Patrick Schwarzenegger: How Much My Life Has Changed After White Lotus

Great to have you on the show. Thank you for having me. No, thank you for being here. Now, it's fair to say I have the whole world talking. You do. With the show and your character especially. Yes. But it's only like, what was, seven weeks or something in? Yeah. How much has your life changed in seven weeks? It's changed a lot, I guess. Now even walking here in Sydney, you have people just running up to you and asking you who dies. That's a normal Sydney thing, though, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's how we say it a lot. Yeah. And people are just yelling Saxon across the street and it's weird. We should point out that's the name of the character. Yeah. Exactly. It's been surreal. It's been fun. Yeah, this role has been such a turning point for you, right? And we've actually got this great clip of you telling your family, you got the role. Yeah. What do you think we're going to act like? Oh, no. Happy New Year! Are you going to make me cry? Oh, no. Oh, my God. People might think it's a bit of an overnight success, but you've been slugging it out behind the scenes for a long time. So what does this mean for you? I have. It's been, it's surreal is really the only way to put it. I mean, as you saw with my, my mom, how excited she was, we became obsessed with the show during COVID. You know, I lived with my mom, me, my fiance, my mom, which was quite a dynamic, us three in the house. We lived together and we became obsessed with season one and then we watched season two together. And they were, every time we would watch it, they were like, why didn't you audition for that role? Why aren't you in this show? Why are you blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so finally I got the opportunity to audition for season three and it came true. And, but at the same time, they'd make you sign your life away. You can't tell anybody. You can't tell anyone you've even auditioned. No, you can't tell people cause they don't want anything getting out. They don't want any information. And so I was so nervous to tell anybody. And then at the table, I was acting very awkward because I found out that I got the job but I couldn't say anything. And then my mom was like, what's, are you guys pregnant? And then that's when I finally said, I told them. And my fiance was videoing it. So now we've got, we've got to talk about Saxon. There's people that, this man that people keep yelling at you about. He is, is it fair to say he's a bit of a douche? Yes. Yeah. No, his character. No, he's got douche-like F-boy qualities. He's kind of a little bit unlikable. Is it hard to know that they wrote that and you auditioned and they were like, that's the guy. Yeah. They just, I didn't even say a word and they were like that. I mean, Mike's too rich of a writer. He's too smart to have this guy be kind of one note. This kind of douche, what you would say, or F-boy, whatever. And I think people are starting to recognize that, you know, once the fifth and sixth and later episodes have come. And it's funny because the first weeks, yeah. People would always tell me how much they hated me. And then now they're telling me they feel bad for me. And they're like, they sympathize with me and all these different things. So it's been a funny kind of rollercoaster of how much people love to hate me, I guess. Pity is definitely better than hate. Yes, exactly, exactly. You must've grown up, you've got movies in your blood. You must've grown up going to movie sets with Ted Arnie. I mean, what was that like? I mean, such a famous name. I love that. It was, yeah, I mean, it was, I guess that's how I was opened up to the industry was like, that was, I know it's not normal, but for me, it was like, that was normal. That was what I would do is go to set with my dad. He would take me out of school early a lot of the time and I would go. And this was back when everything filmed in Los Angeles. And I was on set with him and we would have a break and he would take me in the golf cart and we would drive over to, you know, King Kong or to the Jaws ride or to Jurassic. I know for a kid, I mean, for anybody, it was amazing. And so that was just kind of how I got introduced to the film world and became kind of obsessed with it. So can you remember when you said to yourself, I'd really like to do that as a job? I think I started when I was a kid doing plays and when I was, you know, seven, eight, nine, 10, et cetera. And then when I got a little bit older, I started to play around. Did I want to do it? My parents really wanted me to go to school and get a degree. And then once that kind of happened, I said, you know what? I'm going to go and give acting a full-time shot. Hey, just very quickly. I don't know if we have time for this, but someone who knows you is very keen to meet you. Guy Montgomery is a comedian. He was on the show last week. This is a play. Who are you? This is Guy Montgomery. He has you. He has you tattooed on him. Legit. Come for a beer with me, man. Hit me up, Instagram DMs, you and me. It's what the people want to see. That's all I'm going to say. That's incredible. I told him. I said, if you get my face on the other cheek, I will take you for a beer. He probably will, though. But now we're going to have to look at the evidence. You can write Lotus with the O in it. Your move, Guy. Season three of The White Lotus is available now on Max. In the meantime, would you please thank Patrick Schwarzenegger.