Patrick Schwarzenegger opens up The White Lotus Season 3’s ‘unsettling’ incest plotline: ‘More than what just meets the eye…’

Speaking about writer-director Mike White’s vision for the series, Patrick added, “Mike does a great job with my character with that scene, but also in past seasons of always bringing something that is really fun and outrageous and sparks a conversation that gets people talking, but also has to do a lot with the pilgrimage of the characters’ story and where he’s going. And here, especially with the relationship Saxon has with his little brother. There’s always more than what just meets the eye of the shock value on the screen.”

However, Patrick’s co-star Sam Nivola admitted that the cast and crew were “unsettled” while filming the sequence. He said, “We really trusted Mike because there’s always a very shocking, crazy, intense moment in every season. It’s never just for the sake of being shocking, it always serves the story. And that [incest] scene is really the inciting incident for where our relationship goes next. It’s a great storytelling tactic. Going into this, we really trusted Mike because he’s a fucking badass and a genius.”

This isn’t the first time Mike White has written transgressive queer characters. He wrote the character of a gay hotel manager in Season 1 who sexually harasses an employee. In Season 2, he shows a group of wealthy, dangerous gay men conspire to kill the fan-favourite character of Tanya (played by Jennifer Coolidge).

The White Lotus Season 3 consists of eight episodes. It premiered on February 16, with the first episode airing on HBO and streaming on Max. Since then, a new episode has been released weekly.