Patrick Schwarzenegger
Appearances
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 6: “Denials” with Patrick Schwarzenegger and Leslie Bibb
Well, the aftermath. It was the days after, the morning after we went and got some food. Yeah, right. That's right. Yeah, I went to that cafe. I was in search of protein. Oh, that's right. You were looking for your protein. And good coffee. Yeah.
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 6: “Denials” with Patrick Schwarzenegger and Leslie Bibb
How did you think about that? Yeah, I think, you know, look, when I got the audition at first,
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 6: “Denials” with Patrick Schwarzenegger and Leslie Bibb
uh for sax and it was only a i had like a one sentence logline i think the sentence was like he's a a southern finance bro that uh loves to flirt or something like that uh and when i got the scenes and and you know after i booked the audition and i started to talk with mike and kind of you know put my interpretation of his words that were on the page um you know i it was evident that he was this
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 6: “Denials” with Patrick Schwarzenegger and Leslie Bibb
and he was this character from the outside. But for Mike, he really wanted it to be something that people didn't just hate. They wanted him to be fun, laughable, enjoyable, and some elements of humanizing characteristics and vulnerability that made you want to continue to watch him. So that was something we worked on.
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 6: “Denials” with Patrick Schwarzenegger and Leslie Bibb
But at the same time, which I thought was so genius by Mike, was when we get into some later episodes, I was so focused on how is this character changing? What is his big moments? How is he going to be different? And I started to play this one scene we had and I played it in a certain way and he came over and he was like, what are you doing? What the fuck was that?
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 6: “Denials” with Patrick Schwarzenegger and Leslie Bibb
And I was like, what do you mean? He was like, dude, it's only been like six days. You know, you don't need to have like a
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 6: “Denials” with Patrick Schwarzenegger and Leslie Bibb
huge change like it's we want the we want as like the viewer we want to see like we want to wonder is he going to change after this and we want to see little parts of yes there's there's this internal crisis going on with him and he's starting to realize things but i don't want to see like a full-blown 360 change, you know, and so I thought that was really interesting.
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 6: “Denials” with Patrick Schwarzenegger and Leslie Bibb
You forget that this whole thing takes place over six days or seven days. Yeah, it's kind of funny.
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 6: “Denials” with Patrick Schwarzenegger and Leslie Bibb
Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think that he's, you know, one of the interesting things is, you know, Saxon shows up day one and he puts on this persona that he knows everything that he is. He is this powerful guy. He looks great. He knows exactly what it is to be a man. And he tells his little brother, like, dude, getting what you want in life, that's happiness.
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 6: “Denials” with Patrick Schwarzenegger and Leslie Bibb
It's all about pussy money and freedom. That's it. And I think the interesting thing is over the course of the season, especially at episode six, He goes into the show as the most confident and comfortable, and he's belittling and looking down on his siblings for not knowing what they're doing and exploring Buddhism, and they're just completely lost. And they kind of change places.
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 6: “Denials” with Patrick Schwarzenegger and Leslie Bibb
He becomes the one that is really lost, and really the one that starts to have this internal identity crisis of every layer of him just got stripped off, and he's so confused now. Who am I? What am I? Who do I like? What just happened? That power trip that just changed is a lot for him.
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 6: “Denials” with Patrick Schwarzenegger and Leslie Bibb
yeah but that's part of the overall arching theme i think here is is like that's all that all of them are really i mean timothy and victoria and like there's those scenes where they're just like what's gonna what am i supposed to say to my kids like daddy's poor now like everything is you know or victoria says like i don't i don't even want to live without the money or you know it's it's that these material items are identifying who they are and they're going in conjunction and it's what happens is when all that's stripped away who
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 6: “Denials” with Patrick Schwarzenegger and Leslie Bibb
who are you? And that's a tough identity crisis for them.
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 6: “Denials” with Patrick Schwarzenegger and Leslie Bibb
I didn't know anything. I got the audition, like I said. I got the audition. It was a couple of pages, three different scenes. I read it. I just did what I thought fit.
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 6: “Denials” with Patrick Schwarzenegger and Leslie Bibb
how I interpreted it and then I got a call back saying it was great then they were like you're gonna meet with Mike White and he wants to do a director's read and give notes so I did that and then when I booked it they were like you know here's the scripts you can read it now and uh I mean they asked me ahead of time are you comfortable with you know nudity are you comfortable with x y and z and yeah I said yeah of course you know I'm playing a character um and uh then I started to read it and read it and episode five came and then six came and I was like what the
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 6: “Denials” with Patrick Schwarzenegger and Leslie Bibb
fuck is going on? This is just absurd. This is nuts. So no, I had no idea. I mean, he puts Easter eggs. That's what Mike does. He puts these moments in episode one, and I'm going and I'm tickling my sister, and I'm sucking my finger and putting it in her ear, and I'm with Lachlan in the bed, and I'm naked, no regard for anybody else, and I'm walking around, and I'm talking about how am I going to
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 6: “Denials” with Patrick Schwarzenegger and Leslie Bibb
jerk off and with him in the room and, you know, all these different weird things. And I hit on every single girl that walks by. You know, there's Easter eggs of this guy is something's going to happen. It can't just be this one note character. But I did not know it was going there. No, I didn't.
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 6: “Denials” with Patrick Schwarzenegger and Leslie Bibb
I think there's a mix. I don't think there's anything necessarily so negative or wrong with this sensationalism of a shock value, but there's also way more, Mike's too smart for that. He's way more in-depth and way more, there's such richer content than that. I think that he
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 6: “Denials” with Patrick Schwarzenegger and Leslie Bibb
know some might say that and then once you start to understand it and see the shift of what happens to the character from these moments then you start to understand oh wow this is actually mike's pretty smart yeah well thanks for being on the podcast and it was great talking to you awesome man thank you i appreciate it all right man
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 6: “Denials” with Patrick Schwarzenegger and Leslie Bibb
What do you mean that never happened?