← All Of It with Alison Stewart
All Of It with Alison Stewart
Jason Isaacs Heads to Thailand in 'The White Lotus' Season Three
00:23:25
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- [00:00]
Alison Stewart
All of it is supported by Progressive Insurance. You chose to hit play on this podcast today. Smart choice. Make another smart choice with Auto Quote Explorer to compare rates for multiple car insurance companies all at once. Try it@progressive.com, progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates not available in all states or situations. Prices vary based on how you buy.
- [00:25]
Jason Isaacs
Listener supported WNYC Studios.
- [00:37]
Alison Stewart
This is all of it on wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. Coming up next week, we'll continue our Women's History Month series with a focus on women in music production with Grammy nominated artist, writer and music educator Patrisse Rushin and actor Brian Tyree. Henry will join us to talk about his new limited series Dope Thief. Now let's get started with the White Lotus. In the new third season of HBO's Emmy winning show, the White Lotus, we find ourselves in a draw dropping location. In this case, private villas on coastal Thailand, a handful of wealthy, mostly unhappy people and hotel workers beholden to them. And con men. Yes, there are always con men and women. Tim Ratliff is a middle aged master of the universe with a languid southern accent, the patriarch of the family, a finance guy who supports his medicated wife, an aggro heir apparent son and two younger siblings searching for their own identities apart from bro and dad. When Tim comes to the White Lotus, his phone won't stop buzzing. Something is very wrong back at the office. Let's take a listen. Timothy?
- [01:48]
Jason Isaacs
Yeah?
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Alison Stewart
Is everything okay?
- [01:51]
Jason Isaacs
No. No, it's not. We're on the antipodal. Opposite ends of the earth from humanity there. It's fine. Nobody comes here. His day here, his night there, his night here, his day there. I can't get anybody on the phone.
- [02:04]
Alison Stewart
Who do you need to get ahold of?
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Jason Isaacs
I'm just saying that the time difference is aggravating, you know.
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Alison Stewart
Poor guy, he works so hard. He used to call me calm his ass down. Jason's an acting veteran playing a variety of roles from Lucius Malfoy in Harry Potter to a grieving father in Mass. Jason Isaac joins us in studio. It's nice to talk to you.
- [02:30]
Jason Isaacs
Well, it's nice that you found a clip where I'm not swearing because I'm not sure. I think that might be the only sentence in all eight episodes.
- [02:35]
Alison Stewart
Oh, we tried.
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Jason Isaacs
Well done, you.
- [02:36]
Alison Stewart
No swearing on public radio.
- [02:38]
Jason Isaacs
Fair enough. I'll abide by any rules you give me.
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Alison Stewart
You know we have a delay though.
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Jason Isaacs
I love the fact that you said veteran there, but also middle aged. I'm thinking I'm 61. Will I live to 122. It's possible nowadays, following Brian Johnson, you.
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Alison Stewart
Know, we'll, we'll follow him into the sunset. How are you, by the way?
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Jason Isaacs
Well, I, you know, go ahead, tell.
- [02:57]
Alison Stewart
Us, tell us the story.
- [02:58]
Jason Isaacs
So I am in the middle of a, as all of us are, in the middle of a publicity blitz for this show which seems to need no publicity because everybody in the world apparently is watching it. But, but this morning I did this thing called the Buzzfeed Puppies at the behest of my gorgeous godchildren Marley and Lila in London, who said, please, please do the puppies. So I begged and, and you sit in a little pen and these gorgeous little puppies cuddle you. And you are meant to be so distracted by their fluffiness that you can't answer the questions. I was distracted by the fact they were sinking their fangs into every part of my body and my arm now has a giant gash in it for which I might need some kind of surgery. Oh, and multiple gashes.
- [03:35]
Alison Stewart
It's big.
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Jason Isaacs
And the shirt, which was designated for the rest of the publicity all day is spattered with blood. So I'm fine, but a little bit.
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Alison Stewart
Sore is the answer I'll be gentle with.
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Jason Isaacs
However can I say it was gorgeous nonetheless. And they didn't know what they were doing. Their puppies.
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Alison Stewart
Is Mike, is Mike White that tough?
