[Editor’s note: The following interview contains spoilers for “The White Lotus” Season 3, Episode 6, “Denials.”]

Over three unique iterations of Mike White’s “The White Lotus,” fans of the show have come to expect searing critiques of privilege coupled with deadpan humor that gets progressively less laughable as the season goes on. But nothing could have quite prepared audiences for how unfunny Season 3, which follows a group of guests at The White Lotus’ Thai outpost, suddenly became on Sunday night when Patrick Schwarzenegger and Sam Nivola’s Ratliff brothers consummated their unsettling onscreen flirtation.

In the role of older brother Saxon, Schwarzenegger gives a particularly affecting performance as a series of anxiety-producing flashbacks show a teenage Lochlan (Nicola) jerking off his sibling during a substance-fueled group hookup. These events come after weeks of White lulling viewers into a false sense of security with Parker Posey’s slurred one-liners and light satire around religion and politics, which only began to give way to something more weighty in the previous week’s episode. So they really mark the first chance the actor has had to show off his dramatic chops and introduce audiences to a more complicated version of the Ratliffs’ privileged eldest son.

“You know, everyone’s always asking me, ‘What’s it like to play this kind of, like, douche?’ And it’s hard for me to respond, because so many people made such quick judgments about the character after one-third of the show, and Mike is too smart of a writer to create a one-note person,” Schwarzenegger told IndieWire of playing the season’s most unlikable hotel guest in a conversation ahead of Sunday night’s episode. 

“What’s exciting for me is for people to see what’s to come, because there’s a real shift in the power dynamic and the relationship between the siblings and Saxon, and between Saxon and the girls,” he added, referring to the group of characters rounded out by Piper Ratliff (Sarah Catherine Hook) and new friends Chloe (Charlotte Le Bon) and Chelsea (Aimee Lou Wood), who somewhat gleefully break the news to Schwarzenegger’s stunned golden boy. 

Talking to Schwarzenegger — who admits that his biggest fear going into filming “The White Lotus” was that his character wouldn’t land — it’s clear that reaching the latter half of the season has come as a big relief. In the conversation that’s continued below, the actor, whose biggest role to date was in HBO’s “The Staircase,” hinted at bigger things to come for his character, who was in a full-on existential spiral by the time Sunday night’s credits rolled. And he offered up his own theories about the larger meaning behind the preppy Southern brothers’ incestuous relationship, in addition to illuminating how White drew out his richest performance to date. 

The following interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

IndieWire: Thank you for joining me. I know you’re a hot commodity right now.

Patrick Schwarzenegger: I’m excited to be able to talk with you. And yeah, they have us bouncing all over right now, but it’s fun. It’s a fun time period in life. 

Interest in your character has really been building over the course of the season. Was there some point during filming that you realized how vital Saxon was going to be to the season at large?

Well, I think that every character really is vital to the overall story and that’s one of the best parts about “White Lotus” as a whole. Especially this season, there’s so many characters and yet they all somehow play a role within each other’s storylines. There’s such a messy clusterfuck of groups that cross over. It makes it so exciting because, by the sixth and seventh episode, the viewer is, like, “It could be any single one of these people that is the killer, but also any of these people that gets killed.” I think that’s a testament to Mike White’s writing and to what he does. 

Well, then, I have to ask, have you seen the finale yet?

Oh, no, I haven’t.

But I assume you know what’s coming? I’m just curious about how you think viewers are going to react.

I don’t really. I honestly don’t. I mean, I know what happens with myself, but I don’t know what’s going on between all the other group members.

OK, so to get back to filming the series, were there things Mike White pulled out of you as a performer that you maybe didn’t know were there before?

I don’t know if this will answer your question, but I think what’s so great about [working with him] is that he’s an actor. I mean, he’s the writer and the director and the showrunner and the creator, but he also has an acting background. So when he comes to you with notes, he starts to reenact the scene, like, literally redoes it in his head and plays all the characters. And then, if you’re not sure how to fully understand it, he kind of redoes it and shows you again. 

And he also comes up with ideas right in the moment. You’ll be mid-scene and all of a sudden you’ll hear him shout, and he’ll say something you didn’t think of. He’ll just be, like, “Try this! Try this! Try this! Try this!” 

I saw in an interview that he told you that you didn’t “walk rich enough,” which sort of perfectly articulates what he does so well. 

