Nudity comes with a purpose. The White Lotus is one of HBO’s most popular shows airing right now, but with every primetime show, there has to be some kind of violence and skin.
The dramedy has tackled topics of classism, money, love, sex, and death within its three seasons. With a slew of characters changing every season (with the exception of one that stays loyal to the resort), creator Mike White says that the resort is an easy way to get insight into these topics with different dynamics. “I wanted to do a kind of operatic roundelay,” White told The Guardian. “Mismatched lovers. People sneaking into hotel rooms. More of a sexual revolving door. I think that keeps it interesting, the idea that the content is shape-shifting. So when people come back to the show it’s not the same as it was before.”
Also to White, it’s a different kind of territory. “As a director, I’m very timid about asking people to undress and get into sexual situations,” he told NPR. “It’s not my wheelhouse. There were definitely times on this shoot that I was like, what have I got myself into? My threshold for awkwardness is very low. The actors are much more confident and uninhibited than I am. That was new terrain for me. It just felt like it was important because it really is baked into the narrative.”
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He continued, “It’s funny, though, how now that the show is airing, how much you realize a graphic sex scene or a sex scene that kind of is titillating for various reasons, does just spike and generate an interest in the populace, for better or worse.”
Season 3 is gearing up to look a little bit more nude. Jason Isaacs’ character flaunts a bit of his penis in episode four. “Look, he’s trying to right the balance of how many naked women I’ve seen growing up on every television show and film,” Isaacs said. “Nudity is the thing. He uses it sometimes for comedy, sometimes for sex, sometimes the manipulation. It’s a good TV moment.”
Below, we compiled a list of nude scenes in The White Lotus.
Season one starts with a bang when Mark (Steve Zahn) asks his wife Nicole (Connie Britton) about his enlarged testicles. And whether it was Zahn’s real penis, he revealed it wasn’t all as it seems. “I didn’t even have to do that part,” Zahn told The Hollywood Reporter. “It’s somebody else wearing a prosthetic. That’s about as absurd as it gets, right?”
It’s the first sex scene of the series! Shane (Jake Lacy) and Rachel (Alexandra Daddario) are newlywed couples who do the deed once they get to the resort. But after Shane keeps on complaining about not getting the room that he desired, there’s some serious doubt about their relationship.
After going through most turbulent time as manager of the Hawaii branch, Armand tries to seduce employee (Lukas Gage) and eats his ass out, until Shane and Belinda walk in on them.
When Cameron is changing into his swim shorts in the season opener, Harper gets quite curious about her husband’s BFF. As to if the schlong was real, Theo James revealed on The Tonight Show that it wasn’t real. “I just wanted it not to be distracting. It needs to be ‘Regular Joe.’ Because the scene, you know, it’s not about the pee pee, it’s about power play and sex. It’s about whether he did it deliberately or whether it was an accident and what that means. She says, ‘I got you. Yeah, I got you. Regular Joe.’”
When James saw the prosthetic, he joked about the size, which according to Hickey was regular. “I mean, it’s bigger than that. It’s like she stole it off a donkey in the field!” he joked. ‘The thing is ginormous.”
When Portia leaves Albie (Adam DiMarco) for another bad guy (quite literally), he ends up sleeping with Lucia (Simona Tabasco) in a moment of vulnerability. She rides him in bed, with Albie not knowing that she’s also sleeping with his father.
Tanya finds that the people who she thought were cousins were actually fucking behind her back. Quentin (Tom Hollander) and Jack (Leo Woodall) posed to be cousins to get closer to Tanya and Portia, but they were really using each other’s bodies.
After Ethan (Will Sharpe) is skeptical about whether Harper (Aubrey Plaza) and Cameron (Theo James) hooked up when he was locked out of their room, he imagines the two having sex and the two stop once Ethan knocks on the door. But that’s without to say that they got really hot and steamy.
Tanya (Jennifer Coolidge) has steamy sex with Niccolo (Stefano Gianino) who poses full frontal before they do the deed.
The rambunctious one of the family, Saxon (Patrick Schwarzenegger) tells his brother Lochlan (Sam Nivola) that he was planning to masturbate and we see a glimpse of his butt in the ending scenes.
As for whether what we saw is all him, Schwarzenegger told Esquire, “Yes, that’s my real butt. No stand-in. Once I read the script, I knew what was coming, but before that, I didn’t.”
After a rough day on the resort, Chelsea (Aimee Lou Wood) and Rick (Walton Goggins) talk it out and before you know it, they are swept away in some roleplay. In the steamy scene, Rick undoes Chelsea’s top and exposes her breasts before kissing it.
Wood and Goggins used an intimacy coordinator while filming the scene and had a hand in choreographing it. “We were like, ‘This is what we think should happen. This is why we think it’s important.’ Because we don’t see a lot of tenderness from Rick to Chelsea the rest of the time,” Wood told Elle. “So we have to make sure that when they’re physical and intimate in that way, that you see the love. We don’t want it to be like a fucking gratuitous [sex scene]. We wanted it to be very tender.”
Timothy Ratliff’s empire is on the brink of collapse after the feds caught on with his company’s money laundering and bribery. In a brief moment of coping, he steals his wife Victoria’s (Parker Posey) Lorazepam. The matriarch grills her children Saxon (Patrick Schwarzenegger), Lochlan (Sam Nivola), and Piper (Sarah Catherine Hook) on who took her medication. After Tim lays back on his robe, his penis emerges and shocks the family into embarrassment.
“I don’t remember filming those scenes,” he joked with Decider. “I think it’s digital. I wasn’t there that day Isaacs wanted to pull off Mike White’s vision for the show as well as his intention for the scene. “Look, he’s trying to right the balance of how many naked women I’ve seen growing up on every television show and film,” Isaacs said. “Nudity is the thing. He uses it sometimes for comedy, sometimes for sex, sometimes the manipulation. It’s a good TV moment.”
