Jason Isaacs is hinting that there was tension on The White Lotus cast — again — but will he ever reveal who was supposedly feuding?
Isaacs, 62, addressed the drama during a Q&A at Soho House West Hollywood on Monday, June 9, saying, “It’s a very gossipy set. There’s a lot of people and there’s a lot of cliques [that] form, not just in the actors, but there’s makeup and hair and costume, and there’s the admin department as well.”
The actor suggested that filming overseas played a role.
“Thailand’s a long way from home for everybody,” Isaacs added. “A lot of people [were] there in the hotel, away from home for seven months. It’s hot. No one’s got their families with them.”
According to Isaacs, everyone would confide in him, sharing, “I’d sit there like Yoda. They would come to me. They would often go off and misbehave like children, and come back and want counsel. And I’d go, ‘When I was your age ….’”
Isaacs, however, still wouldn’t reveal who had issues.
“There were online detectives trying to work out where the fault lines were between people,” he explained. “People made friends. People met people they weren’t so friendly with. All the normal stuff that happens when a group of people go away for a long time.”
The third season of The White Lotus took Us to Thailand, with cast members that included Isaacs, Natasha Rothwell, Leslie Bibb, Carrie Coon, Lalisa Manobal, Michelle Monaghan, Lek Patravadi, Tayme Thapthimthong, Jon Gries and more.
“It was like a cross between summer camp and Lord of the Flies but in a gilded cage,” Isaacs shared in an interview with Vulture in March before admitting he didn’t know whether the interactions affected the final content. “When it comes to talking about what happens when you pretend to be another person, I’m slightly at a loss. I’ve done it for decades — and not just the job, but talking about it — and I think almost everything I’ve ever said has been completely [false].”
Isaacs’ comments fueled speculation that season 3 love interests Walton Goggins and Aimee Lou Wood were at odds. He tried to walk back his claims — but it was too late.
“I told the truth, while we were there, it’s a whole community. It was a city and it wasn’t just the actors. People need to remember it was the actors and the crew and the administrators and all these people were in a little pressure cooker together. And like anywhere you go for the summer, there’s friendships, there’s romances, there’s arguments, there’s cliques that form and break and reform and stuff like that,” he shared on SiriusXM’s TODAY Show Radio series The Happy Hour in April. “I’m not stupid. I look at the internet. I only read every single word written about The White Lotus and about everybody in it.”
Isaacs specifically slammed the online theories from fans.
“All these amateur Sherlock Holmes out there, they’re extrapolating, ‘Well, one person posted this.’ And nobody has the slightest clue what they’re talking about. People who think they’re onto something, and then it gets magnified because of a thousand other people. Nobody has any clue I’m talking about,” he continued. “I’m talking about people you’ve never met before half the time, in different departments and the people in the hair and costume and the in the accounts department and stuff.”
He concluded: “First of all, it’s none of your business. I’m just saying it wasn’t a holiday. Partly I started saying that because people think we were on a seven-month holiday and believe me, it felt like work a lot of the time. It was insanely hot and there’s all the normal social tensions you get anywhere, but for all of you to think you’ve cracked it by something you think someone has posted or is in a photo or not, you’re just so far from the truth, believe me.”
Earlier this month, Wood, 31, and Goggins, 53, broke their silence about where they stand.
“There is no feud. I adore, I love this woman madly, and she is so important to me,” Goggins declared during a joint interview with Variety on June 4, where he got “choked up” about Wood. “This is Goldie Hawn. This is Meg Ryan. She can do anything, and she will. You watch what the next 20 years of her experience will be. I’ll be on an island, I think Greece. But she’s special. There is no feud. She is love and I know that I am that to her. We care about each other very deeply.”
Wood, for her part, joked on Jimmy Kimmel Live! on Wednesday, June 11, that she developed a close connection with her costars, adding, “Yeah, it was a very long time and I think that’s why there’s a real feeling of separation anxiety whenever we have to leave each other. It’s intense and there’s definitely a lot of codependents.”
