Ep. 4: “Hide or Seek” with Jason Isaacs and Sarah Catherine Hook

My pills are now totally missing. Well, maybe you didn't bring them.
You're always losing things. They were in my purse.
My whole prescription is gone. Mom, you don't need that stuff.
Oh, I feel trapped, Piper. On a boat I don't want to be on.
With a bunch of people I don't want to talk to. Oh, come on.
Don't be so judgemental.

You're thinking the same thing. You're just as judgemental as I am.

It's not what we're saying, darling. And don't you dare judge me.

I am your mother. Hello and welcome to the White Lotus Official Podcast Companion to Season 3.
I'm Gia Tolentino. And I'm Josh Behrman.
And we saw Dick. We saw Dick in Episode 4.
We did. We did.
Finally, at last. Well, it's in keeping with the tradition where we saw Daddy's Balls in season one.
Yeah. We got a real close-up of Daddy's Engorge Balls.
And then in season two. We see Theo James' if I'm recalling correctly prosthetic Dick in here.
His Dirk Diggler prosthesis. Yeah.
And then everybody screamed in the room. Yeah, yeah.
Including at both rooms, like the fictional room. Yeah, right, right.
The children also screamed. That's right.
The on-screen room and the viewership. Yeah.
They got a rise out of us. Yes.
And, you know, I mean, the reason that we saw Dick is because Timothy has been taking too much lorazepam, right? Right. Well, first of all, we should just note, very spicy episode.
Spicy episode. This thing is kicking in the gear here.
And later in this episode, we'll be talking to Jason Isaacs and Sarah Catherine Hook, who play Tim and Piper Ratliff. This episode is called Hide or Seek and written and directed, like all of them, by Mike White.
So the first thing we see is Jacqueline, and we get the first hint of trouble in paradise back home with Harrison, her younger man. Well, kind of the second hint, right? Because the ladies were already saying, like, I don't think they even see each other.
Oh, right, right, right. They were intuiting that there might be something going on.
And it's kind of an unlikely pairing, which maybe is attributable to the fact that he's 10 years younger. We know he's on set all the time.
We know he's super hot. And our minds go where Jacqueline's mind is going, which is he's fucking.
He's bunny-rabbiting with some other, somebody on set. Yes.
And then the girlies' age becomes kind of, like've come into the White Lotus being like this is our victory tour. We're hot.
We are, you know, we're beautiful. All this stuff.
And then they spend a lot of this episode kind of feeling like they're not at the center of anything. Like they're not valuable.
Those three in particular are suddenly going through some kind of like Greek mythical series of trials and tribulations. Right.
Like Mike has decided to put them through the ringer in this episode. I love the hotel, but it's a little dead.
Do you know what I'm saying? Is there some place around here? Another place that's a little more fun, has more of a vibe? They get sent to this other resort and then they get there and they just see it's all full of old people. It's all full of retirees.
Yeah, it's like retirees. Like the first people they talk to are these women on like some kind of group tour of widows, basically.
Yeah, who can't, you know, who want to go to the White Lotus but can't. And, you know, Jacqueline is looking around at loose skin, which she has not seen in years as a denizen of LA.
Which is her worst fear. Yeah, she's looking around at her worst fear made real.
And it's like Jacqueline who, you know, everyone's been telling her for years and years and years, like, you look unbelievable. You know, you're how old? Like, you look like you're in your 30s still.
You know, all of these things. Suddenly, she has this thought like, did he send us here because he thinks we're old? And she freaks out.
By the way, also, the way the show kind of like lingers and then slowly reveals in every direction, it's all for these old people. Yeah.
Is both funny and then sort of – and then tragic for the characters because you realize that this is – they're in some – it's almost like they're in some kind of purgatory. Right? Or they also in the theme of like, life, death, spiritualism, like the death part, like this is, they're being reminded of their mortality, like it's coming for you.
Like no matter what you guys do, no matter how many victory tours you guys do, you're going to wind up at this pensioner's pool, eventually. And your husbands are going to die, you're going to be like one of these two ladies that you are disgusted by basically because of what happened to them.
Right. And there's this way in which when the camera starts panning around, the camera is operating as if it's Jacqueline's eyes and it becomes kind of this horror.
And the horror is just getting old. Or just like actual life when you're not within this extremely rarefied.
Right. Life outside of the White Lotus.
And the world that you live in, the White Lotus back home as well. Yeah, and you kind of are implicated as the viewer in the fact that by your own—I'll just say by my own enjoyment of the show, it is also implicitly my enjoyment of being in a space where I can only look at beautiful, rich—you know, it's like the whiteness part is built into this.
It's like the show is a critique of it, but it also is giving us this setting that can shut out, you know, anything that resembles real life. Right.
And I think it's kind of meant as it's like a purposeful look behind the curtain, right? Or like almost breaking up the fourth wall in some way. Like, by the way, here's the real, this is really what happens when you go on vacation.
Right. Like in Thailand for most people, and you're sort of at this place and there's real people and random people and it's sort of like whatever.
But it is so almost unsettling, right? Even I was sort of like, well, we can't stay here. They've got to get out of here.
We've got to go. Like, what are we going to do here? Where are we going? I don't care, but I am not staying here.
No way. Just got drinks.
I, finish your drinks. And Jacqueline, like, she's also doing this extremely recognizable girl thing, I got to say, where it's like, she's really in search of, like, the perfect party.
But she, you know, she wants a really specific vibe. And as it eludes her, she just psychologically unravels.
You know, like Jacqueline, who's the picture of ease and just gracious victory for the first couple of episodes here is in, you know, cold sweat the entire time that she's like, but we just need to have fun in this exact specific way that will make me feel young and make me feel like I'm still, you know, like. Yeah, right.
Right. She's searching for the restoration of some idea of herself.
And it kind of recurs later. And there's a similar thing where they're like, OK, let's like let's do something like authentic.
Like let's go somewhere that's like bustling with, you know, Jacqueline starts the episode by being like, it's quiet here. It's dead.
Like we need to be in the mix. We need to really be in the mix.
And then we're finding out what being in the mix means. And there's also a thing where people go to Southeast Asia slash Thailand slash anywhere and they're like, we just want to be among the locals.
Do something the locals do. Be around more local color.
And they go around local color and they're just around a bunch of Thai kids that start pummeling them with water guns. Yeah.
Ruining their hair, ruining their look. Right, exactly.
I mean, right. That was, they actually are experiencing something authentic.
Which is also kind of shot like a horror. Like it's kind of like, it's like they're in the trenches in World War I sort of dodging fire.
A little bit all quiet on the Western front. Yeah.
I mean, they're kind of going down the alleyway and there's a little, little kid with the water gun and Jacqueline's like, oh, cute. And then the camera lingers on that kid's face and is like, oh, no.
Then it's like revenge. The kid like comes – like gets a whole gang and comes after them.
And again, completely unseats them, right? They're no longer in their sort of perfect poise and well-coiffed and all put together. They are thrown out of their element entirely.
And they're no longer able to see kind of the entire world as just, you know, an interchangeable backdrop for their victory tour, right? Like, it's like, actually, the world has impulses and people of its own. Remember? The other thing that kind of gets kicked into motion at the beginning of this is with Rick and Chelsea.
And he says, like, OK, I got to go to Bangkok, and he has that encounter with his therapist, right, who's like, I would love to see you again. And I found this to be very affecting.
I'm curious for your thoughts on this. Yeah, I mean, Rick is having begun the show broken, like Rick is the tsunami came for Rick at age 10 or whatever, right? Or age zero.
It came for him in the womb. And he has been on this journey where it's like, will he choose to heal himself here with this girl who loves him and wants nothing more than for him to be healed and accept him in all of his brokenness and is not afraid of it? Or is he going to lean harder into it and