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Jason Isaacs
Is he a bit.
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Alison Stewart
He's a biter, yes. Mike White a biter.
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Jason Isaacs
He's not a bit. He's the opposite, actually kills you with kindness. Now, Mike White is an extraordinary man. For anyone who's watching the show, you won't need telling what a brilliant writer he is. But I think his directing gets ignored or people forget the fact that he's the guy that brings it to life as well as imagining it all and writing it all. And he directs this. Well, come at another way. My 19 year old daughter wants to be a film director and she's directed plays. And I was there when someone asked her how she directs actors and she said, well, it's the same with all actors, isn't it? It's got to be a compliment sandwich. And Mike White comes out from behind the monitor from where he has been shrieking with demonic laughter how you know that maybe you'll be moving on because he's just uncontrollable with laughter. And then he comes out, he goes, awesome, great, neat, fantastic. And then, you know, maybe you're gonna go again as he's walking away, turns over his shoulder, bit like Peter Falker's Colombo for those viewers, over 100 like me. And he, you know, Peter Falk used to come as a detective and investigate people. As he was leaving, he'd go, one more thing. My wife is a big fan of you. So Mike would just throw a little tip over his shoulder, half a suggestion. You're an idiot if you didn't take it whole and do exactly what he says. But he's a magnificent director, partly because he's also a great actor. So before he speaks to you, he'll come out from behind the monitor, tell you it was great, and then walk around muttering, playing all the parts to himself. When he gets to your bit, he kind of frowns, tries it a few different ways. Then he comes over and gives the note and, yeah, I mean, if in another world and possibly using AI he will be playing parts, maybe season four will all be Mike White. And I, for one, will be watching.
- [05:26]
Alison Stewart
You have a good ear for accents.
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Jason Isaacs
Well, I'm British, so there's a weird thing that people don't realize. Americans don't realize by British people, English people, particularly, when somebody opens their mouth in England, everybody can place them. I don't mean geographically, although that definitely regionally, you can place them. Socioeconomically, you can fight. You can hear what kind of education they've had. You can hear how they would like to be perceived and whether they're making their accent a bit more street or a little bit more. All those things are apparent to everybody within a syllable. So if you're a British actor, that better be a tool that you can use in order to convey who someone is. And also, you can hear confidence. You can hear bragadocio. You can hear mock conference. You can all those things in someone's voice.
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Alison Stewart
Did you do. Did you work with a voice coach?
- [06:10]
Jason Isaacs
There is a woman called Liz Himelstein who's one of the world's great dialect coaches. She works with a lot of big Hollywood stars who was available to all of us. And yes, I work with her because I don't just want to be from Durham, North Carolina. Well, the one thing I really didn't want to do was do a wash of Southern people. I know friends from the south hate it when actors do something like a Southern. There's no such thing as a Southern. Kentucky's different from Alabama, different from Arkansas. This is Durham, North Carolina. He's also a particular guy from Durham. He's old money. He's blue blood money. And the accent in Durham, in a certain section of the community golf club, generally has two vowel Sounds that are English, they're a hangover from the colonial days. Tell me it's got a short vowel sound, the O sound like. Instead of not, they say not. And they also say, I know, I'm going. It's a. It's a diphthong. And so when I do it, there was a. For a while there when people were talking about those things on the Internet, there were people saying, he sounds Australian, he sounds English. I don't. I sound like the guy from Durham. And some people were going, no, no, no, he sounds like my dad. And one guy said, he sounds like everyone at my golf club. But, yeah, it's because I'm English. I come at it from a. You know, I need to build the entire thing, every vowel, every consonant, and the music of it from scratch. But accents are music. They're not really sounds.
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Alison Stewart
Did you build your character based on his ancestry? Because there is a period when you're like, my grand was sure at that point.
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Jason Isaacs
Then. Now we're getting into the grain of it at that point. He's very, very drunk and heavily drugged out. So people's accents comes out, the action they had when they were young, before they went to business school. So, for instance, my natural accent, I talked like that when I was kids. I don't know if you can tell where that's from, but I'm from Liverpool and that accent I had is very, very posh for Liverpool. I have relatives who talk like that, that order chicken and chips in a shop, you know, But. But mine was much more refined because I'd had allocution lessons. Well, I don't talk like that now. But if I get very drunk or very tired or very angry, I do. So that's Timothy without his guard.
