The White Lotus’s Jason Isaacs Didn’t Overthink Tim Ratliff

Spoilers follow for The White Lotus season three episode seven, “Killer Instincts.”

Few things are as stressful to watch as the slow unraveling of a character like The White Lotus’s Timothy Ratliff. In the season’s penultimate episode, he’s still high on prescription drugs, harboring the secret of his family’s impending demise, and contemplating the murder-murder-suicide of his wife and oldest son. Conversations with Victoria and Saxon only add to the pressure that’s built over seven episodes, and Jason Isaac’s patriarch slips further into desperate, Lorazepam-induced oblivion, setting him up as one of several characters who could explode in next week’s finale. “I don’t want to spoil what’s coming,” says Isaacs. “But it does lead to something. It bursts at some point.”

For Isaacs, playing Tim meant letting in all the chaos and hoping for the best, which he admits involved putting quite a bit of trust in the audience. “All I had to do was think what he was thinking, which was about eight billion different things: catastrophe, death, shame, ruin, hopelessness, panic. I had it all exploding in my head all the time and hoped the audience could see what he was thinking about.” The real challenge for Isaacs, rather, comes from trying to articulate the specifics of inhabiting this — or any — character. “There’s been months of talking about the show, and I love talking about it because I think Mike is a unique and special talent,” Isaacs says of Lotus creator and writer Mike White. “But when it comes to talking about what happens when you pretend to be another person, I’m slightly at a loss.”

I have to start by telling you that this morning I saw a tweet about your Instagram posts that said you’ve been posting pictures of the cast the way a dad posts his family on vacation.
Ha! The reason I started posting is because I went out with my screen kids and they were complaining that I took thousands of pictures and they never got to see any of them. I promised them a thumb drive which I haven’t delivered yet. I realized the show’s over in a few weeks and I have this massive archive of pictures. I thought I’d post them every day, but I did it one day and got tired and stopped. So maybe this conversation will inspire me to do some more.

What does it feel like to be part of such an internet sensation right now?
The whole thing feels completely bizarre. I made a joke about Meryl Streep playing me in a TV series and suddenly it’s been picked up by a hundred thousand websites as if it was a genuine suggestion! Though, she really can do anything. But yes, it’s odd, and it’s certainly not like anything that’s ever happened to me before. I’m pretending it’s not happening.

What was the cast dynamic like during filming? 
It was like 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. All the things you would imagine with a group of people unanchored from their home lives on the other side of the world, in the intense pressure cooker of the working environment with eye-melting heat and insects and late nights. They say in the show, “what happens in Thailand stays in Thailand,” but there’s an off-screen White Lotus as well, with fewer deaths but just as much drama.

Any that you want to share?
[Laughs.] Absolutely not. I became very close to some people and less close to others but we still all had that experience together and there’s a certain level of discretion required.

Did the cast dynamics inform how you played Tim?
I really don’t know. When it comes to talking about what happens when you pretend to be another person, I’m slightly at a loss. I’ve done it for decades — and not just the job, but talking about it — and I think almost everything I’ve ever said has been complete bullshit.

I just try to be Tim Ratliff in his situation. Does the fact that I spent a lot of time particularly with Patrick, Sarah Catherine, and Sam, and became very close to them, make any difference? I don’t know. I’ve played opposite people I barely knew and we looked like we absolutely loved each other. I’ve played with people I know very well and the relationships don’t work. I can talk about the dynamic but whether it bled into the work or not I have no idea.

It seems like Mike is really open to letting the cast inform their characters, making suggestions or adding elements to their experiences. Was that the case for you with Tim?
Mike invites you in right from the beginning. But as far as which bits I contributed, it’s 99.9 percent him. I had some suggestions and he took them completely on board.

What were your suggestions?
I’m trying to work out whether it’s loyal or not to say. It doesn’t seem right for the audience, while they’re still enjoying the show, to think I contributed certain things or that the story would’ve been different in some way. But Mike was definitely open to suggestions. He’d never stop refining the scene that was coming up or the scene he’d just shot, whether there was something better that could be done or added to the next scene. A lot of times he’d be shouting suggestions out from behind the camera and you’d think, Is he serious? Does he really want me to do that? That seems outrageous, but what the hell, he’s the arbiter of taste. Then he’d say cut. The first thing he’d do is throw a compliment out, which is great direction. Then he’d start muttering to himself and you’d realize he’s playing the whole scene out as all the characters. He could play any of our parts better than we could. I’d like to see the version of The White Lotus where he does play all the parts. I’m sure it would be wonderful.

Can you tell me about the technicality of the scenes where Timothy has no dialogue? What did the scripting look like, and how did you approach it?
The script says nothing, basically just that Tim is there in the room. I was panicked about how boring I was going to be, particularly since the drug Tim is taking just knocks you out and puts you to sleep. I didn’t want to play those scenes as Tim snoring on the couch. I took some solace from the fact that — have you heard of the Kuleshov experiment?

Yes, but you can give me a refresher.
There’s this famous experiment called Kuleshov, named after the filmmaker, where they showed a picture of a man with a neutral expression next to various other images. They asked the audience what they thought he was feeling each time, and the audience projected different emotions onto him depending on the accompanying image. So with Tim, I figured the audience is going to know what’s going on with him. All I had to do was think what he was thinking, which was about eight billion different things: catastrophe, death, shame, ruin, hopelessness, panic. I had all of that exploding in my head all the time and hoped the audience could see that’s what he was thinking about. But when I read it I thought, I hope to God I’m not the most boring person that’s ever been on any season of White Lotus. 

