The 'White Lotus' Cast Talk Season 3, Revealing Scenes and Working with Mike White

Season 3 of "The White Lotus" has everything: a body, a gang of spoiled (sometimes deplorable) rich people, and nudity – much of it male.

In one early scene, a shy, virginal guest, 18-year-old Lochlan (Sam Nivola), endures his horndog older brother, Saxon, trying to explain to him the manly arts. Saxon's inappropriate comments touch on internet porn and a complaint about not having privacy to jerk off. As Lochlan watches, Saxon rises from bed, grabs his laptop, and walks, naked, to the bathroom.

The way Lochlan watches his brother offers a clue that perhaps the young man will be this season's queer representation – and who knows what might happen once he bursts out of his shell?

Indeed, Nivola comes in for his own nude scene later in the season. But the fact he was working with the show's out creator, writer, and director Mike White, set him (and Schwarzenegger, too) at ease, the 21-year-old actor said during a press conference that took place just before the show's Season 3 Feb. 10 premiere event at Paramount Studios in Los Angeles.

"It was my first nude scene I've ever done," Nivola, the son of showbiz parents Alessandro Nivola and Emily Mortimer, related in the segment of the press conference dedicated to himself, Jason Isaacs, Parker Posey, Sarah Catherine Hook, and Schwarzenegger, who collectively portray the Ratliff family. "It was my first time kissing anyone on camera, ever, and, of course, that comes along with a lot of fear and anxiety."

"I'm already an anxious person about just acting," Nivola added, "but you've got to do it naked? It's intense, but Mike was... I mean..." The young actor cast about for words before explaining, "There's a few people that I would trust more with my footage of my buttocks than Mike White. He made us feel so comfortable."

Family Time

Schwarzenegger, too, intimated some nerves about the premiere, which was set to follow the press conference, and to which his family was coming.

The 31-year-old son of action star Arnold Schwarzenegger was asked if his family had "seen anything yet," giving the lightning-witted Isaacs (who plays the Ratliff paterfamilias, Timothy) an opening to jump in with, "Well, they saw him when he was born."

"He's quick, huh?" Schwarzenegger grinned at his castmate's joshing. "Episode one's pretty safe, though," he added, before acknowledging that "there's some uncomfortable conversations between us" (his and Nivola's characters) "in the bed that are a little weird to show in front of your family."

And things are only going to get more... weird... later in the season, Schwarzenegger suggested.

"Episode five and six, there'll be some times that I take some bathroom breaks," he said, "or maybe I won't watch that episode."

Making a lighthearted moment of the subject, Schwarzenegger, referencing the fact that both he and Nivola are the children of Hollywood actors, joked, "We both asked our parents" for advice on how to approach their birthday suit scenes.

But, Schwarzenegger said, "overall... I just put a lot of trust into Mike."

"I mean, obviously, you know, doing certain nudity stuff is different when it's a writer, director, or someone that you don't know or don't trust, or haven't seen their work," he explained. "But you know what Mike has done with it in the past seasons, and how he always loves to kind of push the envelope and continue to excite... I didn't have any hesitations towards it."

Even the jocular Isaacs gets in on the action in the new season, with a quick glimpse that occurs in front of the entire family as his bath robe falls open – perhaps in thematic consonance with how Timothy, a major figure in the financial world, is "the big swinging dick up there in North Carolina," as Isaacs described his character.

Describing himself as "horrified," the English actor, who dons a Southern accent for the show, said, "I didn't know I was naked in the thing. I'm very upset! I don't remember that day at all!"

As his castmates laughed along with the journalists in attendance, Isaacs added: "The truth is, it wasn't Mike. It's in my contract. I insist on it every show."

Girls' Trip

Carrie Coon (who plays Laurie, a high-powered attorney), Michelle Monaghan (who plays Jaclyn, a well-known actress), and Leslie Bibb (who plays Kate) formed their own group for one segment of the press conference. The actors play a trio of longtime girlfriends taking a trip to get reacquainted after years of pursuing their own successful careers, but the images they each convey to the others of their lives start to crack and fray, in part due to the gossip they share behind each other's backs. Laurie drinks and might not have gotten a partnership at her firm; Jaclyn talks about an actor boyfriend named Dave but spends no time with him and can't seem to get him on the phone. One of the three might even have voted for Trump, in the ghastliest betrayal of all.

"My husband has a quote in one of his plays where he says new friends are better than old friends," Coon, who is married to playwright Tracy Letts, said. "And, you know, we were joking that if these women had walked into the villa and said, 'Listen, this is what's going on with me right now,' and started off in this honest and authentic way, that it would have been a very different vacation."

