Interview: Patrick Schwarzenegger on Saxon’s Growth in ‘The White Lotus,’ Going Viral with Sam Nivola and Finding His Own Path [VIDEO]

Patrick Schwarzenegger has something to prove. But not to you, to himself. Coming from an acting family and a political dynasty is a bit of a double whammy in the ongoing (and often frustratingly vapid) nepo baby conversation, but for someone like Schwarzenegger —who’s been proving his worth in film and television for over a decade with The Staircase, Scream Queens, American Sports Story and GenV —his own growth as a performer is his goal, not having to answer to a standards being set by others.

He graduated USC with a degree in Business, not unlike the path set by his fictional father in the third season of The White Lotus, but also with a minor in cinematic arts, following in the footsteps of his real father, Arnold. It was a shrewd choice by the actor, who started acting as a teenager but played a smart game of making sure he had an education not just to fall back on but to provide him with more than a life on set and to avoid the missteps of so many child actors who came before him.

In The White Lotus, Schwarzenegger plays Saxon Ratliff, the well-off douche bro of the season in the vein of Jake Lacy’s Shane from season one and Theo James’ Cameron from season two. But there’s something different about Saxon and the reason Schwarzenegger wanted to play him, and it’s the thing that surprised him the most about the audience’s response to Saxon. “They loved to hate him [Saxon] but the most surprising to me was the response at the end, of how much people came around to love him.” In our conversation, we definitely talk about working with Sam Nivola as Saxon’s onscreen sibling Lochlan, with whom he forms a real case of brotherly love, much to the excited meltdowns of the viewership at large, and who on the show he had a chance to work with more this season, and maybe a little bit about American Psycho.

Patrick Schwarzenegger is Emmy-eligible in the category of Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series for The White Lotus.