The White Lotus stars react to surprising gay sex scene
“There’s a pleasure to me as a guy who is gay-ish to make gay sex transgressive again," show creator Mike White noted.
The latest episode of The White Lotus season two has left jaws on the floor.
Mike White’s HBO series has garnered a dedicated audience from the comedy drama’s dark and unexpected twists and turns, but in episode five (‘That’s Amore’) things have become even more bizarrely complicated.
The exquisite Jennifer Coolidge plays Tanya who, in the new ep, joins her new millionaire pal Quentin (Tom Hollander) at a gorgeous beach club where she meets his nephew Jack (Leo Woodall).
During a bout of insomnia on her first night, Tanya is wondering through the villa and turns a corner, pushes open a door, and finds Jack having sex with Quentin, his uncle. The episode then ends with no explanation.
“There’s a whole load of stuff about what’s real and what isn’t real, by that point in the story,” Tom told Decider of the scandalous episode ending. “And consistent with that I’m not sure I can even remember whether we’re nephew and uncle.”
Leo also reflects on filming this unexpected moment and credited intimacy coordinator Miriam Lucia for the scene’s realism.
“It was a closed set. Tom and I had already hit it off by that point and it was a laugh, you know? It was completely ridiculous, but it was really, you know, well handled. So yeah it was fun,” Leo said of filming the scene with Tom.
“It is quite intimate to do an intimate scene,” he added. “You do have the experience in a way, without actually performing the act itself. Literally you virtually are, and you sort of feel – you slightly feel like you have just had sex with someone and it’s in the nicest possible way.”
Leo also shared with Variety has was left “speechless” after reading the script for the first time: “I’m such a huge fan of Tom’s, and when I heard that he was going to be playing my uncle, I thought, ‘That is unreal.’ And then when I found out that I was going to shag him as well — that was kind of surreal.”
He adds that he fully trusted creator Mike White’s vision and had “no reservations” about diving into the scene.
“There was a mutually respectful energy between us, too. And on the set, the production was very tender around those moments,” he noted. “It certainly was around that one. We just wanted to do it right.”
This isn’t the first time The White Lotus sees a character walking in on vigorous gay sex; in the first season, Murray Bartlett’s character, Armond, is caught with his face buried in the asscheeks of his employee, Dillon (Lukas Gage). However, the latest episode ups the shock value.
Speaking on the second season’s fifth episode, Mike revealed: “There’s a pleasure to me as a guy who is gay-ish to make gay sex transgressive again.”
“It’s dirty… men are having sex and you have this ‘Psycho’ music underneath. It just amuses me,” he added.
“I just think transgressive sex is sexier. I guess I’m old school,” Mike continued. “There’s this Gothic vibe of walking through a haunted hotel or haunted house and people are having sex behind closed doors.”
He, too, seems to tease that Jack and Quentin may not actually be related, saying “you’ll have to see.”
It was announced last week that The White Lotus had been renewed for a third season for further shocking hijinks and, if continuing this pattern, more unanticipated gay sex scenes.