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Alison Stewart
When the puppies get you.
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Jason Isaacs
When the puppies get me, yeah. Believe me. So. And I. I love voices. I love everything about them. And. And you can hear him disappear deep into himself as well. Timothy and his kids don't have the accent. They will have gone to different schools and they won't want to sound like their dad.
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Alison Stewart
What was it about the role of Tim that pulled you in?
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Jason Isaacs
Well, firstly, Mike White is one of the great voices working in. In screenwriting today on. On television and on film. And there are. It's rare, you know, I've been lucky enough to continue to make a living as an actor since I left drama school in 1988. But I'd say on, you know, maybe on two hands, I can pick out the projects that were brilliantly written with people who are just remarkable talents and he's one of them. And so the shows are great and the character was an interesting challenge. I mean, I get asked to repeat myself often to play. I often get asked to play one dimensional massage twirling villains. I walk away from those always, but. But I get asked to play parts that are similar and I don't get asked to play people like Tim who don't speak much. I like words and I can do a lot with words and I didn't get much to do in this. And I knew. Also, like a great torch song, Tim's journey really happens at the end. You know, there's a. There's a volcano of steam building up for him and, and I read it and I thought that's he's. There's some great and difficult stuff coming. I mean, I suppose by being completely candid. I did it because I was scared that I couldn't pull off the things that Mike had written of me coming up.
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Alison Stewart
What was scary?
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Jason Isaacs
Well, I don't want to tell you what's coming up in the episode. So, you know, the tried so far. I get to be drugged up and my entire world, everything about my ego, myself, my sense of self is imploding. And in fact, the world seems surreal to me. A bit like when someone dies, you know, I don't know if you've had this, but when someone close to you dies, you go around in your life and look at other people and you go, why are you behaving normally? How is everybody continuing as if things are just usual? Well, for Tim, he's looking at his wife, his mad wife and his crazy kids and, and, and they're all talking about what their plans are for the future, what Piper's going to do. And I'm thinking they have no idea what's going on. No idea that our entire world evaporates when we get on that boat, when we leave. And he's trying to work out what, if anything, to do about it and who is he if we are not the things we have and the things other people think about. So it was a challenge. I thought, I don't know if I can. And I said to Mike when he offered me the job, I don't know how to play someone for that many episodes who's just out of his mind on drugs and running through these scenarios in his head. But how can I share them with the audience and make it interesting? My brother's a psychiatrist. I said, jeff, what happens when you take handfuls of lorazepam and he went, will you fall fast asleep? And I went, okay, well, I'm not going to do that. What happens if you don't fall fast asleep? He goes, well, you're very sleepy and boring. And I went again, give me third options. And so it was a challenge. How can I make it clear that the man's these drugs are not working and inside his head is a raging volcano? And then, and then, as an actor, can I pull off what Mike has imagined for me? And you'll be the judge of that in a couple of weeks time.
- [11:05]
Alison Stewart
I'm speaking with Jason Isaacs. He stars in the new season of the White Lotus as the stressed out finance dad, Timothy Ratliff. Before everything goes bonkers. When we first meet Tim.
- [11:16]
Jason Isaacs
Yeah.
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Alison Stewart
What's important to him?
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Jason Isaacs
Oh, status. I mean, first of all, life is easy for him. I got myself a little bit plump, you know, he's a fat cat. He has the entire world at his disposal. It's generational wealth. It goes back. The entitlement goes back forever, probably to the Mayflower. And he's where he is. There are statues to him, you know, if there aren't, there will be. And what's important to him is his kids. Can he. Can this dynasty continue? I've got Patrick Schwarzenegger, the lovely Patch Walshinger. They're playing the awful Saxon myself, awful. And. And he wants to be like his dad, but he isn't. You know, he's trying, but it's not quite landing. And then there's the other two. As far as Tim's concerned, when he gets there, the other two losers who are not making it the way he wants them to be, they're not fighting their way in the world the way they could be.
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Alison Stewart
But did he have to fight his way?
