The White Lotus, HBO Max’s premiere satirical comedy-drama series, is finally back on our screens, this time starring Sex Education’s Aimee Lou Wood, Carrie Coon and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s son, Patrick.
A creepy incest storyline has already been explored and one actor has explained how they experienced a ‘career first’ during an age-gap sex scene.
The third season of Mike White’s deliciously dark TV programme, set in Ko Samui, Thailand, follows on from its explosive second season in Sicily.
In The White Lotus’ sophomore outing, Aubrey Plaza, 40, played employment lawyer Harper Spiller, the wife of Ethan (played by Will Sharpe), who is on holiday with her husband’s college friend, Cameron Sullivan (Theo James) and his spouse Daphne (Meghann Fahy).
We won’t spoil anything major but there’s some stifling sexual tension between Harper and Cameron, who at one point even drops his trousers in front of her.
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The moment happens in the season two premiere when Cameron, whose luggage never arrived at the swanky establishment, arrives at Harper’s hotel room so that he may borrow a pair of her hubby’s swimming shorts.
Harper initially thinks Cameron is going to get changed in another room, so is in for quite a shock when he decides to drop his kegs and get fully naked in front of her.
In a 2022 interview, James, 40, questioned whether his character whipping off his pants in front of his friend’s wife was ‘easy breezy’ or a calculated’ move.
“On the day, we had to figure out what that was because the original derivation of it, it's kind of full-frontal, if you know what I mean,” he told Entertainment Weekly.
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“We shot that and it felt too much, too aggressive. What we came to is a bit more opaque, and that's exactly what Mike does so well. You're never sure a hundred percent of the characters' intentions.”
It was later revealed that the changing scene saw James donning a prosthetic penis—a decision made so that White Lotus viewers weren’t distracted.
The Gentlemen star told The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon viewers: “I said, ‘Honestly, 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.”
He went on to joke that the plastic penis was so large it had been modelled on that of a donkey remarking how ‘ginormous’ it was.
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Due to the buzz around the size of James’ large plastic penis, Plaza was asked to give her two cents on the scene during an appearance on The Drew Barrymore Show.
She claimed that James ‘wanted to have the biggest’ penis possible, contradicting remarks he made about it being a ‘Regular Joe’.
“He wanted to have the biggest one or whatever. He wanted to have the big one and he got it,” she announced.
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“Guys are so weird with that stuff.”
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Neither Plaza nor James is in the third season of The White Lotus, due to it being an anthology series.
However, during the February 16 premiere of the third season, Jon Gries’ Greg made a surprise return.
Previously, he met and married Tanya McQuoid (Jennifer Coolidge) in season one of the series, and it was revealed in Sicily that he had actually been conning her.
How will his season three appearance go? Only time will tell.
New episodes of The White Lotus 3 drop on NOW in the UK every Monday.
Topics: Aubrey Plaza, Celebrity, Entertainment, TV, The White Lotus
Ella Scott