On the set of the third season of “The White Lotus,” which shot for seven sticky months in luxury hotels in Bangkok and Koh Samui, Thailand, the writer and director Mike White had a repeated note for the actor Patrick Schwarzenegger.
“You’re not walking rich enough,” White would yell across the pool deck. “Patrick, be richer.”
Schwarzenegger, 31, recounted this — incorporating an impeccable White impression — on a bright morning at a coffee shop in the TriBeCa neighborhood of Manhattan. (Schwarzenegger described himself as a coffee “addict.” His on-set nickname: Cold Brew.) In person, he was polite, earnest.
“I’m thankful each and every day for the life that I’ve been given,” he said as he spooned up yogurt and berries.
White saw this guilelessness as genuine. “Patrick is just somebody who likes people, and people like him,” White said on a call earlier that week. “He’s a sincere actor, but he’s uncomplicated in his presentation of self.”
Schwarzenegger had come into the city to do a few days of press for “The White Lotus,” his most high-profile project to date. He plays Saxon, the eldest son of a wealthy North Carolina couple (Parker Posey and Jason Isaacs). A cocky finance bro, Saxon’s preferred pastimes include smoothies, pornography and observations about his siblings’ sex lives.
“She’s pretty hot,” he tells his brother (Sam Nivola), speaking of his sister (Sarah Catherine Hook). “But I don’t think she’s ever been laid before.”
Schwarzenegger, who glowed beneath the cafe’s lighting, often plays entitled young men. His character in “Gen V,” the college-set Amazon show that is a companion to “The Boys,” is actually named Golden Boy.
That casting isn’t complicated: Schwarzenegger has wide-set eyes, honeyed hair, a high-thread-count affect. That demeanor ensures a résumé of jocks and pretty boys. But in his best work — “Gen V,” the HBO limited series “The Staircase” and now “The White Lotus” — he is able to get under the moisturized skin of these young men, showing something darker and more wounded.
“He’s got this Tom Cruise quality where he’s very cheerful, but underneath it there’s this anger,” White said of Schwarzenegger’s onscreen persona.
On the handsome face of it, Schwarzenegger and Saxon are alike. They both joined frats in college. They both studied business. Neither stints on arm day. Even in his downtime, Schwarzenegger does not exactly walk poor.
Schwarzenegger is the eldest son of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver, which means he descends from both Hollywood and political royalty. (Shriver’s parents were Eunice Kennedy and Sargent Shriver.) He doesn’t deny his good fortune or the advantages it brings.
“You would have to be totally out of whack to not understand the privilege,” he said. He’s happy to lend some of that to Saxon but is quick to list the differences between them, which he identified as “his vulnerability levels, his relationships, what he values in life.” (He also noted their varying taste in swimwear.)
His colleagues noted other differences. Posey, his co-star, said he had a lot of grace about him, a lot of maturity. He was, she said, a very nice young man. (“My perfect child,” she said, in her character’s lorazepam-inflected drawl.)
White said, “He’s got a gym bro vibe a little, but he’s just a very kind person.” This kindness was evident during the interview and after, when he sent me a thank-you note. “Continue the great work,” he wrote encouragingly.
Like many children with parents in the industry, Schwarzenegger spent much of his childhood on set, doing homework in his father’s trailer, making peanut butter sandwiches at craft services. He wanted to be an actor because that was what his dad did. He had also done school plays and loved the experience, he said, of “totally trying to be someone else.”
That was a surprise. Why be anyone other than Patrick Schwarzenegger? He thought about this for a while.
“It’s weird,” he said. “I love my life. But yeah, I don’t know. It’s fun to play someone else.”
While minoring in cinematic arts at the University of Southern California (his father pushed him to major in business) and studying at an outside studio, Schwarzenegger began to get roles — an Ariana Grande video, an episode of “Scream Queens,” a rom-com called “Stuck in Love.” During the pandemic lockdowns, when production shut down most everywhere, he decided to pursue more challenging roles — parts that were, he said, “more dramatic and deep.” Soon he was hired for “The Staircase.” “Gen V” and “American Sports Story,” in which he played Tim Tebow, followed.
His “White Lotus” character was described, briefly, as a Southern finance guy and an unmitigated flirt. His brother-in-law, the actor Chris Pratt, gave him advice: A role like this would be competitive, so Schwarzenegger should do something to make him stand out.
So in the first moments of the audition, he looked the camera up and down, tilted his head, licked his lips, flirting with the camera. He demonstrated this for me, at the coffee shop, and even speaking as a 40-something mother of two who has no time for nonsense, it works. White saw that.
Schwarzenegger’s pedigree hadn’t impressed him. “Famous people, sometimes the baggage that comes with that is just a turnoff,” White said. But he liked Schwarzenegger’s approach, mostly because he treated the character with absolute seriousness.
“He was just head and shoulders funnier than any of the other auditions,” White said. “It was life or death, the way he played the scene.”
Before flying out to Thailand, a 14-hour time difference from his fiancée, Abby Champion, and family, Schwarzenegger worked out an elaborate back story for Saxon. On set, his colleagues said, he was an unfailingly positive presence, a cheerleader there to pump up the cast and crew.
The role required nudity and at least one disturbing sex scene. He was OK with it. It was right for the character, he said — so right that he elected to do a scene in the first episode without the boxer briefs that wardrobe had offered. “Whether that’s uncomfortable or weird for Patrick, it doesn’t matter,” Schwarzenegger said.
He’s not sure what his family will think about the more explicit material in coming episodes. But he’s excited for viewers to see that he can really act, that he can make Saxon’s distress real and funny and even sympathetic. He pushed White to allow Saxon to transform, but White reminded him that a stay at the White Lotus only lasts a week. There’s not necessarily time for transformation.
Schwarzenegger thinks about transformation often. He’s looking for a role that will strip away that golden boy veneer. (He spoke, elliptically and excitedly, about a potential new project that would require him to change his body radically.) Maybe he doesn’t want his father’s career, which has largely been variations on a muscled type.
“He didn’t give me any clues or pointers or anything,” he said of his father. “I have never really asked him about acting.”
And maybe he’s savvy enough to know that nothing gold can stay and it would be wise to diversify.
He also thinks about success, an enduring theme of “The White Lotus,” which shows, season after season, that money and power are no guarantees of happiness. Having grandparents who helped to create the Peace Corps and founded the Special Olympics can put things in perspective.
“I struggle with the idea of like, I must be here for something more,” he said. “I feel this kind of calling from God to go out and try to do more, that I’ll never be doing enough to help other people. And sometimes I think about acting like, how do I justify that?”
But he does. He starts every day with prayer and a gratitude list, and when your work days include filming on a yacht in Thailand, that list is pretty easy to make.
“I’m so thankful that I’m here,” he said, smiling that 24-karat smile, easy and sincere. “It’s a dream job; it’s incredible.”