murder the co-owner of the hotel? I found it extremely funny, the scene when Rick and Chelsea are talking at breakfast and he's like, I'm going to Bangkok. And she's like, but you have to be on the boat first.
And he's like, I'm not getting on that boat. And that face she makes, I mean, we both have toddlers.
You were like, that's the face my four-year-old makes when she's trying to I've seen that face, and it is a fake face, and it works, and it still works.

Right. You were like, that's the face my four-year-old makes when he's trying to get her away.
I've seen that face, and it is a fake face, and it works, and it still works plenty of the time, and it worked on Rick. Rick's like, fine, I'll get on the boat, which is a boat that like, you know, if someone's like, come get on my yacht and sail all day, there was a lot of resistance to this in the heart of the characters.
I know. I was like, the answer is yes.
Yes. Somebody says, I want you to go on my fancy boat.
And Parker Posey's like, I don't want to go. And they're like, why? And she's talking about, we hang out at the country club, mom.
And she's like, well, that's different. You know, I know them.
They know me. I know they're decent.
I know. It's funny.
Her whole, there's like this tremendous tension being built the whole time between the world that she inhabits, that she loves her husband for having built for her, that like has its values that she believes in. And anything outside of that is sort of questionable.
But we know what she doesn't know, which is that that is unraveling. Like that is a colossus of clay feet and is about to disappear.
And so the more that she keeps repeating it over and, what's important to her, what's important to her, you're bracing for her fall. I'm truly excited to see her withdrawal spiral, I hate to say, on the next episode, which she no longer has access to, you know, a Xanax every three to four hours.
But how she's on a yacht and she hides her. She's so worried about her purse.
It's safe there. Hi.
She hides her purse behind a cushion. And her husband is the one, obviously, that steals the drugs.
Right. There could be no, there's no other potential culprit.
Yeah, yeah. Because her like sense of propriety and fear of strangers means that on a very fancy boat, she wants to like hide her purse somewhere.
Right. But she should just be hiding it from her husband.
And there's something like, you know, wonderfully, the show is not going to go hard on this. But, you know, they are an upper class family in the South.
It's like, where do you think all this money came from in the first place? You know, where do you think your beautiful house, this beautiful land? Like, where do you like you think, oh, like there's a certain she's like, well, he's in finance, you know? And as we all know, American contemporary, you know, financialization is completely upstanding, not exploitative, you know? It's like she has this idea that he's making money the clean way. I am a pillar of the community.
I am. Oh, yeah.
The morally neutral world of high finance. Exactly, exactly.
As opposed to whatever his grandfather was doing as governor of North Carolina during segregation, presumably.

My grandfather was the governor of North Carolina.

My father was a very, very, very successful businessman.

Thank God he's dead.

