It seems like just another day, but it isn’t.

We’re here in London with Jason Isaacs, following him as he cooks eggs, slices bread, shaves, reads the newspaper. All actions that evoke the intimacy of an ordinary day. But this is no ordinary day.

With Jason, who plays Timothy Ratliff, one of the protagonists of the new season of “The White Lotus” by Mike White, we talked about what it was like working with Mike, about his distorted yet spectacular way of viewing humanity, and about his endless stream of stories – each one both incredible and believable. But we also talked about what it was like to live in Thailand for six months, about digital detox, and how it’s something almost impossible to do. We talked about happy places, about how this marks a new phase in his life, and about the most important role of all – one that you won’t see on screen.

I had the privilege of watching the first two episodes of the new season of “The White Lotus”, and I can tell you one thing for sure: it only gets better. You don’t think it’s possible, but then again, this is Mike White we’re talking about – drama, comedy, mystery, the best of the absurd all in one. With incredible intelligence and a deep love for the rawest aspects of humanity, this, to me, is THE series of the past few years.

I also had the privilege of meeting this extraordinary actor, Jason Isaacs, our February Cover Story, and I truly believe he’s about to show us something unique.

Now, all that’s left to do is wait for February 16th.

How’s it going with all your traveling around the world lately?

It’s going fine, I look forward to sleeping sometime in the middle of March [laughs]. I’m not a great sleeper, so flying constantly is a bit weird to me. Also, trying to find bite-sized chunks of perfect stories that both tell people why they should watch “The White Lotus” without telling them anything about “The White Lotus” is kind of an interesting linguistic challenge [laughs].

During an interview, talking about traveling and seeing different things in the world, you said, “Ours is not the only way to live,” and that you also learned about other people’s perspectives through travels. What, of the culture of Thailand, made you most fascinated or curious?

Well, first of all, there’s a national characteristic – it’s oversimplifying things, but there’s a gentleness and humility and a strong desire to avoid conflict in the Thai national character, which is an unusual thing to come across. There’s tremendous poverty and depravation in the country and there’s a strong contrast with England and America, with that sense of entitlement and superiority of these countries that at some point had empires.

Moreover, Thailand is a Buddhist country, and it’s a place where many people come from the outside seeking some kind of self-knowledge; many of them are not seeking it in the right way and waving their money and wanting to do it in some commercial and comfortable and air-conditioned way, and then there are other people who are genuinely seeking. And then there are the monks and the people there who are really living that lifestyle and who have come to an accommodation with both the ugliness and the beauty of the world and found some way of being present and engaging with all those things and staying compassionate and open.

I don’t know if I learned anything. I just observed these things and I was reminded that ours is not the only way of living and, as I often am when I’m in countries that have such an enormous wealth gap, I was reminded how little material possessions mean, how easily it is to get swept up in that notion of what looks right or seems right or feels right, and the kind of social pressure to be like other people around you, and I was reminded of the generosity of people.

“There’s a gentleness and humility and a strong desire to avoid conflict in the Thai national character, which is an unusual thing to come across.”

Speaking of “The White Lotus”: I saw the first two episodes and I already love it so much. I think that maybe Mike White is doing better and better every time, so I can’t wait to see the rest.

I think it’s richer. He’s exploring the human condition and questions of identity in this and those questions that people ask themselves when they travel to those countries, like “What’s the purpose of life? Who am I? Am I the things that I do, the things that I have? Or am I the things that I feel?”, whilst never forgetting to throw in a whole bunch of sex and drugs and rock and roll at the same time, and that rich people who are seeking easy answers to life are often vacuous.

That is such a heady cocktail, but I think you’re right, I think he’s gone even further in peeling layers back from the characters that he creates.

Yeah. And I think that Mike White’s work is totally different from anything else, and the series is twisted and so true.

Wait. You think it’s twisted now? It turns into a real Mobius strip [laughs].

Yes, I can imagine! I think that he can really see all the details and facets of the human being (mainly the worst ones). What aspect do you consider the truest in how he portrays the human being?

