• Jason Isaacs has spent weeks drip feeding us cryptic gossip about season three of The White Lotus
  • And now the actor has hit back at ‘amateur Sherlocks’ on social media
  • But fans (rightly) pointed out that they would have nothing to talk about… had he not opened his mouth in the first place 
Jason Isaacs as troubled businessman Timothy in The White Lotus season 3.
Jason Isaacs as troubled businessman Timothy in The White Lotus season 3. Credit: Warner Bros Discovery

Let’s face it: we all love a bit of celebrity gossip – and Jason Isaacs is delivering it in bucketloads. 

The actor, 61, has been notoriously loose-lipped about what happened behind-the-scenes during filming for season three of The White Lotus.

Cryptically hinting towards cast rivalries and “lost” friendships, the star – who played Timothy Ratcliff throughout the third series, has now called out the “amateur Sherlock Holmes” online for speculating about the drama.

In a conversation on SiriusXM’s The Happy Hour, Isaacs said, “Nobody has the slightest clue what they’re talking about. People who think they’re onto something, and then it gets magnified because of a thousand other people. Nobody has any clue.”

He continued, “First of all, it’s none of your business. I’m just saying it wasn’t a holiday, and partly I started saying that because people think we were on a seven-month holiday, and believe me, it felt like work a lot of the time. 

“It was insanely hot and there’s all the normal social tensions you get anywhere. But for all of you [that] think you’ve cracked it by something you think someone has posted or is in a photo or not, you’re just so far from the truth, believe me.”

Jason Isaacs compares The White Lotus set to Lord of the Flies 

Isaacs’ response to online fans would be all well and good – if he wasn’t the one to have mentioned the cast tensions in the first place! 

In an interview with Vulture, he said, “It was like a cross between summer camp and Lord of the Flies but in a gilded cage. It wasn’t a holiday. Some people got very close, there were friendships that were made and friendships that were lost.”

While he didn’t elaborate on which friendships were “lost,” Isaacs said the experience was “all the things you would imagine with a group of people unanchored from their home lives on the other side of the world, in the intense pressure cooker of the working environment with eye-melting heat and insects and late nights.”

He went on, “They say in the show, ‘What happens in Thailand stays in Thailand,’ but there’s an off-screen White Lotus as well, with fewer deaths but just as much drama.”

Declining to elaborate, Isaacs added, “I became very close to some people and less close to others, but we still all had that experience together and there’s a certain level of discretion required.”

But he didn’t leave it there…

…as fans were also treated to another morsel of gossip from Isaacs back in February.

He told The Guardian, “It was a theatre camp, but to some extent an open prison camp: you couldn’t avoid one another. I don’t know if they spilled from on screen to off screen, or if it would have happened anyway.”

He continued, “There were alliances that formed and broke, romances that formed and broke, friendships that formed and broke. It’s a long period of time for people to be away from their family with an open bar and all the wildness being in Thailand allows.”

Isaacs added, “I was in some ways used to it, but within a couple of weeks my wife [Emma Hewitt] went, ‘Some of these people are freaking mad.’ I said, ‘No, it’s just a bunch of actors away on location, love. You’ve forgotten what it’s like.’”

Jason Isaacs opens his mouth again…

And during an interview with Sharp Magazine in February 2025, Isaacs opened his mouth once more. 

“There was a pressure cooker atmosphere, not just to the story we were telling, but to our own lives,” he said. “People are away from home. It’s hot, people are drinking wine at night. There’s an offscreen White Lotus as much as an onscreen White Lotus – just with slightly fewer body bags – to navigate and to add to the intensity of the whole experience, which is not something I’m used to. Normally, you go home.”

Isaacs continued his comments to The New York Times in March. 

“We were sticking pigs every day. No, but it wasn’t entirely blissful,” he went on. “Obviously people formed friendships, but we weren’t one great big homogenous happy family. 

“It was a large group of people away from home, unanchored from their normal lives. I’m not going to break ranks and say who did what to whom, but it certainly wasn’t a holiday.”

Fans go wild for Jason Isaacs’s comments.  

Fans couldn’t help but go wild for Isaacs’s most recent comments. 

“Starting the mess and then telling everybody to mind their business? Diva,” wrote one, as another added, “Forced to play a boring drugged out businessman, born to be a messy gossip queen who’s addicted to the drama.” 

Referencing his famous role as Lucius Malfoy in the Harry Potter franchise, someone else went on, “Such Slytherin behavior. I love it.”

Others hailed Isaacs’s new role as “a gossip queen”.

“He’s such a true diva,” one joked. “Like we’ve been needing more celebrities who just start shit for a while.”

Another added, “He said, ‘God forbid I try to keep the dying art of storytelling alive.’”

Someone else continued, “Stirring the pot and then gaslighting everyone by calling them nosey… very me coded.”

Others were desperate to feed Isaacs alcohol so he would spill even more secrets. 

“You know if you ran into him at a pub he’d spill tea,” they mused. Another agreed, “Time to drag this man out to brunch and feed him mimosas until he’s in tears.” 

Others simply blamed his star sign. “THIS IS THE MOST GEMINI PERSON I’VE EVER SEEN,” they said.

And some simply pointed out that “he made it everyone’s business”. 

“I love that we wouldn’t have even known about the cast drama if it weren’t FOR HIM,” they laughed. “*stirs the pot and then dips*.”

author avatar
Sophie Cockerham
Sophie Cockerham is a freelance journalist with more than seven years of experience. Her writing can be seen across titles such as Grazia, The Mail on Sunday, Femail, Metro, Stylist, RadioTimes.com, HuffPost, and the LadBible Group. Before starting her career, Sophie attended the University of Liverpool, where she studied English Language and Literature, before gaining her MA in Journalism on the NCTJ-accredited course at the University of Sheffield.
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