I've been, in general, kind of loving seeing the proud patriarch spiraling. Yes.
Like a proud man coming undone, which is what starts happening through this whole episode. He reveals at one point sort of like his pedigree and how he raises a glass to his dead parents and grandparents.
So they're not going to see his downfall. Right.
Also the sort of recurring identity as a prison thing. That's what I was thinking about when the dad was talking about his grandfather, his father.
You know, he has been imprisoned by the requirement to have $10 million. Do you know what I mean? Right.
And also, like, the encounter in the lobby. You have touched my heart.
And I hope you will hear me when I say, you are not stuck. You can let go of your story.
You can escape the Karamek cycle. I was like, oh, this is, again, what the show is about.
This is what I think the whole series is about. This was, I was sort of vindicating my thesis about season one, which is really boomeranging now in season three.

And I was very struck by this because there's the same language as used.

There's, I think, when Tanya first gets on Belinda's, you know, spa bed, she says something like, let go of your story.

Every moment.

Every moment.

I'm being born into this life. I'm being born into this life.
I will drop the story. I will drop the story.
And feel the newness of each moment. Feel the newness of each moment.
And then every day you're born anew, right? And this is also that Buddhist language of atemporality and not having a narrative and so on. And so then that comes up here.
And also, like, it kind of has even reflected the visual cue of like, they wake up every morning, they wake up every morning. Is this going to be the morning where they're divorced from their past and future? Because that's the whole thing with Buddhism.
It's like pain resides in the past and the future with regret and anxiety. And that's your story.
So if you let go of your story, then you're released from that. And then I was just like, oh, this is really incredible, because he's like using the huge architecture of like, extremely detailed, fine grained human storytelling to get the point across that story is not the point.
Yeah, but it's also funny. It's like there's lots of ways for story not to be the point, right? Like for Rick to escape the past and the future means one thing, to escape the way that he's been living under the curse of his father's murder, which like Walton Goggins is pulling off this highly melodramatic storyline.
I'm like getting so – I can't even believe that at the beginning. I was like, I don't know.
Maybe I'm like Walton Goggans. You're like, I'm locked in.
So hard inhabiting this. Yeah, you're locked in as Goggans.
I mean, I was also really thinking like, well, is he going to get a chance to get off – is he going to escape the narrative, right, that he is telling himself? And that's what's making him so unhappy. But it's different for him versus like when they finally get to the boat.
So a lot of this episode is, you know, they're preparing to get on the boat and they get on the boat. And once they're on the boat, the class of sort of white men from various places in North America or Australia who are just talking about how they've come here to hide money from their ex-wives, hide money from the government.
Someone says a line about you're either here or you're running from something or looking for something. I've heard someone say that.
Anyone who moves to Thailand is either looking for something or

hiding from something.

Rick has a reason to transcend his past. Currently, and you see Timothy Ratliff

considering this all the time, he has a very particular reason to transcend his past and start over and live in a sort of eternal return of the present. So what about you? You hide or you seek? I'm just on vacation with my family.
But you never know. You know, it's like it's salvific for Walton Goggins and it is undeserved amnesty for Timothy Ratliff.
Right. I know I was wondering if at a certain point when they're talking about all that, if Tim is like, well, that's where I'm going to wind up.
Like how much money can I get out of whatever accounts are still liquid and, like, disappear into the jungle here.

A lot happens on the boat. That's where Rick reveals to Chelsea that the man who murdered my father is, you know, owns the hotel.
And then she has the funny line from Princess Bride. She's like, is this like, you killed my father, prepared to die? My name is Inigo Montoya.
I continue to love, you know, like having appeared off of the boat to have a certain kind of relationship. They actually, you know, the thing that prompts this admission from Rick finally is that she pulls him out and she's like, I'm about to leave.
You know, she's like, I'm going to leave you. Right, right, right, right.
It's when she threatens. And she does it calmly and honestly.
Yeah. And I was like, good for it.
You guys are communicating. I know.
You know, like they're actually really good together. You know, and like.
They're a totally functional couple. They're actually communicating so honestly.
And then Rick's like, okay, I'll tell you. And he does, and he tells her.
Right, that's true. Like he comes in as the person with the most, seeming like he has the most to hide, and he is the only one currently being honest.
It's actually not that he's hiding.

