Jason Isaacs chats with THR at the season three premiere of 'The White Lotus' and says he was afraid of his difficult role after he first read the script. Plus, he dishes on living with his castmates in Thailand for seven months while shooting the show.
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00:00So, what did you think when you first read these scripts?
00:02I thought, oh Christ, I don't know if I'm a good enough actor to pull this off.
00:06Mike's given me, particularly, some incredibly difficult things to do, but then it's Mike
00:10White and the kind of creative, low buzz of terror eased away as soon as I started getting
00:16on the set with him and I realized he creates this atmosphere of controlled chaos where
00:21you can try everything and he'll catch you if you fall.
00:23And so I thought, well, I guess if I don't get there, he's going to get me there.
00:28Your character's a little mysterious.
00:29What can you kind of say about him?
00:31Well, the reason my character's mysterious is he's created it that way so the audience
00:34leans in and is intrigued, so I could tell you everything about him and then nobody will
00:38watch.
00:39So I'm afraid that question's going to go unanswered.
00:41Okay, okay.
00:42And what was it like filming in Thailand and kind of the cast bonding here, I imagine,
00:46was pretty good?
00:47Well, we filmed for seven months in Thailand, so it wasn't a holiday.
00:50It was hot.
00:52It was insanely hot a lot of the time.
00:54And we were in these beautiful places, but we were there for a long time together.
00:58So at times it was like paradise, at times it was like an open prison, at times it was
01:02like summer camp, at times it was like Lord of the Flies, Mean Girls, High School Musical.
01:07It was all those things.
01:08Oh, wow.
01:09You really checked all the boxes.
01:11And Mike has talked about this season being darker than the past, too.
01:13How do you kind of feel like it compares?
01:15I don't know if I'd say darker.
01:16I'd say richer, deeper, more profound.
01:18It's Thailand and one of the reasons he chose that is a lot of people go there searching
01:21for some sense of spirituality, and he certainly puts his characters through situations where
01:27they question who they are and whether they've ever really known what they are.
01:31And their sense of self and identity is heavily challenged.
01:35In fact, I say their character, me, I go through an absolute catastrophe of a personal crisis.
01:42And it being Thailand, there are monks around in meditation, but we are rich people who
01:49engage with that stuff through the filter of our own entitlement, and Mike White-style
01:53entertainment ensues.
01:54Well, thank you so much.
01:56Congrats.