Sam Nivola on ‘The White Lotus’ Finale, That Blender Scene and Lochlan’s Shattered Relationship With Saxon

Sam Nivola on 'The White Lotus' finale, filming Lochlan's near-death scene and that blender.

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SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers for Season 3 finale of “The White Lotus,” now streaming on Max.

Who knew Chekhov’s gun would be a protein shake?

In the Season 3 finale of “The White Lotus” dear, sweet, people-pleasing Lochlan Ratliff (Sam Nivola) nearly ended his vacation a day early after he downed a smoothie filled with fruit from the “suicide tree” outside his family’s palatial villa. Mike White, the show’s creator, has planted the seeds for Lochlan’s ill-fated attempts to pack on some muscle from the very first episode, when hotel worker Pam (Morgana O’Reilly) warned the family to avoid the poisonous fruit that was growing just outside their front door. Throw in some ominous shots of a blender and endless chatter about protein shakes courtesy of Lochlan’s older brother and idol, Saxon (Patrick Schwarzenegger), and it was pretty clear that these powdered drinks would be a major plot point.

And yet, in an episode with a very high body count (RIP Rick and Chelsea), White ultimately spared Lochlan. As he throws up by the side of the pool, so enfeebled he can’t scream for help, Lochlan starts to hallucinate. He’s underwater, looking up at the outlines of four people. That’s when his father Timothy Ratliff (Jason Isaacs), waking up from a deep, Lorazepam-induced sleep, looks outside to see his youngest son collapsed on the patio, hovering near death. He fears the worst, but it turns out Lochlan isn’t as gravely ill as he thought. He coughs up a little more of the poisoned protein shake and stares up at Timothy. “I think I just saw God,” he tells his dad, who is cradling him in his arms.

Popular on Variety Courtesy of Stefano Delia/HBO

Lochlan’s resurrection is good news for Timothy, who was responsible for almost killing his son after he whipped up some lethal cocktails (ingredients: rum, pina colada mix and the aforementioned poison fruit), but thought the better of it at the last minute as they sipped, knocking their glasses out of their hands while lamely explaining that the “coconut milk is off.”

It also brings Nivola’s arc, which included a sleepover at a Buddhist monastery with his sister Piper (Sarah Catherine Hook) and a boat party that ended with him jerking off his brother Saxon, to a satisfying conclusion. The role has catapulted the 21-year-old actor, who had previously played supporting roles in Noah Baumbach’s “White Noise” and Netflix’s Nicole Kidman miniseries “The Perfect Couple,” to a new level of celebrity.

Nivola spoke with Variety shortly after the latest season of “The White Lotus” ended with the Ratliffs’ bidding farewell to the resort and sailing off to an uncertain future where Tim’s financial misdeeds mean that they are about to get used to fewer creature comforts.

Me too!

Totally. I have to be honest, now that it’s all done and I can say what I want, I was much more loose-lipped about it than I should have been. I told a lot of my friends and my parents, but they are all people who I trust with my life, so I thought they could keep a secret.

Weirdly, it was fun. I’ve never gotten the chance to die in a show. And it’s an interesting thing, because obviously it’s something that I’ve never experienced in real life. So it’s fun to act things out that you have no idea what the actual experience is like. And it was bittersweet, because over the course of that shoot Jason really felt like my father. He’s one of my best friends. It was hard not to burst into tears while he was holding me and screaming. I had to just stay completely limp. But it was funny, because he kept having to slap me to try and wake me up. He was like, [Nivola slips into an uncanny imitation of Isaacs’ accent] “I mean, I think I have to do this to be more real about the story here. I need to really try to wake you up.” I was like, “Yeah, totally. I understand.” Between every take, he’d go, “I love you. I’m really sorry.”

No, that’s really funny. I just came for a screening for the finale, where I watched it for the first time, and then we went straight to a Q&A afterwards. So this is my first time on my phone since it aired.

I’ve got a 15-year-old sister who sends me a lot of it. I’m on Instagram. But I’m not on TikTok or Twitter, which where a lot of the loudest reactions come from. But it’s totally surreal having all this discourse about about you. It’s fun seeing people’s response and the funny phrases they come up with to describe these things.

