Staff
Episode 6 of HBO’s white hot series pushed way past that shocking incestuous kiss between Patrick Schwarzenegger and Sam Nivola’s brother characters, and neither the fans nor the cast were ready for it.
After briefly flirting with a major taboo in last week’s episode with that shocking kiss between brothers Saxon and Lochlan Ratliff, played by Patrick Schwarzenegger and Sam Nivola, respectively, The White Lotus took things several levels deeper in its latest episode.
Let’s just say, an incestuous kiss is chaste compared to a scene so unexpected that even one of the actors admitted he thought it was a “typo,” while talking to TheWrap about this weekend’s sixth episode.
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“I thought that there was a typo that screwed up the names,” Nivola said when he first saw the script, while Schwarzenegger added, “The first time I read it and got to that scene, I thought ‘Oh boy, we’ve got a wild [ride],” adding, “This is classic TooFab Staff Mike White, classic White Lotus.”
The scene in question has to do with that full-moon party of drugs, drink, and debauchery. One scene saw Lochlan hooking up with Charlotte La Bon’s Chloe, while Saxon pleasured himself just a few feet away. That’s kind of skirting the line, but that wasn’t the whole story.
Another flashback — much of the night was revealed in this manner — revealed that what was actually happening was Lochlan pleasuring Saxon directly at the same time he was hooking up with Chloe. That might explain how the brothers wound up naked in bed together!
Schwarzenegger told the outlet he “gasped” when he got that part in the script, knowing “it was going to be this hilarious moment … that was a big shift and changing point for Saxon, and for Saxon and Lochlan’s relationship … and the power shift between the two of them.”
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The actors played it “naturally,” too, as the writing intentionally left things a little bit vague as to just what was going on there, and how it came to be.
“Did Saxon want it? Did he not want it? Does he even remember it? Does he not? Was it the drugs? Was it not? Was is it these girls that pressured him into doing it? Was it not?” Schwarzenegger mused, adding that White wants “the viewer to come up to their own ideas.”
“For most intents and purposes, it doesn’t matter who initiated it,” Nivola added. “It happened and it’s crazy.”
That said, he doesn’t think his character is perhaps as into all this hyper-sexuality that Saxon exudes with everyone (including his brother, apparently). Instead, he thinks his character’s insecurity leads him to mold “himself to his brother’s sex-obsessed behavior,” as a way to get attention.
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Schwarzenegger, meanwhile, says Saxon is just as much of a mess himself, seeking constant approval and validation from his father. “All he cares about in life is being successful, having money, having power, but [also] having his dad say that he’s proud of him,” he said.
And while he’s been pushing the sexual tension and dialogue with his brother throughout the season, Schwarzenegger says that in the aftermath of that latest moment between them, Saxon is “having this full panic moment.”
Meanwhile, Lochlan seemingly doesn’t remember at all — or at least not at first — leading to a whole different kind of brotherly tension when Saxon starts shutting down and withdrawing from him, while Lochlan realizes “that something bad happened and that it was wrong.”
Watch as The White Lotus keep pushing the envelope with these two with new episodes every Sunday on HBO and Max.
