Jason Isaacs Shared This Sweet Behind-the-Scenes Moment With Sam Nivola in That Finale Scene in 'The White Lotus'
Warning: This article contains spoilers for The White Lotus season 3 finale.
Yesterday’s season 3 finale of The White Lotus had our hearts pumping. After all, with increasing tensions between Rick (Walton Goggins) and Jim (Scott Glenn), Belinda (Natasha Rothwell) and Gary (Jon Gries), and Timothy (Jason Isaacs) and his family, it was as if most of the characters were an inch away from death at any moment.
Of course, one of the biggest moments of the episode was when the drama between the Ratliff family finally unraveled. After deciding not to kill his family with a poisonous fruit the night before, a still-high Timothy wakes up to find his youngest son Lochlan (Sam Nivola) passed out near the pool. As it turns out, Lochlan blended his protein shake with some of the residue from the poisonous piña coladas.
After drinking it, Lochlan’s body started shutting down, and he vomited by the pool and fainted – which led to some extreme hallucinations.
Speaking of the scene with Variety, Nivola admitted that filming it wasn’t as intense as it appeared. “Weirdly, it was fun,” the 21-year-old actor told the outlet. “I’ve never gotten the chance to die in a show. And it’s an interesting thing because obviously it’s something that I’ve never experienced in real life. So it’s fun to act things out that you have no idea what the actual experience is like.”
As Lochlan continues passed out, Timothy runs in and takes his son into his arms. Feeling him limp and unconscious, he tries to wake him up and starts shouting for help.
“It was bittersweet because over the course of that shoot, Jason really felt like my father,” Nivola said. “He’s one of my best friends.”
Given how close they had become, pretending to be (almost) dead in his arms was no easy feat. “It was hard not to burst into tears while he was holding me and screaming,” he admitted. “I had to just stay completely limp.”
Between takes, Isaacs then talked through his acting choices with Nivola. “It was funny because he kept having to slap me to try and wake me up,” he said. “He was like, ‘I mean, I think I have to do this to be more real about the story here. I need to really try to wake you up.’ I was like, ‘Yeah, totally. I understand.'”
But Isaacs still felt bad for the slaps. “Between every take, he’d go, ‘I love you. I’m really sorry,'” Nivola recalled.
Luckily for Lochlan fans, he does end up waking up and doesn’t die in his dad’s arms. “I think I just saw God,” he tells his dad as he wakes up.
Previously, the actors behind the Ratliff siblings were all candid about their connection with Isaacs.
“The Ratliffs had hopped on a group chat before we got to Thailand, and it was just the most chaotic group chat I had ever seen,” Sarah Catherine Hook, who plays the middle sibling Piper, told The Hollywood Reporter. “I was like, ‘Oh, this is going to be fun!’ Then we all got there and spent every waking minute together.”
Isaacs even called his onscreen children (Nivola, Hook and Patrick Schwarzenegger) his “kids” during filming. “When you’d ask the kids, ‘Whatcha doing tonight?,’ they’d go, ‘I’m going out with Dad,'” he said. “Then I’d be on FaceTime with my real kids, and I’d say, ‘The kids are here.’ And they’d go, ‘Daddy, we’re your kids.’ I’d be like, ‘I know, I know.'”
Isaacs shares two daughters, Lily and Ruby, with his longtime wife, Emma Hewitt. But, from the looks of it, the Ratliffs are giving them a run for their money!
Before you go, click here to see all the cameos you might have missed in ‘The White Lotus’ season 3.