"But that's not what happened," the "Gilded Age" star went on to add. "Everyone's pretending, and I think I'm afraid everyone can relate to pretending to be living an extraordinary life, whereas everyone's actually feeling left out."

"I really think that it's a testament to these unrealistic expectations that we have for each other, and the way that we've been socially conditioned to constantly judge ourselves, to be competitive with ourselves and one another, and always looking at each other and ourselves and saying, 'Am I enough? Can I do be doing it better, and is the grass always greener?'" Monaghan agreed.

"You see these women come together really putting their best feet forward, and this slow boil starts to happen, and you start to see that slow reveal and that unraveling of women trying to defend their life's choices and really... really try to be perceived as having this perfect life when, really, they're just going through their own lives and their own vulnerabilities."

As an actorly exercise, it was a welcome challenge.

"It requires a great deal of vulnerability, which is very hard to do," Bibb said, "and also... it feels so intimate [in] your relationship."

"We were the first ones to shoot," Bibb added, "like we got to Thailand first, we shot all of our villa scenes. We were all shot out of a cannon at the same time together... So that that was like our diving board with which we jumped off of into the swimming pool of 'The White Lotus.'"

Leave it to Valentin

Sexier swimming pools awaited... and not just metaphorically. In one episode, bored by the spa retreat vibe of the Thailand White Lotus and having been referred to a more "fun" resort by their hot Russian butler, Valentin (Arnas Fedaravicius), only to discover that it caters to an elderly crowd, the three more or less abduct Valentin and demand that he show them a good time. To please them, Valentin rounds up a few friends (also hot, and also from Russia) and they hit the town on the night of a full moon festival. Drinking, cavorting, and a jealous girlfriend all figure into an evening where the centerpiece is a wild, and somewhat naked, pool party.

Coon related how "our 'Russian gentlemen'... their first night was the pool. That was their first day of work. They had to just, like, strip off and jump in a pool at three in the morning, and we'd already been there working."

Hello Again!

There's a familiar face among the many new characters introduced in the new season of "The White Lotus." Natasha Rothwell reprises the role of spa worker Belinda, who, in the Maui-set inaugural season, formed a friendship with Jennifer Coolidge's erratic, wealthy heiress, Tanya.

(Spoiler alert!) Coolidge, of course, returned for Season 2, but did not survive it. Rothwell laughed off the suggestion that a similar fate (a kind of returnee's curse) might befall Belinda, and indeed that character does seem to find her way to a position where such an outcome could be plausible – though, then again, so do most, if not all, of the other characters.

Asked whether she missed Coolidge when working on the new season, given their Season 1 storyline, Rothwell said: "I do think it is a love letter to Tanya, in a way. You know, her spirit lives on, if not in direct impression."

The "Insecure" writer and star added that she and Coolidge "have kept in touch. She actually sent me a pretty great sort of pep talk before I, you know, embarked on to season 3, and I went to her house for her epic Halloween party." Rothwell went on to call Coolidge "just a vibe" and proclaim herself "obsessed with her."

Rothwell was full of praise, as was the entire cast, when it came to White. "I wish more directors were like him," the "How to Die Alone" creator said. "He's so open and collaborating, and he's very aware he's not a Black woman, so being able to work with him on pages and pitch ideas to help ground the character and make Belinda as authentic as possible is such a dream."

Identity as a Theme

Mike White himself made an appearance to discuss the new season, including how the departure of Jennifer Coolidge was a primary reason for bringing Belinda back.

"We're sad that Jennifer died in this last [season]," the Emmy-winning writer-director said, "and how do we keep her alive in some way? I had this idea that maybe by bringing Belinda back, we could do that."

That wasn't the only reason, though.

"I think people were kind of bummed by Belinda's final moments in the first season where everybody's off to [whatever's next for them], and she's still working at the hotel, and her dreams were dashed," the "School of Rock" writer explained.

A major theme of the new season is identity‚ which fits in nicely with an overall Buddhism-infused spirituality. White took note of how that's a theme that's been present all along.

"Something that keeps coming up in the show - and in this [season], it definitely is more made explicit - [is] people wanting to be their ideal self and to be more than the base kind of animal creatures that they can be," the "Despicable Me 4" writer mused. "And then there's this kind of antic force that keeps pulling them back out to [a more primitive mindset]."

Thailand, he went on to add, is an ideal setting for the story. "Obviously, it's a very complex country, with so much going on... It really does have all the temples and the spiritual dimension. But then it also is known for Bangkok and the wild nights, and so it felt like that would be a great canvas to explore those themes, because people either go there for one or the other, or a mixture of both."

"The White Lotus," Season 3, premieres on Max Feb. 16.