It's too painful for him to reveal, basically, right? Because he knows that once that happens, then the dam is going to break, right? And then he has to reveal all of himself to her. And then maybe that's dangerous.
Maybe she won't want to be with him anymore, right? Who knows what that entails. Right.
Also on the boat, you get more of the, like, lovely sibling dynamics between the Ratliffs and Saxons trying to get Lachlan laid with the lovely ladies. And Lachlan is like, you know what? I'm going to do that because my sister is about to leave me.
I found that so, I found his face. Yeah, that was very sweet.
Yeah, he's like, what about me? Yeah. Where, if you go, what about me? And she's like, sweetie, you'll be at college.
And he's a little bit trying not to cry. Yeah.
It was so sweet. And then he's like, well, fuck it.
I'm just going to get laid. He starts doing magic.
He's doing magic. He's like, I know.
The quickest way to get laid around here is magic. It's what he's got.
And then it turns out he's very good at it, wowing the ladies. It would absolutely slay if everyone is drunk and you start doing close hand magic.
That would be, that would work. It is sweet how all the siblings really need each other.
And even though Saxon's giving Piper a hard time, I feel like if Piper needed Saxon, he would be there. Yes.
Right? Like he would 100% show up for her. I'm curious, actually, how your feelings have developed at all about Saxon because my— Yours are changing.
Yeah. You're becoming more sympathetic to him because of the way he is towards Lachlan.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. It could also just be— Is it also the introduction of his possible lack of business acumen? Yeah.
Well, he has a weakness now. He has a vulnerability.
Like he's not perfect. He thinks he's perfect, but he's not, which is among the worst kind of vulnerabilities, right? And so I'm finding him a little bit more sympathetic.
It could also be I like watching him. Like he has such an ease of – Yeah, I like his teeth.
The way that he flirts, the way with those girls, the way that he – he has like all the exact movements down of like how to deal with them. I'm slightly triggered by it.
Having had all of this work on me seamlessly in so many years of my life. So for me, it's the opposite where it's like, that's the guy that like I wanted to be in high school, right? And the guy that I always saw was like, how do you pull that off? That's incredible.
There are some guys that just that walk into a situation, they are absolutely sure they're going to come out of it with what they want. Yeah.
And there is like a pleasure in being around that kind of guy even – and especially sometimes if what they want is you or what they want is to get something out of you or – you know. Right.
So I kind of inherently have a soft spot, so to speak, for that person. But I don't know.
I need Saxon to sort of confront the terrifying divine in this season. You know what I mean? Like I need him to be humble before an encounter with the other.
You know, like I think he might, but I want that out of him. I know.
I mean that's why I'm – especially somebody like that who's so sure of himself. I want him to become very unsure.
Yeah. Saxon is.
And so we have like the wounded lion of Rick, and then like the proud father coming undone. And then I wonder where like the striding buck is what's going to happen with him, like when his, you know, foot gets caught in the trap to extend the Sylvan metaphor.
But like, I also just, I mean, in some ways, also, I'm thinking about like, Patrick Schwarzenegger himself is kind of from this, you know, he's a Kennedy dynasty hanging over exactly And he just, he moves through the world in that way. It's like, oh, am I watching? Is this what like Jack Kennedy was like, you know, at Harvard, right? But there's something interesting about Saxon's character specifically where it's like, I would bet, I would bet $100 right now that that character has never been in love.
You know, like I think when he's talking about like, I love work, dad. Like he's so, he thinks that the world is conquerable.
And it's been so easy for him to conquer in so many specific ways. But I just like have a feeling that this guy has never actually been in love.
And I want something that terrifying to happen to him. Another way that the cue balls are scattering is the Belinda and Greg situation, which is tightening up.
Like we don't know if Greg was in her room or if it was simply a monitor lizard. She's also afraid of the wildlife.
You know, it's been established. But, you know, we know that the sun is on his way.
They're researching each other. They are researching each other.
They are mutually Googling each other. And it's a little like it's the stakes are high.
Yeah, it's rationing up. And it's a little like hints of it only in this episode, but you see, but it's like now it's clear.
They've made each other. Right.
They each know what the other knows. They're eyeing each other in the lobby.
They know what the other knows, and now it's like they're set on a collision course. I mean, the question is, like, what would you do if you're either of them? Like, I'm trying to be like, what would I do if I was, like, if I was Belinda, do I trust Chloe enough to care? No.
Not telling Chloe. He's not connected to the White Lotus in any way.
You can't tell the White Lotus. Who do you report him to? Right.
What is her recourse? She doesn't have any recourse. And his only recourse is, I am going to do something to the sun to make her keep quiet, basically.
That's the only thing. Oh, I see.
That's what you think. He was focusing, right.
He gets on her Instagram. He sees her son.

He's looking for some sort of angle and he finds nothing but, you know, I mean, he finds the quickest thing to hold over a parent's head, which is the well-being of their child. Right.
He's really interesting, too. He was like sort of in season one, like plays this kind of goofy, guileless character.

Yeah.

And now he's this like stoic monster that we know has this, like, simmering. Yeah, like giving serial killer, actually.

Yeah, exactly.

Right.

And then when he says, it's like, what are you?

Are you hiding or seeking?

Yeah.

What's the name of the episode?

And it just, like, hits so hard.

Well, and they both say, you know, he's like, I'm on vacation with my family.

And he's like, just got to get out of the rat race. You motherfuckers.
Yeah. As Parker Posey says, when they get off the yacht, I bet some of those guys were actual killers.
And I was like, she sees, she sees and she knows. And then so Timothy, you know, resurfaces from his haze and is like, Pam, I need my phone, Pam.
He gets the phone, gets the horrific news that he's going to lose everything. And, you know, his muscles and bones are melting, you know, in front of us.
And he's slumped over the guardhouse, kind of railing, and he sees the gun. The gun just sitting on it.
Why the fuck did the guy talk?

Guy talk is honestly horrible at his job.

He is a bad security guard.

He just leaves a gun sitting.

By the way, it's not even just like on the desk.

It's on the counter.

It's on.

Right.

Well.

Because he sees it from outside the shed.

Right.

That's very conspicuous wherever it was left.

And it's sort of like gift wrapped.

You know what I mean?

Exactly.

It's in this gift box.

It's like, do you need a gun, sir?