You’re right in that he presents us with these people, we think we understand them, we think they know who they are, they fit relatively easily into boxes, they seem to be representing types. And then, at his own magnificent pace, he makes us laugh and gasp and then recognize ourselves and feel guilty for the way we felt and then feel horrified at what they’re doing. It just gets richer and more complex, the pictures of them and our ideas of who they are gets ever more nuanced as time goes by.

I think his greatest ability is all of that: he’s a tremendous storyteller and stories contain everything, so not only does he keep you hooked wanting to know what happens next and how, but why. Plus, he doesn’t judge anyone, he doesn’t sit down and try and create a pattern or a model for himself, he doesn’t think, “I need these people to do this and prove this” – they surprise him in writing, so they surprise us by being who they are and not what we expect them to be.

It’s funny how the greatest reward you can get from Mike on the set is that he starts cackling and shrieking behind the camera, and you have to go again because he’s too loud. That’s amazing, in a way.

Speaking of surprise, in the first scene, we immediately see a big contrast: a meditation and breathing class that is ruined by chaos. This is what immediately makes you want to know more. What was your first reaction when you read the script?

Oh, that Mike needs some serious therapy [laughs].

In the beginning, I wasn’t sure we were going to get all the scripts because the show is such a big secret; anyway, they actually gave us all the scripts right to the end. Then when we were in Thailand, we had to hand them back, and they would give us scripts day by day, and the same when we traveled between places. So, that secrecy turned up a notch.

Anyway, when they offered me the job, I got all the scripts, and I thought that there isn’t anyone I know who writes like this. First of all, it’s really hard to write that many characters and that many stories and hold it all together, he can balance all these elements, all these plates, and also balance comedy and action and sex and explorations of the human condition and meditation, spirituality and vacuous capitalism, and paint such different pictures. A lot of great writers have one or two great stories in them, and then they’re done, while it seems like he has an endless font. I think he’s a very curious human being.

Another thought I had on a completely selfish level was, “How the fuck am I going to pull this off?”. It’s a difficult acting job. Some acting jobs are easy, you can coast through them, and they do themselves, but this requires a lot of “ACTING” from me, with capital letters. So, I was slightly challenged, thinking, “Well, some of these other people have got much more fun things to do, and Timothy does not have a very good time on holiday”. I knew I was going to have to do some big acting and hoping that I could keep it both truthful and entertaining. Luckily, I had Mike White behind the camera, and I felt like I could swing big because if I fell, he’d catch me.

“if I fell, he’d catch me”

How did you work in general on Timothy, your character? He seems like a powerful man, very strict also with his children, very demanding, and at the same time it looks like he doesn’t notice that their children are not happy or simply that they are dickheads. How did you approach this?

That’s all very well observed.

He is a patriarch in the old sense of the word, he’s a fat cat, very firmly established, very certain of himself and who he is. I’m sure he thinks he’s continuing generations of this kind of entitled and moneyed behavior. It’s clearly not going right with his kids, but you’re right, he doesn’t see that very well. In the same way, his wife is drugged out of her head, but I’m not sure he does see that. I don’t think he’s disappointed at it, but, you know, maybe it’ll come around. He’s not quite sure what to do, but he’s in a position of enormous status back home, and even at this place here. Actually, it is a bit of a step down for him to come to this hotel, because they normally take private planes somewhere, while they flew commercial to get there, which was a concession to his daughter’s eco-consciousness.

You know, what Mike does is set this up: a man who relies on and is his status, who is his role as a strict parent, and then threatens to take it all away. And “who am I without that stuff? Who am I without money and status? What would I be, and who is everyone?”. How did I prepare? I wanted to be a fat guy, quite chunky and heavy, and I wanted to be entitled. Then, I also worked on the accent, which is a fabulous old-money accent from Durham, North Carolina.

I found it really funny when your wife in the series says, “We are a normal family, you’ll see”.

Yeah, they’re anything but normal [laughs].

