‘It’s a dream job’: On The White Lotus, actor Patrick Schwarzenegger gets rich quick

NEW YORK – On the set of the third season of the hit dark comedy drama series The White Lotus, which shot for seven sticky months in luxury hotels in Bangkok and Koh Samui, Thailand, American writer-director Mike White had a repeated note for American 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 neighbourhood of Manhattan. In person, he was polite, earnest.

“I’m thankful each and every day for the life I’ve been given,” he said as he spooned up yogurt and berries.

Schwarzenegger had come into the city to do a few days of press for The White Lotus 3, available on Max and 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’ (played by Sarah Catherine Hook and Sam Nivola) sex lives.

The rising star often plays entitled young men. His character in Gen V (2023 to present), the college-set Amazon Prime Video show that is a companion to satirical superhero drama The Boys (2019 to present), is actually named Golden Boy.

That casting is not complicated. Schwarzenegger has wide-set eyes, honeyed hair, a high-thread-count effect. That demeanour ensures a resume of jocks and pretty boys. But in his best work, he is able to get under the moisturised skin of these young men, showing something darker and more wounded.

On the handsome face of it, Schwarzenegger and Saxon are alike. They both joined fraternities in college. They both studied business. Neither stints on arm day.

Even in his downtime, Schwarzenegger does not exactly walk poor. He is, after all, the eldest son of Austrian-American movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger and American journalist-author Maria Shriver, which means he descends from both Hollywood and political royalty. (Shriver’s parents were Eunice Kennedy and Sargent Shriver.)

He does not 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 is 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”.

Like many children with parents in the industry, Patrick 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 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 music video (Right There, 2013), an episode of slasher series Scream Queens (2015 to 2016), a romcom called Stuck In Love (2012).

During the Covid-19 pandemic lockdowns, when production shut down almost everywhere, he decided to pursue more challenging roles – parts that were, he said, “more dramatic and deep”.

Soon, he was hired for crime miniseries The Staircase (2022). Gen V and sports drama anthology American Sports Story (2024), in which he played American former professional football quarterback Tim Tebow, followed.

The White Lotus role required nudity and at least one disturbing sex scene. He was okay 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 is not sure what his family thinks about the more explicit material in recent episodes. But he is excited for viewers to see that he can really act, that he can make Saxon’s distress real, funny and even sympathetic. He pushed White to allow his character to transform, but White reminded him that a stay at The White Lotus lasts only a week – there is not necessarily time for transformation.

Schwarzenegger thinks about transformation often. He is 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 does not 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. I have never really asked him about acting.”

In the meantime, 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 I’m here,” he said, smiling that 24-karat smile. “It’s a dream job; it’s incredible.” NYTIMES