Jake Lacy Says Aloha to ‘The White Lotus’

This interview includes spoilers for Sunday’s season finale of “The White Lotus.”

Before Jake Lacy landed in Hawaii to shoot “The White Lotus,” he had only received the first script of what was at the time a six-episode limited series. (HBO recently renewed it for a second season.) He knew a character had died — a cardboard coffin of human remains was loaded onto a plane. But who was it?

“Mike White [the show’s creator, writer and director] was like, ‘All these limited series start with a body,’” Lacy said. “So there’s an element of narrative satire along with the social satire. It’s like, If a dead body is what you want, then we’ll start with a dead body. We’re making fun of the device that is part of this very popular narrative format.”

“The White Lotus” doesn’t deal with its opening mystery right away, and only gives us a few clues at first. Before a backward time jump to a week’s events at a Hawaiian luxury resort called the White Lotus, we see that Lacy’s character, Shane, seems disturbed both by the dead body and by a friendly question put to him regarding the whereabouts of his wife Rachel, (played by Alexandra Daddario). Hmmm.

“I kept asking myself, ‘When do I kill my wife?’” Lacy said. He assumed he was the killer, and she would be his victim. From the character’s perspective, the couple’s honeymoon had gone off the rails the minute they failed to get the prized Pineapple Suite they booked, and the hotel manager Armond (Murray Bartlett) put them in the Palm Suite (no plunge pool, but a nicer view) instead. Things soured further thanks to Shane’s temper tantrums and Armond’s odd responses to them.

“Either one could back down,” Lacy said, “but they both keep upping the ante.”

The actor recalls reaching the last pages of the final script — the scene in which Armond slips into Shane’s room to leave a parting gift in his suitcase — and pumping his fists with glee. “I was like, ‘Oh, this is it!’ How did I not see this coming four episodes ago? I can’t believe we’re going to have a guy defecate in my suitcase and then I murder him!”

During a phone conversation, Lacy, who was in Vermont, discussed the series’s social satire, male Karens and Season 2 possibilities. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.

HBO just announced a renewal of “The White Lotus” for a second season, to focus on a new location, new staff and new guests.

This is the first I’m hearing of it! I’m thrilled. I hope I get to have Shane in the background at the pool, complaining about his daiquiri.

You think he would go back to a White Lotus resort? He wouldn’t rather avoid the chain entirely?

I don’t think shame or embarrassment are in his wheelhouse. He might be haunted by what happened and make up some excuse why he’s not going back, but it would be out of paranoia. I think he assumes people are whispering, “That’s the guy who killed the guy.” The more brazen Shane move is to play the victim: “I should be able to stay at any one of these places for free, anywhere in the world, for the rest of my life, because of what they put me through! I should have sued them for this!” That might actually be his mentality, to think he’s got the short end of the stick as a multimillionaire 30-year-old. He doesn’t know he’s the villain, not the victim.

Shane appears to escape all accountability and just walk away from the death he caused. On the other hand, Kai (Kekoa Kekumano) will likely be severely punished for stealing the Mossbachers’ jewelry.

I think that’s intentional. In this “White Lotus”-reality, here’s how one class of person is treated by the criminal justice system and here’s how someone with access, money and privilege is treated. Yes, you would normally be told, “Don’t leave the island,” or “Don’t leave the state.” But Shane’s dad probably called in a favor — a senator? a judge? That’s how at times a certain level of this world operates. Kai will be a felon, but Shane will not have to serve any time — and Shane will still paint himself as a victim, because he might become a social pariah. He might not be invited to summer parties in the Hamptons because of this.

How replicable do you think the show’s concept is as it continues as an anthology series? How many oblivious rich people can we take?

If Mike White didn’t have more to offer at this same level, he would go do something else. But you could do something more like “Upstairs, Downstairs,” with the second season being more about the service end of things.