At this moment, it's like the fifth time or whatever that Chekhov's gun has appeared in this series. It's just coming up every single episode.
It's kind of amazing. It's an insane twist on the Chekhov gun.
It's the eternally recurring Chekhov's gun. It keeps coming, having more import.
It takes a while to be. We know it's there.
Then it's revealed. Then it gets now stolen.
Yeah. He takes it.
He immediately beforehand says, I would rather die than go to prison. And so I was like, OK, he's going to take the gun.
Yeah. He takes it.
Like he immediately beforehand says

I would rather die

than go to prison

and so I was like

okay he's going to take the guy.

Yeah.

When he returns to dinner

after having learned

basically what

that the wave

has arrived

and the

sort of shot lingers

on his face

trying to resettle himself

at dinner

and just the expression

on his face

is so good

and telling.

It's tremendous.

Yeah.

But it also to me

I was like

this is also giving me when I was 25 trying to follow the conversation at brunch when I was hungover. Do you know what I mean? You know when you're like at a wedding event after the wedding on Sunday and like you're like trying to talk to somebody's mom and you're just like.
Just waiting for the Bloody Mary to show up so you can like get right again. Yeah.
But your eyes are kind of wandering off in different directions. It's interesting, as we've been discussing, a lot happens in this episode.

The gears are turning, the billiard balls are moving, and the Chekhovian gun has appeared and has made its way into the hands of one of the protagonists who's losing his mind. And it is very plotty, actually, in comparison to the previous two seasons, particularly season one.
But it's also kind of a, I mean, there's a joke aspect to it also, right?

Where it's like the show is playing with exactly, you know, you're just going to keep seeing the gun and it's just not going to be doing the thing that you think that you expected it to do. Right.
Like it's like you're going to see the gun, but it's not going to be the mass shooting or whatever that's starting episode one. You're right.
I bet you it's like the violence is not instrumental.

It's going to be the denouement of some of the emotional like carnage.

Right.

And it's going to be the outcome of something as opposed to the thing that sets it in motion.

What sets things in motion here is the people and who they are and what they're afraid of.

Right.

And now we're so excited to talk to Jason Isaacs.

He's told them everything.

I think the best we can do is plead guilty and cut a deal.

We're just going to roll over?

Are you not fucking serious?

If I plead guilty, Chuck, it's the end of my career.

You understand?

I can't work in finance if I plead guilty to fucking embezzlement and fraud. Tim, that's the least of your problems.
This is the kind of case these guys dream of. They're going to come after everything you have.
Jesus fucking Christ. All right.
Welcome, Jason Isaacs, to the White Lotus Season 3 Official Companion Podcast. Thanks very much.
So I'm from Texas and I went to college in Virginia. And so the character that you are playing, I feel like I've known him my whole life because I have known versions of him my whole life.
And I wanted to ask you about playing this archetype. Like, were you familiar with this? Well, I'm immediately offended by using the word archetype there because Mike White is far too nuanced and sophisticated writer.
You're absolutely right. He introduces people you think are archetypes and then he adds or strips off layers and layers and you go, wait, I thought I knew this person who they were.
Right. I mean, he comes off the boat as someone you think you know, right? He's giving like golf, dad and finance, you know, taking this break.
But I wanted, you know, how did you go about inhabiting not the archetype, but this character? Well, I started, for me, because I'm English, I started with the voice. I knew him from Durham, North Carolina, so I got some people from North Carolina until I honed it down to one particular person whose voice I wanted to do and broke it down phonetically.
So there was the voice, but also he's what Tom Wolfe called a big swinging dick, you know, and it's incredibly important to him how other people see him. Not that he's anxious about it because it goes well for him.

He has a huge status within his family

and in his community back home.

So you need to build that first

before Mike starts to puncture it.

You know, the Zeppelin starts to leak very, very slowly,

and then it deflates very quickly

with a couple of phone calls.