They’re my favorite storyline, I’m in it, of course, but it is my favorite: the kids are great, Patrick, Sam, and Sarah Catherine, they all have really good storylines coming up. Patrick is one of the nicest people you could ever wish to meet, even though he’s such a dick in this show, he opens his mouth and you’re like, “Somebody slap that boy down”. Anyway, Mike is not in the business of morality plays, so I’m not going to tell you whether he does or not, but they all have really great storylines and they’re all really lovely actors. It was such a pleasure to watch them.

The show also talks about digital detox, meditation, the need to listen to yourself, to embracing silence. What’s your relationship with silence? Do you ever feel the need to isolate?

I find that excruciating and almost impossible.

I live my entire life with headphones on, listening to podcasts, I fall asleep listening to hypnosis tracks. I am on my phone, embarrassingly, all day, every day. I can give myself the excuse that it’s because I’m in contact with a lot of people and there are things I want to know about, but I’m uncomfortable with it.

Anyway, there are moments in my life when I can do it. I went rafting down the Colorado River, we were out of signal, and even a satellite phone didn’t work for five days and that was extraordinary, I very slowly found myself getting in tune with nature. We lived at the rhythm of the sun; we went to sleep when the sun went down, we woke when the sun came up, we washed in the river… But it was some years ago now.

I did a film called “The Salt Path”, which is out in a month or two, based on a book, the true story of these two extraordinary people who lost everything and then went walking. When we filmed that film, I felt the power of nature because we were out in nature all the time, walking up mountains, along cliffs and coasts and there were long takes and there were wide shots sometimes of just us walking up and down. But I can’t pretend that I didn’t feel the itch to get back on my phone, I couldn’t wait until the take was over.

I’m very geeky anyway, I was always into technology; I was on the Internet way before there was the World Wide Web, but it’s been the worst thing that could have ever happened to me. Do I think it would be good for me? Yes. Have I ever done it? No. I remember when we were told these devices would free up our time and now, I sit on the subway every day and I look along the carriage and there are hundreds of people staring at their phones. I like human contact, but I’m as guilty as anybody else, so I hope they bring in a national ban for five days a week, that would be very useful.

It would be amazing. You know, sometimes I feel trapped, and my only way to go away from this is reading a book; sometimes, though, when I’m reading a book and I have my phone near me, I can’t help but look at it in between my reading, and it’s horrible.

The world’s greatest minds are designing the apps and the noises that go with them and the cycle of use to make sure that you feel anxious if you’re not checking it all the time, even if it’s switched off… It sucks.

You know what, funnily enough, there are two times in my life when I’m not thinking about my phone or about a hundred other things, when my mind is very scattered: one is when I’m acting because I’m in someone else’s head, and two is when I’m playing tennis because I’m a tennis nut, in fact, I was on the tennis court a lot in Thailand.

You, actors, have the chance to get to know yourselves in depth also thanks to the many lives you live. What’s the latest thing you discovered about yourself thanks to your job, in this case to “The White Lotus”?

I don’t know that I ever discover anything about myself. I’m continually curious, that’s certainly true, which I think is one of the reasons I was drawn to acting. I wasn’t quite sure who to be, how to be, I felt uncomfortable with other people, but I was able to pretend to be comfortable, so I could fit in lots of places, and other people who’ve known me over the years might not recognize that description, but my inner dialogue was always wondering and worrying about what they were thinking and how I should best fit in.

I think through being a parent, I found that that’s who I have to be, who I want to be and that’s the only role that’s ever stuck.

I think I’ve learned more just by getting older, and what I learned on “The White Lotus” was not really anything from “The White Lotus” at all. It was the first job I’ve done since my children both had left home to study abroad. Previously, when I’ve gone away, there’s always been some sense of guilt and a burning responsibility to get on a plane as often as possible and go home and be around them, or try and be around them, or try and talk to them. This time they were both away and happy to be studying, one in America, one in Canada, and so my wife could come with me: it’s the first time that’s ever happened. She came with me, and we spent months together and it was interesting because I feel like I’ve been married to many people, and this is a new person – she is a mum, but she has a different role now.

