Information reaching Kossyderrickent has it that the Clip of Murray Bartlett eating the ass of his employee, Dillon Lukas Gage, on The White Lotus movie goes viral.
As the pandemic hit and Bartlett, like the rest of the world, prepared for an industry-wide shutdown, a script for “The White Lotus” landed in his lap like a “gift from God,” he says. “Or a gift from Mike White, who is kind of godlike.”
Describing his first impressions of the script, Bartlett recalls, “There was just so much to play with, and it was very joyful and funny. But what struck me is that I didn’t want to play Armond as some sort of caricature of a guy on the edge, or some stereotype of a campy, gay man. He has all these big aspects to him that I didn’t want to shy away from. I wanted to anchor him in something that felt real, even though he’s quite a larger-than-life character. It turns out that tone was what Mike was going for as well.”
He immediately began formulating ideas about how to approach Armond and what his backstory might look like. But having only read the pilot, Bartlett was completely unaware that his character is the dead body teased throughout the series — a twist he found out on the plane to Hawaii to film.
“I really took the bait about it being Rachel,” he says, referring to Alexandra Daddario’s character. “I was really shocked when it was Armond — shocked because I wasn’t expecting it and shocked because it’s very intense and tragic.”
On some level, “The White Lotus” revolves around Armond’s struggle to keep a mask over his nervous breakdown and sobriety slip. His primary conflict is with spoiled man-child Shane (Jake Lacy), whose ridiculously expensive Pineapple Suite has been double-booked and given to a German couple. Armond’s unwillingness to own up to this mistake — and Shane’s unwillingness to let it go — launches a series-long conflict that begins as simple skepticism but soon escalates to all-out war.
A pivotal scene in this rivalry comes at the end of Episode 4, when Shane barges into Armond’s office as his face is lodged between the butt cheeks of his employee Dillon [Lukas Gage]. The scene, which is quite startling even by HBO standards, lit the internet on fire. And the best part? It wasn’t even scripted.
“It was written that something sexual was happening between us, and it was shocking to Shane and Belinda [played by Natasha Rothwell],” Bartlett says. “Mike didn’t want us to do anything that we weren’t comfortable with, but we were sort of left open as to what the scene would actually be. Lukas and I came up with some different ideas and we both really liked that one because it’s unusual and very shocking.”
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