Harry Potter legend Jason Isaacs plays family patriarch Timothy Ratliff in the third season of HBO’s hit The White Lotus, but he didn’t land the role straight away
Jason Isaacs has opened up about how he got his role in The White Lotus.
The beloved 61-year-old actorplayed Lucius Malfoy in the Harry Potter movies – and recently revealed he gave his own character a dramatic makeover that was very different to what was originally intended. However, his latest role is worlds away from Hogwarts.
Jason portrays family patriarch Timothy Ratliff in the third series of the HBO hit – a man who turns to his wife Parker’s Lorazepam to cope with the fallout of an illegal financial venture. He also accidentally exposes himself on screen in the fourth episode – a scene a lot of people are still talking about.
The BAFTA-nominated star hasn’t needed to audition for his roles for years, but this changed before landing his job as Timothy in Mike White’s black comedy-drama series. He revealed he had to audition for the programme and was blown away by the script.
“I actually had to audition, which is something I’ve not done for decades,” Jason told Vogue magazine. “But then I got a phone call and they said ‘They’d like you and here are the scripts’, and I read them and I thought, ‘Oh sh**, this is some big acting required'”.
It turns out Jason’s on-screen family in The White Lotus have a very real inspiration behind them – the cast of reality show Southern Charm. Aside from Jason’s Timothy, the Ratliff family is comprised of mum Victoria (Parker Posey), oldest son Saxon (Patrick Schwarzenegger), daughter Piper (Sarah Catherine Hook) and youngest son Lochlan (Sam Nivola).
Southern Charm, produced by Bravo and which airs on Hayu in the UK, follows the lives of friends living in Charleston, South Carolina. In The White Lotus, the Ratliffs come from Durham, North Carolina.
In a recent interview, Sam, who plays the youngest of the clan, told People: “Mike [White, series creator] told us to go watch Southern Charm. In fact, Jason Isaacs, who played our dad, kind of modelled his whole accent and character off of [that cast]”.
Jason recently admitted he meddled in the plans for Lucius before taking on the role of Draco Malfoy’s dad in the Potter films. Discussing Lucius’ look in a TikTok video with Esquire, he said “none of it was there originally”.
He said: “I went to the set before shooting and they showed me sketches of a guy in a pinstripe suit with hair like this (gestures at his own hair). And I went to the hair and make-up department and I went, ‘I was hoping for a wig’ and they went, ‘Well Dumbledore has a wig’ and I went, ‘Well it’s a one-wig film for Warner Bros?’ and they went, ‘No but why would you want one?’
“I said, ‘Because he wouldn’t want his hair like a Muggle. I’d want long blond hair, you know, my son has blond hair'”. He went on: “Then I went to the costume department and they said, ‘Well we’ve got you in a businessman’s suit’ and I said, ‘Really I was hoping to wear fur and velvet and ermine and have capes’ and they went, ‘Why? He’s a businessman’. I said, ‘No he’s not, he’s a rich aristocrat and he would never want to dress like a Muggle!'”
There was nothing in the department that fit Jason’s vision, but he did spot a curtain and asked if he could borrow it. Wrapping it around himself he went down to the set in his tinfoil wig. When he got there he approached director Chris Columbus, who asked: “What is that on your head?” and questioned whether the star had seen the sketches of Lucius.
Jason said he told him: “I saw the sketches, they are great, but I was thinking long blond hair. He went, ‘Right. Is that a curtain?’ And I went, ‘It is a curtain but imagine it instead as a kind of velvet cape, or a fur lined cape or something.’ He went, ‘Huh’.” The actor then said he thought Lucius’s wand should come out of his cane. He laughed: “It took about three seconds and he (Columbus) went, ‘I think the toy guys are going to love you’.”
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Source: Celebrities - dailystar.co.uk