When we were shooting, we were always trying to think what’s gonna be the thing that people love. Everyone knew Parker [Posey’s] accent was gonna be an immediate classic. She’s so funny and ridiculous, there was no way people weren’t gonna love that.

It checks out. Saxon’s a healthier character than Lochlan. It’s really tragic, because the way that Lochlan describes himself in that scene is just exactly right. He’s just a “people pleaser,” and he just wants to make everyone happy, and if he feels like he’s not making people happy, he feels alone. He is alone. He obviously goes about that in the wrong way. But it’s tragic that no one can forgive him for that. Basically that conversation, I think, is what leads him to make a protein shake, because he’s trying to feel closer to his brother who just rejected him. So he’s like, “I’m gonna try to go to the gym and workout or whatever.” Then he makes the shake, and that’s what almost killed him.

Their relationship is irreparably damaged. I don’t think they’ll ever be as close. I don’t know if it’s like they’ll never talk again — I think they’ll probably suppress it and try to forget it never happened. But you can’t forget something like that happened. It’s too awful and traumatizing.

I think he was. We talked about that a lot when we’re making it, because it’s a very pointed decision, the fact that Jason doesn’t give me the cocktail when he makes it for everyone else. He really does think that I’m sort of the only one who wouldn’t care. I think he thought that me and Piper were both the two members of the family that were more down to earth and connected with reality and didn’t use the money as a crutch. And then halfway through the episode, you find out that Piper is not that way at all, and she’s a lot more like her mother. There’s lots of bad things about Lochlan, but one good thing is that he’s just more focused on figuring himself out than anything else.

I don’t think he’s made any. There’s a moment when he comes back to life and he says, “I think I just saw God.” And you think oh maybe he found the answer. But I don’t think he did. He’s going through the phases of trying to figure out what his thing is and he still doesn’t know. That’s the realism of the show. Some people are changed by their experience at this hotel and all the fucked up shit that happens. And some people just aren’t. And that’s like life. People change, but people also stay the same, depending on who you are and what their circumstances are.

That wasn’t in the script. I just saw that part of the scene for the first time, those hallucinations. If I had to guess, I’d say, he loves his family, and that’s what he’s thinking about as he’s dying — the people he loves. But of course, it’s, there’s a little bit of a sort of dramatic irony in there, given his weird relationship with all of them.

Jason loves to say, “We’re all fucked.” He was like, “What job is Saxon gonna get after this?” I kind of agree. If there’s anything that the last episode proved, it’s that they’re all kind of incapable of living without money, except maybe me. I think I would Lochlan will be ok with the money, but I think he’s got a whole host of other problems to deal with.

He’s in the midst of an identity crisis. He just jerked his brother off. He’s totally lost.

I don’t think so, because I think if he did, he would tell someone, and then they’d be talking about that on the boat home. He just thought he got food poisoning or something like, which is not uncommon when you’re from America and you’re traveling abroad.

It was a 12-hour time difference to New York. So you aren’t in touch with people very much. There’s not very much distraction. You’re fully just engulfed by these characters. The only people you see are the people that are playing your family members. And we got so, so close. We still are. It’s also surreal and weird, and because the lifestyle that the characters in the show lead is very fucked up. That’s the point. It’s how money corrupts people. You start to feel that yourself when you’re living in a luxury hotel for seven months.

I have been in North Carolina for the past month shooting a movie, so I was far away from a lot of things. But when I went back to New York for one weekend to do a photo shoot, and I went out on St. Patrick’s Day with my girlfriend, we had to call it a night very quickly because I was getting stopped by people on the street. That’s the first time that’s ever happened to me in my life. And it’s so cool that random people that you’ve never met, like what you’re doing enough to take time out of their day to say that to you. It’s so moving and really lovely. But it also feels weird in terms of privacy. I was on an airplane the other day taking a nap, and some guy woke me up to take a picture with me. That was invasive.

I doubt he will, but I’ll go anywhere Mike asks me to. I think that he wants to keep the common thread extending from Tanya. The whole thing is her story as it relates to her money. If I had to guess, I’d say Nick Duvernay [who plays Belinda’s son] is gonna be the next one to come back, because he and Belinda made off with all the money.

That’s the least of his worries.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

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