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Jason Isaacs
No, he didn't have to fight his way. He thinks he did. You know, it's all. It's all testosterone and braggadocio with him. What's important to him? I don't know, I. He's worried about his wife. Who wouldn't be? Take a look at her. Like the way she's behaving. They lost each other a long time ago. She's drugged out of her mind, so things aren't going that great to start with, but the world is falling at his feet and he has that, you know, it's all disposable income and it's unlimited.
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Alison Stewart
It's interesting. You have to do a lot of acting while you're on the phone.
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Jason Isaacs
I do. Thanks for noticing that. It's not easy There was no one there and no one on the phone. One of my first jobs, out of drama school, when I. Sorry, yeah, out of drama school. But when I left university, it was when Thatcher and Reagan had just deregulated the world of finance, and so everybody was getting recruited to be commodity salesmen or currency traders or whatever. And all of my friends, people who'd done a macrame degree, it didn't matter what you did, you were suddenly given a Porsche and giant shoulder pads and a bunch of. I went to drama school instead. So when I came out of drama school, I got a job in a show set in the kind of Wolf of Wall street world. And I knew those people. I been to college, I went to watch them and, you know, I watched them get their giant houses and their cars and lose them and watch the inner linings of their nose dissolve and all the rest of it. So I learned to do phone acting because so many of my scenes were on the phone. Traders were on the phone all the time, and there was no one on that phone. So I thanked God that that was one of my first jobs 35 years ago, because you're right, a lot of my acting is on the phone in this, and. And it's no fun. And then months later, when the show was finished, I was back and I was on the phone in my house with the different actors who play people at the other end. In fact, I went to Scott Galloway's apartment here in New York, who is not an actor, and I spent hours with him, and he had a slow realization that he's one of the world's great podcasters and a brain the size of the planet. But there's a little bit more involved in acting than he'd first thought.
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Alison Stewart
One of the hotel's policies is to give up your devices. Why doesn't Tim want to comply? I think it's because he has issues with being told what to do.
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Jason Isaacs
Well, he lives his life on the phone. The market moves very, very quickly. You need to know what's happening. You know, if, for instance, if. If we imagine that President Trump was in office. 1/2 a comment on Air Force One. Suddenly, the world's markets turn around overnight. So most trades nowadays, it might be surprised people listening who don't know much about the stock market. I don't know or care much about it, but billions of trades a second are done by supercomputers. So it's very rare that human beings are involved in lots of trades. Anyway, you can't be off grid. You can't possibly be off grid when you're in the world of finance.
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Alison Stewart
He does for a moment, though, give up his phone.
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Jason Isaacs
Well, that's because he realized the entire world has evaporated and everything that he was is gone. And he doesn't quite know what to do about it. And the last thing he wants is anyone else in the family to find out while he tries to work out what to do about it, if anything, if there's anything to be done. Or is this the last four days of their lives?
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Alison Stewart
I was wondering, is it the kind of thing they're that kind of guy that it'll get better, we'll just put it away. Well, so someone will fix it.
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Jason Isaacs
These were discussions with Mike early on. He's incredibly. Not only is, okay, he's a genius, but he's also very collaborative. And I had said this guy would throw lawyers at it. There are certain people in the world who, when they get in trouble that seems irreversible and. And bound to bring them down. They just throw lawyers at it for years and the problems go away and they, you know, jam up the courts, whatever. And he went to good point. So we tried to that. That became part of some of the phone calls. And yeah, he does think the lawyer is going to sort things out because the lawyers have always sort of things out. You throw enough money at any problem when the lawyer comes back and goes, there's no way out of this one. It's such a shock to him that he turns on the lawyer because certain people can't accept responsibility and turn everything into I don't know who I'm thinking of. I'm sure you can fill in the gaps yourself.
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Alison Stewart
His wife seems sort of half stoned.
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Jason Isaacs
Half stoned. I don't know who you're hanging out the weekends, but yes, his wife is popping pills like a lunatic until I take them.
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Alison Stewart
Do you think. Does she really know what her husband's up to?
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Jason Isaacs
I'm not sure she remembers his full name. Yeah, she doesn't know what's going on most of the time. One of the reasons that Parker is so entertaining in the show is that she has, you know, half a toe in reality and nine and a half toes off in the surreal world of Victoria.
