‘The White Lotus’ stars Sam Nivola and Patrick Schwarzenegger defend incest scene: “It’s never just for the sake of being shocking”
Sam Nivola, who plays Lochlan Ratliff in season three of The White Lotus, has defended his character despite the shocking developments which occurred in the sixth episode.
Lochlan is the youngest of three siblings in the wealthy Ratliff family, and from the first episode, there are incestual undertones between him and his older brother Saxon (Patrick Schwarzenegger). At the beginning of the season, Saxon is the one making unsolicited comments about Lochy’s sex life and walking around naked in their hotel room.
Last week, in episode five, however, the tables turned, with Lochlan kissing his brother passionately during the raucous festivities of the Full Moon Party. Now, in episode six, audiences learn what happened afterwards. As Lochlan and Saxon wake up naked together in bed, nursing hangovers, flashes of memory from the night before begin to surface. Lochlan and Chloe (Charlotte Le Bon) had sex while Saxon masturbated next to them. Then, Lochlan reached over and jerked his brother off. It makes for an uncomfortable reunion on the deck of the yacht the next morning.
In an interview with Variety, Nivola said that shooting the scene with Schwarzenegger was awkward on multiple levels. “It was very weird kissing Patrick because he’s a really good friend of mine,” he said. “And, you know, I’m straight, he’s straight. It’s already weird.” It would have been easier, he said, if they had only just met. “Patrick was already like a brother to me,” he continued. “It felt sort of fucked up.”
Shooting the scene with Le Bon was easier because she’d only just arrived at the set a few days before. “We didn’t really know her at all,” he said, “But I guess she knew that [White Lotus creator Mike White] wouldn’t pick some creep to… play the creep.”
As for how much Lochlan remembered about the threesome the morning after, Nivola revealed that White usually shoots several versions of a scene with various subtexts. They did multiple variations of Lochlan’s line, “I can’t remember last night at all,” each take suggesting something different.
One suggested that he knew everything and was just pretending he didn’t, while another suggested that he truly had no memory of it. The one that ended up being used suggests that Lochy does not, in fact, remember hooking up with his brother until he and his sister, Piper, are at the monastery later that day.
“I like that he made that choice, because at the end of the day, Lochlan is not a creep, necessarily,” Nivola said. “Of course, I have to say that. You have to love your character. So, fuck it, I’ll defend him!”
He added that, although Lochlan is definitely misguided, “I don’t think he’s evil or malicious in any way. It’s important to the story that he’s not some psychopath.”
For his part, Schwarzenegger believes that the scene is all about character development for Saxon. “There’s some sensationalism, but then there’s also the stuff behind the wall of the character and what he’s dealing with in the conflict of what just happened,” he said in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter.
The actor continued: “What is that going to do to who he thinks he is? His thoughts on, what is it like to be a man? What is a man? What makes all these different things that he thought he stood for in the episode and the days before?”
Throughout the season, Saxon has been the stereotypical finance bro who drinks protein shakes, shamelessly chats up women no matter how overtly they reject him, and constantly talks about sex. According to both actors, the sex scene on the yacht was the beginning of something, not just the sensationalistic payoff of several episodes worth of escalating tension.
“It’s never just for the sake of being shocking, it always serves the story,” Nivola said. “And that scene is really the inciting incident for where our relationship goes next.”
The third season of The White Lotus is set to continue on March 30th with episode seven.
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