You look at the function in the story,

like what kind of person would create Saxon as a son

and just come in dripping with power and privilege and entitlement and a total lack of doubt and Then allow the audience at least certainly not me to enjoy the journey as all the things that he thinks he is Are taken away and this is it's white Lotus in Thailand and Mike's been explicit that it's it's a search for identity What is the self and I think Tim probably faces it more than anybody because everything that he is is threatened to be taken away and everything that his family think they are too. So the pressure builds to a hideous climax.
Yeah, it's really, it's a strange, like exciting for a song watching like a great man spiral, you know, watching The Descent. So I was like, what in your own life have you drawn on to create this character my catastrophic failures uh on the screen they don't really match the great man spiraling possibly people who know me well might see what i have in common i don't think i have any comment here uh i think i'm a bit of a blank slate i mean i as a human being i'm not quite sure i have a very amorphous.
I tend to adopt the accent of whoever I'm talking to after a short while. And I just jumped into the world that Mike created, and the bits seem to fill themselves in.
It's a bit like you have an outline, and you fill up from the inside or outside, or the jigsaw slowly fills itself. What really helps is the other actors.
So when you're looking in other people's eyes, and they seem to be your children, and this person seems to be your wife. And luckily, thank God, we're one of the shows that's still on a real location before AI makes it all happen in a computer.
So anything that helps you trick your imagination is of use because that's what acting is, just imagining you are someone else in another situation. But 99.9% of it is Mike's ability to dream up full and human worlds, I think.
Well, let me ask a different way then. Is it, was it then fun to- Mike, is it a different answer, Josh? Is that what's going on? No, no, no.
No, no, I'm going to get the answer. Okay, go on.
No, no. Ask a different version of an adjacent question, which is, so then was it fun to luxuriate in this fully formed spiraling great man that Mike has created for you? That's a very perceptive question because he's really unhappy.
I mean, I experienced as much as I could. I know it's pretend acting, but when you're very, very angry, you come away with your cells, you know, carry the anger.
If you're crying all day, which I've done films with, my kids get killed and stuff. I did a film called Mass, which was all about losing a son and hanging on to the anger.
You know, we cried for weeks. So this, it was incredibly stressful being him.
And yes, you're right, I love that. All actors love that.
We like vicarious, extreme experiences. So I get to, you know, have been in war numbers of times, but they're not real bullets.
So as close as I ever want to get, I do. And this is as close as I ever want to get to my world falling apart and being broken.
Yes, it is fun. The more extreme, the more fun.
Although I shat myself, to be honest, when I read the script to start with, I thought, oh, wait, I've got to raise my game and I've got to, can I pull that scene off? Mike's written something really extreme and I've got to make it truthful and emotional. And those things are demanding of it.
I know you can't always get there, but it did feel like it was scary biscuits. Two things.
One, having some big acting, and two, having to hide a secret for many episodes without words and in ways that aren't boring. That was also a challenge.
In your mind, as Tim is unraveling, there's so much in the story about the Ratliff family values and what they stand for and how important that is. And at least- Everyone being a dagger to the soul for me, every single, every time- Right.
...one thinks or says that, I know, I mean, there is a cliff coming at me at a million miles an hour and there's no way to avoid it. And so I had that always in mind.
And as an actor, what you want is secrets. You're desperate to have secrets.
To say one thing and mean it is really nothing and feels like nothing. But all the time that the dialogue is going on around me and all the stuff that he's created and structured on purpose is the stuff to make my world worse all he does is tighten the vice on my heart and uh i don't know how much the audience get of it i was trying to feel it and think it and i hope that they sense it in me because i'm not talking very much well i the yeah and the way that you are not talking is incredible.
That's like when Parker Post is like, say something and you're like, oh, you know, but I was wondering as you experienced it, do you think that Tim is re-evaluating those values or is he simply thinking about how can I not lose my house? You feel something building such as like, perhaps the most money in the biggest house was not the thing that I've been directed my entire life to want and build. Perhaps that has led me here and it shouldn't have, you know, to what extent is he thinking about it? Yeah.
I mean, the writing's too complex for it to be either one of those things or the other. It's both.
At the same time, it's thinking how the hell am I going to, what am I going to do? I cannot I cannot imagine a life without it I equated to someone going into rehab or going to a or something like it I cannot imagine a life without this But I have to or I'd rather die and so those people do go into recovery the people who go decide they want to live but but Or people who are forced by a court or a DUI to go to a they don't want to be there They get there and they go. Yeah, I could.
So he's not one of those people who've gone to Thailand, gone for a Buddhist meditation retreat and thinks, no, I should reevaluate. He's got no choice.
He's going to have nothing. The family have nothing.
So I don't think he's spending much time thinking, you know what, maybe I should have made some different choices and I'll be OK. I think he's forced, like the walls closing in on him and forced to think, can I live without this? Can my children live? Can any of my children or my wife survive if they had to go and get a job in a shop and rent an apartment or live in public housing? And realizing with horror that none of them are equipped for any of those things.
So yes, he's reevaluating, but it's at gunpoint. So it's not the same kind of reevaluation that people are doing around him.
Yeah. Do you understand him as someone I was like, what is his relationship to pleasure? What is his relationship to, does he have any sense of who his own identity aside from? Sure, he does, because he's not had to question it.
He's not had to question any of those things. Things came easy to him.
He was handed money. He made it into more money.
He was handed status. He comes from blue blood.
He probably traces family back to the Mayflower. No, no, I think that he's probably a sensualist in many ways.
I think he had all kinds of pleasure. I don't know if he was getting pleasure from his marriage.
It doesn't seem like that's going particularly well, but he gets pleasure from power and status and probably from golf and high adrenaline gets endorphin released from pushing himself physically all the time and winning. That's why Saxon has so grotesquely misinterpreted the point of life, which is winning.
Saxon tries to dominate women everywhere and dominate his brother because he actually has no power because he works with dad. He's watched his dad be a winner all the time.
So yeah, I think he takes tremendous sensual pleasure from food and drink. He's a bit of a fat cat.
I put a bunch of weight on in the show and for the show. And I was comfortable doing that.
I wanted him to be a bit of a kind of chunky fat cat. He goes to gym a lot, but he also eats a lot and drinks a lot of red wine and all the rest of it.
He's got an ample wine cellar for sure. Yeah, absolutely.
I think he indulges in everything, left, right and center. There's a Henry VIII quality And that's because the more you do that, the more there is to take away.
Yeah. Do you think that the deal with Kenny was just like a one-time peccadillo that really was a favor to a friend or? No, I think most of, money makes money.
You don't have to be illegal, but you do not want to pay any tax. The more rich you get, the less you want to pay tax.
I think he is comfortable to get away with whatever he can get away with. I think he's a Darwinist in finance.
What you can do, you should do. Is this systemic with him, do you think? I was just like, I'm just curious.
He's up for any deal that he can get away with. So, yeah, he's done it before.
He doesn't make his money out of being crooked. He doesn't have to.
He has so much money, most of the time, the deals are good. But if the deal happens to break whatever law is there, if no one's going to catch him, that's fine too.
Yeah. This is like we were debating.
I was like, what if he- If he's a lovely guy, he'd do the favour to a friend. Yeah, exactly.
That's what I was like. I was like, is that what we're meant to take? I was like, no.
I don't think it's nearly- look, he hasn't been operating a Ponzi scheme or something. He's not a crook.
He's just got tons of money. Administers a hedge fund with his own money and other wealthy people around him.
Sometimes, you can avoid tax and move things around. That's what everybody in that world does, and they don't think twice about it.
This was just another side deal for someone. Is he a criminal? Yes, he's absolutely a criminal because he has no regard has no regard for laws that he can't be caught by.
That's why he's so shocked. I played a number of criminals in my life and met the people I played a couple of times and they go stupid if people go to prison.
I've heard more than one person say only really stupid people get caught. Most of us get away with everything all the time.
And that's, I think he feels really stupid that he got caught. Can I ask who is Tim's favorite child? Oh, it's Piper by far.
Yeah, we knew it. We knew it.
Of course it's Piper. He loves it.
He's disappointed by both of his sons in so many ways. And he absolutely worships Piper.
He probably worships him in all the wrong ways and places it on a pedestal. And even though his world's falling apart, so he could care less,