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Alison Stewart
Ralph, we've had her here.
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Jason Isaacs
She's. She's a pistol. I wasn't talking about Parker in real life. Although it does apply partly. Yes, that's true.
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Alison Stewart
I wonder, you know, is there a still magnolia to her character?
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Jason Isaacs
Well, I don't want to say what's coming down the line. But of course, she doesn't have the drugs anymore, so she's bought very, very slowly back up to the surface and maybe too quickly for her. Like somebody getting the bends and the world comes into focus. And what was that kind of languid, sleepy energy becomes what those people are like when they don't get their pills. And. And you'll get to see and be entertained by that too.
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Alison Stewart
It's funny because your character says, I don't take drugs. Then we see him taking the drugs.
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Jason Isaacs
Well, yes, he's. He's not burdened by the responsibility to tell the truth in the world generally. That's why he got into this trouble. And. And also he's all about what other people think about him. He's all about. His wife thinks about him, his children think about him. And one of the. One of the. So many great things about Mike but choosing to settle in Thailand is it's a place that people go to seek enlightenment and it's a place that rich people go to buy, Enlighten enlightenment, I think, or spiritual growth. And of course, yeah, none of these people get what they think they want or need, but they get what Mike lines up for them. And fate conspires to strip Timothy down the way Buddhists would have it, to his essential self. And I'm not sure that happens to Victoria, But. But he looks around him at the people who he loves and whose job it is to protect and. And rightfully, he's. He fears for how they're gonna cope.
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Alison Stewart
Actors have to feel empathetic for their characters, even though we might see them as different.
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Jason Isaacs
I disagree.
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Alison Stewart
You do?
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Jason Isaacs
I don't think you have to feel anything for your character. You have to be your character. Are you empathetic for yourself? In the morning, do you ever think about whether you're empathetic for yourself?
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Alison Stewart
I'm just me, though.
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Jason Isaacs
Exactly. I'm just him. And people go, do you like him? Do you dislike him? I'm him. I'm him with the things he worries about, the things he. The times that he's confronted with. Has he done the right thing or the wrong thing? We do that sometimes ourselves and struggle with it. Mostly we just do the thing that we do and a bit like, you know, Gladwell, Michael's. Michael, Malcolm Gladwell's blink. We make our decisions and then we've rationalize. We find some confirmation bias to allow us to feel comfortable with those decisions. And, you know, even those people who seem to us brutal, some of the worst people in the world to us who make immoral decisions and are people who just have a different view of the world, that it's Darwinian and that, you know, nobody judges a lion for eating a wildebeest at the watering hole. And people who are crushing or brutal or, you know, I feel like that.
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Alison Stewart
Is the way I understand why he eats it, though.
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Jason Isaacs
Ah, no, you said, you said empathize. I need to understand. I need to have all of his thoughts. I need to have. I need to think like he thinks. I need to worry about things he worries about. I need to. That was the challenge for this. I didn't, I don't speak for so much of it, but I'm thinking like crazy. His mind is, you know, like a kaleidoscope off kilter. And I had to have all those thoughts in my head.
- [19:13]
Alison Stewart
Yeah, that's so interesting.
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Jason Isaacs
People think when actors cry, they need to think about their puppy getting run over. No, I need to think about the things that are making the character sad. And I need to feel sad.
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Alison Stewart
My guest is Jason Isaacs. We're talking about the White Lotus. He plays Timothy Ratliff, a stressed out finance dad. New episodes premiere on Sunday nights on hbo. And Max, this was a seven month.
- [19:37]
Jason Isaacs
It was a seven month shoot. I mean, longer for Mike and Dave. And all the rest of the crew went out there months earlier to scout, but we were there for seven months. We all lived together, cast and crew, in various different hotels. I mean, we're all in the same hotel at the same time. We moved a few times and it was a crucible. It was, let me tell you, it was a petri dish of human behavior. It was.
- [19:55]
Alison Stewart
What was the experience like for you? Some people had ups, people had downs.
