Why Are There So Many Rumors About The White Lotus Cast Drama

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In the wake of The White Lotus’s season 3 finale, a big mystery remains. No, it’s not whether Victoria Ratliff will survive poverty (you heard what she said) or where season 4 will take place (Mike White hates the cold, haven’t you heard?), it’s what on earth went down behind the scenes with the cast.

If the press tours around Don’t Worry Darling and It Ends with Us (before the lawsuits) taught us anything, it’s that any whisper of on-set tensions will have audiences foaming at the mouth. And after Jason Isaacs (who stars as Timothy Ratliff) mentioned some friendships “were lost” while filming, speculation about feuds has since spread like wildfire. But Isaacs now says we’ve got it all wrong.

“Nobody has the slightest clue what they’re talking about,” Isaacs told SiriusXM’s “The Happy Hour” about the rumors of drama, per Variety. “People who think they’re onto something, and it then gets magnified because of a thousand other people. Nobody has any clue.”

When asked to clarify, Isaacs added, “First of all, it’s none of your business. I’m just saying it wasn’t a holiday, and partly I started saying that because people think we were on a seven-month holiday, and believe me, it felt like work a lot of the time. It was insanely hot and there’s all the normal social tensions you get anywhere.”

The rumblings began when Isaacs spoke to Vulture about the cast dynamic during filming. In an interview published March 30, he said, “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.”

But when asked to elaborate, Isaacs replied with a laugh, “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.”

Later addressing whether the cast dynamic affected his performance, he said, “I just try to be Tim Ratliff in his situation. Does the fact that I spent a lot of time particularly with Patrick [Schwarzenegger], Sarah Catherine [Hook], and Sam [Nivola], and became very close to them, make any difference? I don’t know.”

Viewers have since speculated that Isaacs’s comments might also allude to something between co-stars Walton Goggins and Aimee Lou Wood, who played onscreen couple Rick and Chelsea in season 3. Fans noticed after the finale that the two do not follow each other on Instagram and didn’t tag each other in their posts after the episode. It also didn’t help that last weekend, Goggins commented on a Saturday Night Live sketch that spoofed Rick and Chelsea’s storyline, writing, “Hahahahahhahaha Amazzzingggg,” according to People. Wood, however, called it “mean and unfunny” for the way it mocked her teeth. (She said she has since received an apology from SNL.) While the actors have not addressed feud speculation, they have spoken highly of each other in interviews. When Wood discussed Goggins’s absence from a White Lotus finale event, she told The Hollywood Reporter, “I was sad that Walton wasn’t there because it was something that we did together.”

Goggins, meanwhile, included a shoutout to Wood in a tribute to the show. “Thank you Aimee Lou for being my partner… a journey I will never forget,” he wrote in a post after the finale. It should also be noted that he posted a number of selfies with wood set to none other than “Silver Springs” by Fleetwood Mac (who are infamous for their own internal drama, but I digress).

One disagreement we do know about for sure is between creator Mike White and composer Cristóbal Tapia de Veer, who exited the show ahead of the fourth season. Tapia de Veer gave an interview to The New York Times about leaving the show, detailing creative differences with the White Lotus showrunner and producers. Days later, White later told Howard Stern, “It was kind of a bitch move.”