she's going to have to get a job somewhere

folding t-shirts, you know?

So all this talk about what they're going to do in the future

and what she's going to do is irrelevant

if he doesn't sort this situation out

and he's got no solution for it.

But yeah, no, it's his daughter, always.

And do you think that, right,

there's this sense that he respects her

because she's chosen also what she wants?

Oh, no. No, no.

It doesn't matter what she says. I want to be an astronaut.
I want to score the winning goal in the World Cup. None of these things are going to happen.
They're going to get home. They have no house.
They have no car. She has no phone.
They have no, they will have no money of any kind. How's she even going to fly to Thailand? Right.
No, no. So the whole thing is some bizarre farce playing out in front of him.
In this episode, you get the call. The shit's going to hit the fan.
I guess we can say that on the podcast. It's all over, basically.
So there is no way out of it. You're going to go to prison.
Spies the gun sitting in the security station. So what do you think is going on there? What do you think Tim's intention is with the gun? Or is it just like...
Absolutely to kill himself. Is he going to wait for the end of the week? He doesn't know.
His brain is in a blender. You know, he's in free fall.
But there's a gun and you can end it quickly. And so whether he's going to do it right there in the guard station, whether he's going to write a note late at night, the next day at the end of the week, you know, he's not that organized at that point, but he knows that there's a way out.
And before he saw the gun, there was no way out. Thank you so much for talking to you.
I could talk about it forever.

Well, there was never any doubt in my mind

who the favorite was going to be.

Yeah, confirmed.

Yeah, confirmed.

Another predictive point on your bingo card.

And now I get to talk to that favorite child,

Sarah Catherine Hook or Piper Rallif.

Sarah Catherine, thank you so much for coming on the HBO Companion Podcast. Thank you.
We are loving the show. Yay.
And I have to say, so I'm from Texas. You're from Alabama, right? Yes, yes.
And, you know, when the Ratliffs walk off the boat, immediately everything, the clothes, the, you know, the way that Jason Isis is carrying himself, the way that the siblings are, everyone is well-groomed and a little bit repressed and a little bit about to act out. And there's so much that felt – and I went to college in Virginia.
It just felt very familiar. And I wondered, you know, for you, you know, reading the casting notice and playing this part, did you feel like you were coming into sort of familiar territory from home at all? Too familiar, honestly.
being from alabama i'm also the middle girl between two brothers like i mean i am this bitch like the second i saw the breakdown and everything i was like am i being bunked yeah like this how did he know this was my life like he even asked asked me to in the beginning, like about the accents.

And I was like,

why Mike White is asking me like my thoughts on like what we should do with this family.

Like it's just,

that's really cool.

