by It seems there’s more to Jason Isaacs than we realized.
After his character in The White Lotus caused a stir with a viral full-frontal moment in the March 9 episode, his co-stars opened up about what went into filming the scene.
In a recent chat with TV Insider, Isaacs’ on-screen children, Sam Nivola and Sarah Catherine Hook, revealed the truth behind what viewers saw. “That wasn’t actually his real penis!” Nivola, 21, admitted.
“It was a prosthetic,” Hook, 29, clarified, adding, “It was really amusing. He was pretty excited about it. He seemed to take a lot of pride in the prosthetic. He gave it a good shot.”
Nivola further recalled Isaacs’ excitement, saying, “He was like, ‘It’s my fake d— scene today!’”
In a March 9 interview with Decider, Jason Isaacs discussed how The White Lotus creator Mike White came up with the now-iconic scene, although Isaacs admitted he’s not particularly comfortable with nudity in either his personal or professional life.
“I don’t remember filming those scenes—I think they’re all digital. I wasn’t there that day,” Isaacs joked.
He explained that White is seeking to balance out the portrayal of nudity, considering how many times audiences have seen naked women in television and film. “Nudity is a key element. Mike uses it for various reasons—comedy, sex, manipulation. It’s an important TV moment,” Isaacs shared. White’s approach to nudity is certainly evident in The White Lotus, with the season beginning with an explicit moment featuring Patrick Schwarzenegger’s character in the first episode.
At the premiere on February 10, PEOPLE asked Schwarzenegger’s mom, Maria Shriver, how she felt about her son’s nude scene. She humorously admitted she “turned a blind eye.”
“My kids were like, ‘Did you see that?’ And I was like, ‘No. What?’” she told PEOPLE, adding that she focused solely on her son’s face, deliberately avoiding anything below. “So that shows you—a mother’s eyes are always on her kids,” she quipped.
Arnold Schwarzenegger, Patrick’s father, had a more playful reaction, sharing on Instagram, “What a show! I could say I’m surprised to find out he has a nude scene, but what can I say—the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”
The Ratliff family has captured a lot of attention since the premiere, with Isaacs playing Timothy Ratliff, a man desperately trying to keep his multimillion-dollar business dealings from ruining his life when they return from their Thai vacation. His wife, Victoria (played by Parker Posey), is somewhat oblivious due to a dependency on lorazepam, while their adult children—Lochlan (Nivola), Piper (Hook), and Saxon (Schwarzenegger)—are starting to catch on to their father’s troubling behavior.
