A little over a year ago, Patrick Schwarzenegger sat in his agents’ office to put together his career goals for 2024. He was coming off of a strong run of prestige television roles — HBO’s The Staircase, Seth Rogen’s The Boys spinoff Gen V — but there was one white whale that he couldn’t stop thinking about.
“At the very top of my list was wanting to work on White Lotus season three,” he tells The Hollywood Reporter. “It’s an actors’ dream, you do one single season, on a really great network, and you get to go and live on an island for six months. So I told them that, even though I knew it was out of my agents’ hands because we had no control over what kind of characters Mike White was going to write or what I would be good for.”
Of course, as White Lotus fans know, the show’s creator wrote a role that was perfect for Schwarzenegger. The actor, now 31, soon found himself auditioning for the role of Saxon Ratliff, a Duke-educated finance bro sex pest vacationing at White Lotus’ Thailand outpost with his entire family. He was on vacation in Idaho with his dad — Arnold Schwarzenegger, though you probably already knew that — when he got the fateful text from White that the job was his. By February, he was jetting off to Koh Samui to join the troop of actors that included Parker Posey, Carrie Coon and Walton Goggins.
Schwarzenegger, in personality, has little in common with Saxon; he’s far more surfer boy than good old boy. But thanks to the spaces he’s inhabited over the years — Los Angeles area private schools, USC, being the son of a Kennedy and a former California governor — he’s intimately familiar with the archetype (Schwarzenegger uses the phrase “finance douche”). “This guy feels like he knows everything,” he says. “He’s making money, he’s getting girls, he thinks he’s got his life figured out.” White was adamant that the character not veer into hateable territory, so the actor took cues and mannerisms from three different people to create what we see onscreen: “There’s a person I knew in high school who I won’t name but was just super ridiculous; a reality TV show person I won’t name; and then Bradley Cooper in Wedding Crashers.”
The actor says he also worked with White to perfect Saxon’s very particular physical swagger, which came in handy during that episode-one nude scene that everyone is talking about, and that the six months of Lotus helped him channel his own confidence in his career path.
Schwarzenegger is speaking to THR (via Zoom, from his L.A. home) on the morning of his annual agency meeting — shortly after he hangs up, he’ll head to UTA to repeat the process of laying out his dream roles for the year. And this time, he’s going bigger — sort of. “Christopher Nolan is putting together his next movie, and I think they already cast it, but that would be a dream,” he says. “I would go be an extra. Just watching him work would be unreal. I know [Steven] Spielberg is working on something too. Basically, anything I can get on a movie with a director I really look up to — that’s my number one goal.”
So if Saxon is sort of the spiritual successor of Theo James’ character last year, did you have a hunch from the beginning that you would also have a nude scene?
So, on the day that we filmed that scene, they had like underwear and pajamas and stuff out. I was like, dude, this guy would just walk around naked. This is not the kind of guy who’s wearing pajamas to bed. He sleeps naked and his brother being there is not going to change anything — you see that in the line he says about the real issue is how I’m going to jerk off with you in here. It’s such a ridiculous line but that’s the sort of thing that’s really going through his head.
Do you think the decision to flaunt his nakedness to his brother was at all a power move?
I don’t think it’s calculated. He’s just trying to prove to his brother that this is how he should live life. Mike and I worked on the physicality of the character, and this guy leads with his private parts — like, that’s how he walks. He thinks he’s good-looking and has a great body and that all the girls are looking at him. He has no regard for the other people in the room.
To play a character like this, with this much ego and who’s going to be a bit objectified, did you have to psych yourself up to take that on?
It’s funny, when I got the audition they just gave me a couple of pages and I didn’t know anything else about the story. So one of the sides was when Saxon is saying, she has issues because she’s pretty fucking hot. I sent a message to the casting director asking who he was talking about and they told me it was his sister. I was like, wait what? (Laughs). Like OK, that’s what we’re dealing with. But signing up for this show requires a level of trust in Mike. After watching the other seasons you know how capable he is and that you’re just along for the ride. I don’t think about, is this awkward from Patrick’s point of view? Because the answer to that doesn’t matter. You’re in the character.
How did you handle such a long shoot, and so far away?
It was a really interesting bonding experience, it really was like summer camp but with a job. We had a lot of fun, doing a lot of excursions like boating to different islands and going to see the elephants. I also really loved our random nights with big cast dinners, or watching movies or having a drink together. I also did go back to the States twice, and I hate saying this but it was for a handful of days each. Environmentally, it’s just terrible — I flew from Thailand to New York and L.A. all within three days because I had shoots for campaigns for Tommy Hilfiger and Armani.
Do you get starstruck or intimidated by people you work with?
I really don’t, I’m pretty good about it. Though, when I did The Staircase, all of my scenes were opposite Colin Firth and I was nervous for that. Like, I’m a nobody and he’s an Oscar-winning actor. It’s like playing tennis against Venus or Serena Williams. But by the time I got to White Lotus, I’d gotten a lot more confident in myself and my work. I still got the first-day nerves, and I actually talked to Walton Goggins about it. He’s a very intense guy. He’s super nice once the day is done but he’s serious about his work. I had a scene with him and I asked him what he does when he gets nervous. He looked at me and was like, yeah I get nervous but I never fucking question that I’m the right person for this role, and I never fucking question that I’ve done the work and am going to go out there and give it my best. I’m like yeah, good point.
White Lotus has done a good job of launching young people’s careers or sending them into the next phase of their career. Is that something you’ve thought about?
I think anyone, no matter what their job is, likes when they get a compliment or a promotion. Getting this job has been a moment for me to realize, OK other people believe in me. I’m in acting class every single week — for the past nine years, I’ve been doing theater every single Thursday night — so it’s like the hard work is paying off. So it’s more internal than it is wondering what this will do for my career. Acting is so up and down that you can’t have expectations that you’ll be able to go from one job to the next.
In an ideal world, then, what would this do for you?
I do feel like this is getting my work out to a wider audience. But I don’t have an ego about it. If a great director called me tomorrow and said I’ve got a one-page scene for you in my movie, I’d do it. I’m trying to be picky about what I do now, but that just means working with great directors and writers, so I’ll take anything that lets me keep learning.
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