White Lotus’ Sam Nivola Breaks Down Filming Incest Sex Scene

Filming that White Lotus sex scene between brothers was just as weird for the actors as it was for the audience members who had to watch it.

During the Sunday, March 23, episode of the hit HBO series, Saxon (Patrick Schwarzenegger) and Lochlan (Sam Nivola) individually came to terms with the fact that they had a threesome — together. The worst part? Lochlan got quite handsy with his brother during the sexual encounter, which left them both questioning their dynamic moving forward.

Nivola broke down the process of filming the NSFW sequence, telling Variety on Sunday, “When I got the part, I remember talking to Patrick Schwarzenegger, and one of his audition scenes was the scene with Chloe [Charlotte Le Bon] where she’s like, ‘Your brother jerked you off last night. You don’t remember?’ And he’s like, ‘No, I totally blacked out.’ So he told me that, and I was like, ‘Weird … I wonder what that’s all about.’”

It wasn’t until Nivola, 21, and Schwarzenegger, 31, officially signed on to the show that they learned the extent of the confusing sexual undertones between their characters.

“Then we both had to sign in our contracts that we were comfortable with nude scenes on camera. Then we got the scripts about a week later, and I read all of them in one sitting, on the plane to Thailand,” Nivola recalled. “We all just trusted each other, and that dynamic worked well. In the scene, Patrick and I are brothers, with this girl who we just met, like, the day before.”

Nivola admitted that it was “very weird” kissing Schwarzenegger because of their friendship, adding, “I’m straight, he’s straight. It’s already weird. It would have been easier if that was the first time we were meeting. Weirdly, it was easier to do things with Charlotte because there were no stakes. It’s just this person I’ve just met. But Patrick was already like a brother to me. It felt sort of f—ed up.”

While reflecting on the process, Nivola was asked whether having an intimacy coordinator made the experience easier.

“All love to her — she’s a really sweet, lovely person — but I just trust [creator] Mike [White] so much. It’s funny the way intimacy coordinators talk. They’re always using anatomically correct vocabulary that feels stale and awkward,” he quipped. “I’d be like, ‘I don’t know if I can grasp the shaft.’ And then Mike would be like, ‘Just jerk him off.’ And I’d be like, ‘OK, that I understand.’”

Nivola acknowledged the confusing dynamic between Lochlan and Saxon but stood by his character’s actions.

“Lochlan is not a creep, necessarily. Of course, I have to say that. You have to love your character. So, f— it, I’ll defend him!” he told the outlet. “I think he’s incredibly misguided, and his circumstances have put him in a bad spot, but I don’t think he’s evil or malicious in any way. It’s important to the story that he’s not some psychopath.”

New episodes of The White Lotus air on HBO Sundays at 9 p.m. ET.