But yeah,

no,

I thought that the,

like,

especially with Saxon's character,

like the first time that I saw him walk out with those like really dorky

shades with the band and the loafers and yeah. And like the polo shirts and everything.
I was like, oh my God, I'm having PTSD. Uh-huh, me too.
Yeah, it's like immediate like cringe all over my body. Like, ew.
Like I flirted with this boy with a solo cop over a cat. Yeah, it's so gross.
It was so grossly perfect. And just thought they nailed it completely.
Wait, so I didn't know that you were the middle girl of two boys. Tell me more about that dynamic.
Like, are you quieter than your other two siblings? You know, like, what's the, tell me about the. That's a good question.
I was definitely very, very shy when I was little. Like, I couldn't, like, speak to other people, like, in public.
And it's interesting. I, oh God, we might get into some like therapy talk now, but, but it was one of those things that like I had to quote unquote overcome.
But what I do love about Piper is that I was able to kind of embrace that like inner child in myself, like that, that shy girl who I feel like that, that Piper is also that because I think I've I've kind of in a weird way I feel like I've been trying to perform out of my shyness and naturally too like I think as the only girl in my family like once I felt the the warmth of the spotlight like it was so hard to avoid that so I definitely got very loud and I kind of overtook, like I said, the spotlight with my real life brothers, Forrest and George, my shout out to them. But yeah, I think there are definitely similarities that I share with Piper, but then in real life, I don't really feel like the middle child.
A lot of people think I'm like the youngest because I can be very bubbly and so I feel like the youngest is kind of loud and like lacks awareness usually. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, yeah, and presumably the psychosexual dynamic on Huck is perhaps particular to the Ratliff's here. Yeah, yeah, for sure.
I wondered for you, you know, as you were thinking about Piper, she seems like she's been a good girl her whole life. She's been smart, she's had it together, she's neat, she's held up that sort of obligation of that role in her family, and now she has her sights on something else.
And did you think of this as this is the first time that she's perhaps about to rebel? Like, is this the first time? I don't maybe think so. Like, I think, you know, given that she is a student at Chapel Hill, I think she's been very disciplined in her studies forever.
Like, I imagine she was a straight-A student. You know, I feel like for her, she's probably, like, a goal-oriented person where, like, her whole high school career was about getting into the right college.
And then once she got into the right college, then it's like, okay, what's the next step? And a lot of the times, like, when you go off to school and you are plucked out of your immediate bubble of your family and you learn all of these new ideals and develop your own opinions, then you start to think, oh, god, what I was raised upon is just so wrong. And how could I ever, like, prescribe to anything that my parents raised me to to believe and so I think like whether she's aware of it or not like I do think yes there is a rebellious streak within her but not I don't I don't know if it's like intentional in the sense it's like I'm doing this to get back at my parents like I do think she is very sincere about the path forward that she's taking and I just I, I think she is someone who takes everything that she does very seriously.
And she just like fell in love with Buddhism and the practice. And I think it, it, for her, she's like, this is what's going, like, this is my purpose right now.
And this is what's going to give me my purpose. And it makes total sense to like, given the nature of her family and how crazy they are.
Like she wants something completely different and respect. I mean, she comes from a, I mean, even for myself, I don't know, coming from Alabama, I definitely had a big culture shock.
I went to school in New York and I was a music major and was introduced to a whole new world. And it does actually genuinely rock your world a little bit.
And I grew up in the church and I kind of had my first taste of like other forms of spirituality, like while I was in college. And you do start to develop your own interests.
And then your parents have a freak out about it because they're like, but what about Jesus? You know, so. Girl, I cannot tell you how deeply I relate to this.
Exactly. Like, you know, you get it.
I know. I really know.
So, yeah. And I wondered, yeah, and I sort of wondered watching Piper.

I was like, it's sort of like you get out of that context and maybe you've had some kind of unnamed discontentment or sort of like, why is this the way it is? I don't love this. But you don't really have the language or the framework to understand that discontentment.
And then you, maybe in college, you experience something, an alternate framework that's like

you kind of realize, oh, I was perhaps a little more searching for something new than I thought, right? Yeah, and I just didn't have access to it. That makes a lot of sense.
I feel like that's exactly probably what happened with her. Like she didn't have the avenues available to her like in the immediate environment that she was surrounded by like with her family.
Like, and she probably also i would think is just like craving like actual real connection that she probably did not have with her family and that i would think a lot of like young kids like in very wealthy families like they probably were raised by like a bunch of nannies and stuff and didn't even have like a real relationship with their parents. So that's like how I kind of justify a lot of her decisions.
Yeah. Like she just wants love and wants a life of her own, you know? Yeah.
And I think we can see that she is searching to see who she is outside of the identity of her family and outside. She wants to test it, right? She wants to see what is in me that is not just this talk I'm getting from my mother about who the kind of person we are, what kind of people we are.
It's like she wants to know what kind of person she is underneath it, right? Yeah, totally. Well, last question.
We asked Jason Isaacs who Timothy's favorite child is. We thought correctly that he would say Piper.
Piper? He said Piper? Yeah. He's biased because he has two daughters.
And we did a Vanity Fair quiz show yesterday. And they asked who his favorite character was in Harry Potter.
And apparently it was Hermione. And he said, he was like, she's so brilliant.
And I have two brilliant daughters. And I just saw so much.
And so I think he's biased. Who is Piper's favorite parent?

Oh, definitely Timothy.

Yeah.

Like she's a daddy's girl for sure.

Like she,

and this was something Mike talked to me about.

He was like,

she has to,

she fears her mother.

Like she,

she's afraid of her on,

and on all levels.

On all levels.

Yeah.

Like.

Afraid of becoming her.

Afraid of.

Yes.

Yes.

Exactly.

Totally.

Like all of the above.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay. Well, thank you so much for coming on the podcast.
Such a delight to talk to you. Yes, exactly.
Totally. Like all of the above.
Yeah. Okay.

Well, thank you so much for coming on the podcast.

Such a delight to talk to you.

Yes, you too.

Amazing how Sarah Catherine and I are just, you know, literally the same person.

Just really wonderful to connect in that way about being the same person.

Yeah.

All right.

So thanks, of course, to our guests, Jason Isaacs and Sarah Catherine Hook, and join

us for the next episode.

Thank you. 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 Leitrimuen.

At Campside Media, our executive producer is Josh Dean.

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

senior producer Allison Cohen-Zorokach, and producer Kenya Reyes.