The incestuous kiss during Sunday’s White Lotus may have caught some fans off guard (at least those who weren’t paying attention), but at least one of the stars in question had a “really difficult” time getting into the character for the shocking moment.
In a move the show’s third season been foreshadowing since its first episode, Ratliff brothers Lochlan (Sam Nivola) and Saxon (Patrick Schwarzenegger) share a long kiss, as egged on by flighty French character Chloe (Charlotte Le Bon).
Le Bon shared in a new interview with Vulture that the scene was “really difficult” for Schwarzenegger in particular. “We all thought he was going to throw up,” Le Bon told the site, “And Sam was like, ‘It’s fine, it’s just a kiss, calm down!’”
She added, “For Sam, he was kind of like, it’s whatever, let’s just do it well one time and it will be over. You know? Because if you don’t do it well the first time, then you have to do it over and over again. But Patrick’s reaction in the episode is his genuine reaction.” Schwarzenegger plays the show’s most obnoxious character in Saxon, who relentlessly pressures his brother to get “laid.”
Lochlan, the younger, milder, and more sweet-tempered brother, faces various pressure from both Saxon and his other sibling on the show Piper (Sara Catherine Hook). This time around though, as Le Bon explained to Vulture, it’s her character Chloe that pushes the boundaries. “I think Chloe is deeply, deeply bored,” Le Bon said. “This kiss between the two brothers for her is just pure entertainment, which is obviously really evil when you think about it,” she continued.
Though Schwarzenegger struggled with the scene according to Le Bon, Nivola, on the other hand, seems amused by the fan reaction, reposting a photo of the brother characters arm-in-arm to his Instagram Stories on Sunday.
On the whole, the cast seems all too delighted to expose each others’ reactions to the season’s most eyebrow-raising scenes, like when Hook and Nivola revealed Jason Isaacs’ hilarious reaction to filming his full frontal scene from last week’s episode.