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Jason Isaacs
Where everybody had all of them. I think it was, you know, some part paradise, some part Lord of the Flies, some part mean girls, some part Grease, you know, summer camp, Friday the 13th and you know, the lovely versions. It was, it was all of it and some part Groundhog Day. It was a lot of people away from home, a long way from home, very, very hot. A lot of stress. Sometimes because you're playing stress people, sometimes because you have too much time off and it's not like you're going to sunbathe. And once you've had a few massages and been out on a boat, you're like, you're no longer tourists. I got out a lot. My wife, oddly, who's never wanted to visit a set before for some reason a five star resort in Thailand seemed more attractive. She came for most of it which was great. And we traveled a lot and saw some of the much more heartbreaking side of Thailand and some of the wonderful things. And some people didn't leave the environs of the hotel at all, which is interesting.
- [20:52]
Alison Stewart
Did you travel for yourself? To relax, to get away from it?
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Jason Isaacs
Travel to get away? Yeah, it was just. It was. It was too intense for. It was very intense for everybody. I mean, there's a lot of alcohol there. There's obviously there's all kinds of other things in Thailand that are legal and flowed and there are lots of lovely people having a lovely time. But it was not. It was not a holiday and it was not without its own white lotus behavior.
- [21:19]
Alison Stewart
What should we keep our eyes open for, Tim? What should we watch for?
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Jason Isaacs
Well, who. What would you do? I mean, what is storytelling? It's what if. And really great storytelling like Mike does is what if that was me and what would I do at every point, you know, what are your choices and what's going to happen? And the other thing he sets up the. Not just who done it, but who had it done to them and why done it. And that's kind of fun thing. The thing I was thinking actually more about the show is that we. There is a culture of binging shows. And some people I know are even just waiting to watch it all the end. And it's a terrible shame if you do that because there's a craft in telling stories. Dickens wrote to be serialized in newspaper, specifically to be serialized. He knew how to do that. And Mike knows how to use this form, this medium of television, week by week to tease you and to torment you and to give you that exquisite torture and satisfaction of. Of these things marinating and percolating in you. So watching Tim's unraveling week by week, what would you do? I hope you wouldn't do what I do. And where's he gonna take it? The one thing that Mike does is surprise you. Always. So those people. Spoiler. If you haven't seen season two, covey rears right now, skip on 10 seconds. The way he killed Jennifer Coolidge was just genius. She got away, she killed all those guys, and then she smacked her head on the side of a boat. You know, he's just. He knows both how to satisfy and how to surprise. So hopefully those things happen. And I'll tell you this. I took the job partly because it's Mike and I would, you know, I'd do his shopping list in dinner theater, but partly because of what's coming up for me.
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Alison Stewart
So from your taking the role, you knew what happened to Tim.
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Jason Isaacs
Yeah, yeah, no, we all got all the scripts. It wasn't one of those things where they hand you out pages day by day. We all was weirdly that we all got the scripts and then when we got to Thailand, they got incredibly secret about the script. They took us off, took it off us all the time. When we traveled between islands, we had to hand them all in and get them all back in. Them reminded me of the days when I used to get the Harry Potter script. But the day before an NDA would arrive and it would be the size of War and Peace and I'd have to sign it and I would always sign it Mickey Mouse going, you do realize the book been on sale for two years. There's nothing that secretive in here. But yes, they're very, very secretive about the end. Even my wife who was there said to me, did you shoot four or five different endings? And I went, what planet were you living? You were there, love. So they were secret about it. But yes, we all knew what was coming.
- [23:46]
Alison Stewart
The White Lotus can be seen on Sunday nights on HBO and Max. My guest has been Jason Isaacs. It's nice meeting you.
- [23:52]
Jason Isaacs
It's lovely to meet you. Thanks very much. I'm Ira Plato, host of Science Friday. For over 30 years, our team has been reporting high quality news about science, technology and medicine. News you won't get anywhere else.
- [24:08]
Alison Stewart
And now that political news is 24.
- [24:10]
Jason Isaacs
7, our audience is turning to us to know about the really important stuff in their lives. Cancer, climate change, genetic engineering, childhood diseases. Our sponsors know the value of science and health news. For more sponsorship information, visit sponsorship.wnyc.org.