He’s the whole package.
Jason Isaacs, best known for playing scenery-chewing villains like Lucius Malfoy in the “Harry Potter” franchise and a mad scientist in “The OA,” now stars as family patriarch Timothy Ratliff on “The White Lotus” Season 3.
On Sunday’s episode, “Hide or Seek,” Tim was drugged out on Lorazepam he pilfered from his wife, and didn’t realize that he was sitting with his robe open in front of his family, flashing full frontal nudity.
“Yeah, [full frontal nudity] is now in my contract for every show I do, so we’ll see,” Isaacs, 61, joked to Entertainment Weekly. “It’ll get easier, hopefully.”
Co-star Patrick Schwarzenegger quipped: “You should be asking what it was like for us to watch it.”
Timothy is a Southern man who works in finance, and he’s vacationing in Thailand with wife Victoria (Parker Posey) and three college aged kids Lochlan (Sam Nivola), Piper (Sarah Catherine Hook), and Saxon (Schwarzenegger).
His idyllic getaway soon becomes a nightmare when he learns the FBI is investigating him for money laundering and bribery, and his life is falling apart, unbeknownst to his family.
“He’s drugging himself into a stupor to try not to think about the fact that his entire life is blowing up and trying to work out what to do about it,” Isaacs told EW.
“The Death of Stalin” actor said, “It was actually quite challenging — I remember reading the scripts thinking, ‘Wow, I’ve got to keep my powder dry for five or six episodes, and then this s–t really kicks off.’”
“You haven’t seen other things that are coming, but I just remember thinking, ‘I better dig deep and produce something here.’”
“The Patriot” actor teased what’s to come for future episodes, noting his character has been “bottling it up for a very long time.”
“There is a point coming when they leave — if they make it and they’re alive, because who knows — but it’s going to be unavoidable, the big secret he has been harboring,” he explained. “I just remember thinking, ‘I’ve got to go big — go big or go home.’ And then when things happen that I can’t talk about particularly, something else had to kick in, and there’s a mania and a terror that you have to access… there was some inner gear changes required.”
“The White Lotus” is currently airing Sundays at 9 p.m. on HBO and Max.