Jason Isaacs has responded to “amateur Sherlock Holmes” fans who have speculated about behind-the-scenes drama on The White Lotus after previous comments by the actor.
The star, who played the role of financier Timothy Ratliff in the recent season of the HBO show, previously spoke about the dynamic during filming in Thailand, calling it a “cross between summer camp and Lord Of The Flies but in a gilded cage”.
“It wasn’t a holiday. Some people got very close, there were friendships that were made and friendships that were lost,” he told Vulture.
Since then, some fans online have speculated about potential tensions behind the camera, though Isaacs has now set the record straight.
“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. I’m careful,” he told SiriusXM’s The Happy Hour.
“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.”
He then hit back at fan speculation, declaring: “Nobody has the slightest clue what they’re talking about. People who think they’re onto something, and it then it gets magnified because of a thousand other people. Nobody has any clue.
“First of all, it’s none of your business. I’m just saying it wasn’t a holiday, and 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 [that] 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.”
Jason Isaacs in ‘The White Lotus’. CREDIT: Sky/HBO
Meanwhile, as season three was airing Isaacs suggested there was a “double standard for men” amid debate around a nude scene involving his character, with claims from co-stars Sam Nivola and Sarah Catherine Hook that Isaacs wore a prosthetic penis during filming.
In the interview, he claimed that Anora‘s Mikey Madison or The Substance‘s Margaret Qualley hadn’t been asked similar questions about nude scenes, though he has since rowed back on these comments.
“I said the wrong words in the wrong way. I used the phrase ‘double standard,’ which I didn’t mean at all. There is a [different] double standard — women have been monstrously exploited and men haven’t,” he told Variety.
“It came out wrong, and I was tired — I’d done so many interviews. I absolutely should not have mentioned those two actresses, whom I respect enormously.”
In other news, The White Lotus season three star Aimee Lou Wood has criticised a Saturday Night Live sketch that parodied her character on the show, calling it “mean and unfunny”, and has revealed she has since received an apology from the show.
Elsewhere, series creator Mike White has weighed in on comments from show composer Cristóbal Tapia de Veer about their public feud, calling them “a bitch move”.
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