Yeah, exactly. That’s exactly what he said, and it was pretty funny.

You and Sam Nivola both come from famous families with ties to entertainment. Were there conversations about channeling that into the performance?

In terms of our privilege or in what sense?

Yes, that and being from a family where there are a lot of expectations and the pressure of being in the public eye.

We talked, Mike and I, about what kind of things we could draw upon. And I told him that I think a vital part to Saxon’s story is that he’s constantly vying for his dad’s attention and really wanting to prove himself to his dad. That whole storyline is important, because it’s what makes Saxon a little bit more human and relatable. And it’s something that I could relate to from his perspective, as well. 

But we never talked about it through the lens of Sam and I in the story. I’m embarrassed to say that I didn’t even know who Sam was or who his family was until like six months into the thing. He was, like, “Oh, I hope they don’t call me a nepo baby.” And I was, like, “Why?”

I think a lot of people don’t know, actually. 

And I didn’t know really at all, so there you go.

So the reason I wanted to do this interview around Episode 6 is that it feels like a real breakout moment for you, because of the emotional intensity that you deliver. Were the scenes in that episode the most challenging to film? 

Yeah, definitely, Episode 6 has uncomfortable and weird scenes — I guess is the way to say that. It’s also such an important and vital part of the overall story and Saxon’s story. 

In Episode 5, you start to see a different version of him at the Koh Phangan full moon party, when his brother takes the drugs. Now, it’s his brother egging him on and the girls [Chloe and Chelsea] egging him on, and he’s on the other side of it. It’s like this idea of what happens when everything you thought you were gets stripped away; that’s what’s happening to Saxon. And Episode 6 is the first time you see it in daylight.

Well, speaking of Episode 5, there was an interview circulating last week about how the look on your face when the brothers kiss was a “genuine reaction.” Did you have a visceral reaction while filming that scene?

I did have a visceral reaction, because that’s what would happen. It would be weird if he [Saxon] didn’t have the reaction that I had. It’s his brother, and the first reaction is not, like, to shove him off and be upset; it’s confusion. 

Obviously, the brothers’ relationship isn’t just for shock value. So do you have thoughts on the thematic significance of how that relationship develops and how incest is used in the plot?

Mike doesn’t write things to just write things. I think that he’s smart enough that he uses things as a marketing tool — whether it’s how Parker [Posey] delivers certain lines or how sincerely Saxon talks about his sister being hot. There’s outlandish things throughout, but it all plays toward the overall arc of the story and the characters. 

This moment that happens between the brothers, how I see it, is kind of like in this Buddhist ideology of both of them getting reborn into different people, into different levels of power in their relationship and in the family dynamic. Saxon becomes a new person after this. He’s now at the lower half of the totem pole, and he no longer exerts this power over Lochlan. Everything that he stood for, everything that he’s been talking about, has now been flipped on its head, and he really is internalizing and questioning everything.  

So that’s how I see it, but I can just tell you how I started to interpret things. You’d have to ask Mike why he did what he did. I think he would probably give you the best answer.

There’s that moment when Chloe calls Saxon “soulless” in Episode 6. It’s something that probably wouldn’t have even landed before, but then, it’s a big moment for him.

And that’s really how we wanted to play it. In Episode 1 and 2, if she called him soulless, he would’ve been, like, “What are you talking about, ‘soulless’? Who are you?” [scoffing] You know, “Whatever.” And in this episode, he kind of laughs to himself and then looks off. You can see that it affects him and he’s now starting to be, like, “Wait, what?”

And in Episode 7 and 8, there’s moments where, I think, Mike is, like, “I don’t need him to fully change, I just want the audience to start to wonder, ‘Will he change?’ Are there parts of him that are starting to think about, ‘Should I change?’”

There’s this scene of Walton [Goggins] and Aimee [Lou Wood] hugging, and I’m just looking at them. The scene is just me staring at them and having this internal dialogue of, “Maybe it is nice to have someone that really appreciates you and have a relationship. Maybe, I yearn for that and strive to have that. Or maybe not. Maybe, I’ll go back and be Saxon.” 

Well, that gives us something to look forward to. In the meantime, congratulations on the season and Episode 6.

Thank you. I’m curious to watch it with people. We’ll see how it goes.