I feel like we started a new phase of our marriage pretty much when the job started. That was interesting.

Throughout your career, you’ve played iconic villains but also heroic characters. Timothy, for example, I’d call him a “villain”. Do you prefer playing heroes or villains, and why?

Well, not to contradict you, but I don’t think Mike writes anything that’s binary in that way. Certainly, almost everybody who arrives is, to the viewer’s eye, initially unpleasantly rich and privileged, there’s no question. But I think Timothy will become human in the end, and some part of him we’ll judge, some part of him maybe we’ll feel sorry for. What I prefer playing is parts that make me look good, and the ones that make me look good are the ones that are really well written.

Obviously, the most well-known villain I’ve played is in the Harry Potter films, but who is he? He’s a bully, a loveless father, a coward, and he’s tremendously obsessed with his status, and he has some until Voldemort arrives. At that point, Voldemort sees right through him, through his vanity, and completely humiliates and undermines him at every turn, culminating in him snapping Lucius Malfoy’s wand at his own table in front of his own family, which is akin to castration. I saw in Malfoy what we see in most bullies, which is tremendous insecurity and a man who was frightened that the world had left him behind. He might have money, but he’s a racist, an old-fashioned racist. The analogy is really pretty transparent with Nazism: he wants the world to be how it was when people like him ruled the world, he doesn’t think that these muggles should be allowed to come along, he’s trying to “make Hogwarts great again”.

The answer to your question is, all in all, that I just try and take really well-written parts.

And what’s your favorite character of the new season of “The White Lotus”, if you have one?

You know, some very extreme things are coming from many people. Mike pushes everything very, very far, so, to tell you whose story I like the most, I’d have to tell you what their story was and that would be like telling you the punchline of a joke.

You know, people keep asking me who dies: “Who’s going to be in the body bags?”. Why would they ask that?

No, I don’t want to know that!

I love thrillers, but this is much more than a thriller.

Let me ask you, at this stage, having seen two episodes, who do you think dies? Who do you want to die?

Who do I want to die? Oh my God, maybe… Walton. I don’t know if I want him dead, I’m not sure, but I know he’s got a big secret. It’s also amazing that there are always characters from the previous seasons, I think that’s great, really.

Yeah, Mike is ridiculously clever, that’s why every actor jumped at it, nobody thought twice about it.

Since you mentioned podcasts earlier, what’s the podcast you are listening to right now?

I have a thousand podcasts I listen to. The granddaddy of all podcasts I started with is “This American Life”, a magnificent podcast; then, I’ve listened to “Unholy” a lot, I listen to “Radiolab” a lot, “I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue”, which is the most English pun and word comedy-based podcast in the world, “Dan Snow’s History Hit” … I listen to so many podcasts, I can’t even begin to tell you how many.

I’m taking notes…

What’s your happy place?

Tennis court.

Or anywhere my wife and kids are.

During lockdown, I loved that we were stuck together, although I was worried about the future of the world. At one point, we went on holiday, and we all got COVID, so the holiday had to continue, and we had to stay inside a quarantine flat for 10 days, I loved the fact that we played board games and watched TV every day. I’m sure that it’s one of their worst memories [laughs] and one of my best.

Photos & Video by Johnny Carrano.

Grooming by Nohelia Reyes using LANEIGE and Sam McKnight.

Styling by Gareth Scourfield@ONE REPRESENTS.

Thanks to CLD Communications Ltd. 

LOOK 1

Shirt: Frescobel Carioca @mrporter.com

White vest: Mr P @mrporter.com

Trousers: Carter Young

Belt: Anderson’s

Sneakers: Manolo Blahnik 

LOOK 2

Suede shirt: Carter Young

Henley top: &SONS

Trousers: Luca Faloni 

LOOK 3

T-shirt: Sunspel

Shirt: God’s True Cashmere

Trousers: Percival

Sneakers: Axel Arigato