“White Lotus”: Jason Isaac on the character's fate in the finale

“Storytelling is magic,” said Jason Isaacs. “It's hand-held and offers a surprising ending where you don't see people coming.”

Isaacs, best known for playing the villains in “The Patriot”, “Peter Pan” and The Harry Potter Films, 61, was talking on a video call a few days before the “The White Lotus” season 3 finale. A eager amateur magician, he has already done some on-screen card tricks. His work on “White Lotus” is also a kind of commitment.

He plays Tim Ratliff of Durham, North Carolina. Tim's blood runs blue, just like the letters on his Duke T-shirt. (Duke reportedly is upset by the association.) Facing past misconduct and all the losses he inherited and worked, Tim overdoses his wife Benzo on his Thai leave and considers murder and suicide. His actor's gift tells him that he can make Tim attractive to a sweaty maelstrom of internal crisis.

In particular, there are ways that are misdirected. (Spoilers start now.) In Sunday's season finale, Tim tries to poison his family with a deadly batch of Piña Coladas. So that's a pleasant surprise.

Of course, Isaacs knew this from the start. “I read all the scripts,” he said. However, watching the finale with his castmates on Sunday, he felt strangely moved. “We all held each other's hands and wept looking at our eyes in a rather embarrassing way,” he said.

In a long chat just before the finale, and in a rushing chat right after it aired, Isaac was still wiping away tears, so he discussed the villain, accents, and the nastyness of on-screen nude. These are excerpts from the conversation.

Why did Tim ultimately decide not to poison his family?

Because he sees them and realizes how much he loves them. The reality of it breaks through the mist of drugs and fear and catastrophe that had filled his head for a long time. At that moment he loves them more than he wants them to die.

The title of the finale, “Amor Fati,” refers to Nietzsche's concept of embracing your destiny, which may not be much different from certain Buddhist teachings. How does it resonate with Tim?

I think he fully embraces that. Ironically, of all the characters who have arrived in Thailand, he is the closest character to those Buddhist principles. He gets a huge spiritual enlightenment.

Is Tim the villain for most of the season?

What is a villain? Tim is Tim. He made the wrong deal. Technically it was illegal. I'm sure many people are doing illegal things around him. It wasn't a big deal for him. Is he a villain when he fantasizes that he kills their family because of the shame he knows he will face? I think Mike White's story about the villain about writing is a misunderstanding of him as a humanist as a writer.

There, Mike created this character of a Southern Hedge Fund guy with a complete existential meltdown. And apparently he thought of you.

In fact, they first thought of someone else. He said, no, thank God. (Isaacs didn't name any other actors.) I had to audition. This was strange to me. Auditions are stressful. I walked into the room and slammed into the front of the video camera, tripped, and uttered. I was excited to get a job. Then they sent me the script and it gave me a pause. Because this was a man off the head of drugs that would make you a sopper. I wasn't sure if it could make it interesting. Or conveys the audience of what's going on in Tim's mind about panic, fear, the damage to reputation, and its existential anxiety.

I spoke to my psychiatrist brother and asked him what the effect of chugging Lorazepam all day long would be. He went, “You're going to be asleep.” I went, well, I'm not going to fly on TV. Mike was relieved, but not. He said, “Let's go on an adventure together. We'll come up with something. I won't let you get bored.”

Do you understand that Mike was watching “Southern Charm” to prepare?

Mike instructed me to see one of the characters from “Southern Charm.” I did it. I was also starting a session with one of the great dialect coaches, Liz Himmelstein. I knew he was from Durham and Durham has a rather distinctive accent. It's an old colonial hangover. Young people don't do that. The old man does that. Someone like Tim who wanted to sound like his grandfather would. As someone who loves accents, seeing someone online who doesn't know anything about Durham was tough for me to say, “He doesn't hear the South.” Accent right. Encouragingly, many people in Durham love it.

Did Duke see Tim getting mad at wearing Duke's gear?

I thought it was pretty hilarious. If you want to devastate your university, you have real-life alumni from people who do things much worse than Tim Ratliff. But I have my honorary degree from Duke.

Why can't you confide Tim inside and out?

What do you want to reveal? As we know, our lives are over. We will all be broken and poor. There is no house, car or phone. I'm in prison. Our last name is in ruins. In other words, it's hard to imagine for him.

This is the guy who was able to fix all the issues at all times. Because the problem wasn't that big because money and power couldn't crush it. But there's no way out of it. He's just trying to wipe out his brain. He tries to get as close to coma as he can with pills and alcohol. Those medicines will relax you for most people. For Tim, these drugs aren't working. He does not get peace.

How do you act?

We shot perfectly well, so that was my particular job. I had to explode my head with fear and layer the medicines I was trying to blur things out. I will prepare, research and accent as much as I can. Then I just try to be that person. I don't know what the acting is and I don't know how I do it. It's an animal's instinct.

Have you recently described this shoot as “The Lord of the Flies” in a golden cage? Have you become a feral?

We used to paste pigs on each day. No, but it wasn't totally blissful. Clearly people formed friendships, but we were not a big homogeneous happy family. It was a large group of people away from home who were not relieved of their normal lives. I'm not going to break the rank and say who did what to who, but it certainly wasn't a holiday.

How did you feel about being nude at 61?

Ah, I don't know. I can't even think about it, let alone talk about it. Sex is embarrassing. Naked is embarrassing. That's embarrassing at any age. But it's heartbreaking, terrifying, murderous, and difficult to commit suicide. Undressing my clothes is just physical. In other words, it's as scary and annoying as the people who ask me to get naked on the streets. But it's all part of the job.

Have you made me think about your own family, your own destiny by playing Tim?

I didn't need the “white lotus” to make them think about them. I always think about them, especially as my kids grow up. As a parent, and you know that it's impossible not to think about someone getting older, and you're closer to the end than you start.

Will Tim ever stay at the White Lotus Resort again?

I don't think he has the resources. I think he'll be completely wiped out, but at that moment I feel it's okay for him. He looks forward to being a part of humanity and doesn't feel he needs to be better than anyone else. When he sees the water, and finally, seeing the water flying through the sky and joining the sea again, some of him feel less lonely than he ever felt.