.
Stated plainly, unapologetically. I just knew when I read that, I was like, oh, 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 his decisions. That jet plane is going to fly whatever way it's going to fly.
So don't get mad at me if he says no. And they're like, no, no, no, no, no.
I was like, great. But 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 I remember saying, I was like, I think you'll regret not doing this 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.
Thank you so much. Bye.
Okay, bye-bye. 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. The White Lotus Podcast is a production of HBO and Campside Media.
This episode was hosted by Gia Tolentino and Josh Behrman. Natalia Winkleman is the managing producer.

Our associate producers are Allison Haney, Anthony Pucillo, and Aaliyah Papes.

Sound design and mix by Ewan Leitrimuyn.

At Campside Media, our executive producer is Josh Dean.

For the HBO podcast team, our executive producer is Michael Gluckstadt,

senior producer Allison Cohen-Zerokach, and producer Kenya Reyes. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time.
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