People have been talking about how the show is about entitlement, but Mike says it’s more about how money corrupts the dynamics of every relationship, whether it’s a business relationship, a friendship or a marriage. Tanya [Jennifer Coolidge] unfairly dangles this hope to Belinda [Natasha Rothwell] of having her own spa, and it’s messed up how quickly she snatches that hope away. But you also see how Belinda changes in the face of this opportunity. Nobody’s free from it, except maybe Quinn [Fred Hechinger] and the guys in the outrigger canoe, because none of them are making money from the ocean. There is a certain equality in that relationship.

The story also seems to be about complicity. When Rachel joins Shane at the airport, she is essentially accepting his objectionable qualities in exchange for the benefits he provides. But since she spent the night in another hotel room, do you think she knew that Shane killed Armond?

Oh, man! I always assumed that she knew, but maybe she just heard through the hotel, “Oh, somebody killed somebody.” Or maybe Shane’s mother Kitty [Molly Shannon] called her and told her. But it would be a wonderful scene to show her finding out after they get on the plane. He’d be like, “I killed that guy,” and she’d be like, “What are you talking about?! Oh no, no, no, no! I thought you were just rude to waiters!”

But yeah, she’s giving Shane a get-out-of-jail-free card with her decision to stay. It’s just short of being in abusive relationship. The conclusion she’s come to is that having money is better than not having money in a capitalist society, but that’s not a healthy choice. You want to see her follow her heart, but that’s not what happens here. She makes a pretty pragmatic choice as to what she wants her life to be. Maybe she regrets it later. Maybe she walks away. But for the moment, she is settling, essentially, and the cost is the loss of some sense of self.

One of the things Shane and Rachel fight about is having sex on their honeymoon. Isn’t that when you’re supposed to have the most sex of your life?

Some of what we shot didn’t make it in. We had one scene where Shane wanted to have sex, and Rachel wasn’t quite saying no, but she wasn’t in the mood. It’s not assault, but they took it out because it ended up looking far more aggressive than what they had intended. The purpose of the story wasn’t meant to be that Shane sexually assaulted his partner as much as he was not reading when she was in the mood or not.

Some of those references about how sexed up he is maybe made more sense with those kinds of pieces in there. I think there is a multitude of things happening under that, too. She’s saying, “My concern is that is all you want from me.” She’s not saying, “This is too much sex.”

If it were a white woman trying to get Armond fired, we’d have a name for her: Karen. I don’t know if we have a male equivalent of that name, but here it seems like “Shane” might work.

I hope it does! The Karen thing is like, “I won’t stand for this,” as if they’re taking the side of justice. And Shane’s thing is, “Don’t make me make this ugly.” There is this aggression there, like, “I won’t be treated this way!” It’s the same in Shane as it is in a Karen.

At the same time, Armond gave him the wrong room. I mean, these rooms cost $26,000 a night. It’s as if you bought a car, and they were like, “Oh, we just know this is the one you wanted,” and you’re like, “This is definitely not the car I paid for.” He booked a room, and he feels they should give him that room. Even if his behavior is increasingly inappropriate, and the way he treats people is terrible, what he wants seems pretty fair: “I want what I paid for.” Not that that excuses his behavior. In a perfect world, he would chill out and let it go.

Who do you think was the worst?

I feel like people are going to say Shane, but that’s my guy! I still have a little empathy for him. I feel like most of these characters are pretty unpalatable. In actions alone, Shane is the worst, for sure. No one else kills a guy. But Paula [Brittany O’Grady], as honest and progressive as she claims to be, is an accomplice to a felony, and when the rubber meets the road, she gets back on a plane. She doesn’t say anything. And Rachel will put up with Shane if it means she gets the nice dinners.

To me, a lot of the show is saying is, “How clean are you? How innocent are you? How free of guilt are you?” Whether it’s the opportunities you’ve had that others haven’t, or your privilege, or money, or the way you look, or the color of your skin — if you’re in a transactional world, how clean are you?

The hope is that all this gets reflected back to the audience: “You probably do some of the same things, don’t you? On some level?” Whether it’s at the Four Seasons, the carwash, in line at McDonald’s or at Starbucks, how much expectation do you have for what the world owes you and how you deserve to be treated?

That is the part of the show that most intrigues me. It’s less about who’s worse, and more about who’s kidding themselves the most.