We definitely see that big acting in Tim’s conversation with the monk in episode six, where he seems to be coming to terms with his own understanding of death. 
You know, it’s less beautiful than it seems, because he’s thinking of killing himself and other members of his family. I took from the monk — as Timothy — some relief. He’s always felt other, if not better than, the rest of society. What he takes from this conversation is tremendous comfort that he’ll just be like other people when he’s dead. That maybe his wife, who thinks she’s better than other people, and his children, who he’s raised to think they deserve better than other people, being reunited with the common mass of humanity is better than the life they’ve been living. The great irony is that of all the people who go to Thailand to seek spiritual enlightenment of some kind, Timothy is the one who is least interested in any of that. And yet, Mike has chosen him to strip down to the bare essence of his ego.

Is he really engaging in something spiritual, or is he just looking to feel better about the decision he’s already made?
I don’t know if it’s spiritual, but that conversation with the monk is the first time he’s absolutely present. He’s listening to every syllable and he’s hanging on to every word. It provides him some comfort. It’s a beautiful scene.

In a recent interview with HBO you mentioned that you loved Murray Bartlett’s performance as Armond in season one. Did you take inspiration from Armond’s descent into chaos? 
I did think about the madness. I wanted the audience to sense how insane Tim is going. But I had to honor the fact that he’s chugging Lorazepam and has to make sure that the family doesn’t pick up on it. It would’ve been very easy or funny to play it much sloppier, but then his family would’ve picked up on it.

In episode seven, Timothy is confronted by Saxon, who can tell something is going on and is begging for an explanation. Why doesn’t he consider telling Saxon the truth?
Telling the truth would be to admit that he’s not the hero Saxon thought he was, and that when they get back, the future has disappeared. It’s partly for himself, but it’s more for the family. He does love his kids, even though he’s disappointed by all of them in different ways. But he doesn’t tell Saxon because there’s no way out of this. He’s still thinking in his drugged up state that maybe he’ll come up with something.

I thought Patrick played that scene so beautifully. He’s played something very similar for many episodes and suddenly he’s peeling all these layers back — or adding them on, whichever way you see it.

Right, it seems like Saxon is gaining more clarity while Timothy is actually getting further from it.
He’s maturing! Saxon is changing. I don’t know if he’s discovering things about himself that have always been there or new things are developing. Either way, Tim looks at him and thinks, Jesus, he’s not going to be able to cope. 

It’s hilarious and tragic that the only solution Tim can think of is killing himself and taking his family down with him. Why is this the only option he sees?
His wife tells him she can’t live being poor and he looks at her and he thinks, I don’t think she could. I don’t think she could take this fall from grace. Then Saxon goes, “I’m nothing without this. My future is tied to you.” Well, there’s two kids left. At this point, Tim is thinking Piper will probably be all right. I don’t know what he thinks about Lochlan, but he knows Lochlan isn’t like him. He doesn’t have the same set of values, so Tim has some hope for the other two kids. But he’s thinking Victoria and Saxon will be better off. By the way, he’s thinking about all of this while he’s out of his mind on drugs. But I’m not sure that he’s wrong. From his mindset, it seems like the most sensible choice.

Why haven’t we seen Tim and Lochlan interact very much in the show?
There’s only room for so many scenes. Every episode was considerably longer and we all shot scenes that didn’t end up in the show. But there will be me and Lochlan, don’t worry.

Victoria is clearly supportive and encouraging, but they’re not very affectionate with each other. Is that something you and Parker discussed?
We didn’t really discuss it. It’s in the script that they arrive and they are very unconnected. Timothy is this enormously successful, capable alpha male and his wife is this disconnected, vacuous, pill-popping shadow of the woman he married. He looks around and there’s just nothing but disappointment. I’ve been with my wife for 37 years, and when you’ve been with someone a long time, you don’t see them as the same age they are. You see them as the age they were when you got together. You don’t even notice the changes in them that much. Timothy and Victoria have raised these children together and they’ve had a life together. I don’t know that he wants to look too clearly at what that life has become. As the week goes on, he realizes who they might be if there is a future, and he looks at her for the first time with clear eyes. So it’s not that they’re unaffectionate with each other, they just don’t connect. She’s out of it, and then he’s out of it.

At the end of episode seven, he’s planning on killing his wife, his son, and himself, but the gun is gone. Knowing he’s totally losing track of reality, what does he think happened to the gun?
He has no idea. This is the funny thing about acting. Numerous people wrote to me about that scene with the monk because it’s such a lovely scene. They wrote to me about the expressions on my face, and what my eyes were doing, as if somehow I had chosen to do that. In all of this, I’m just thinking what Timothy is thinking. So with the gun, I run through every single scenario in my head like he would do. He thinks, Where the fuck is the gun? Does my wife have it? Did the guy come back and get it? Does my son have it? Have I forgotten it? Did I put it somewhere else? You catch him in a state of blind panic, which is a pretty permanent state for him, but it’s gone up to eleven at the end of the episode.

You’ve played a couple notable father figures in your time. Did those experiences inspire you as you prepared to play Timothy?
I hope I never bring anything from previous characters into anything new, but I am a dad and my daughters are roughly the same age as my screen kids. I try to make myself as blank as possible and allow the characters to fill me up from the inside every time. The older I’ve gotten and the more experience I have, the less preparation I do. I read it and I think about it and I just trust that if I stay loose enough mentally and emotionally, I’ll get filled up from the inside by the character.