You’re best known for your TV shows and movies—from The White Lotus to School of Rock—but you’re also an excellent reality TV show contestant. You competed with your dad on two seasons of The Amazing Race, and you were the runner-up on Survivor: David vs. Goliath, in 2018. Now you’re back for Survivor’s 50th season, which has a cast of all returning players. Why did you initially go on Survivor?
I’m a Survivor nerd. A Survivor fan? I don’t think of myself as a nerd. But I like the show. I was in a period where I was tired of whatever I was doing. I was like, I should just do it and see if I can get on.
How was your preparation different for this season?
I was told to gain weight—I lost 27 pounds in 39 days during my first season. This season, the problem was I got pneumonia right before I left, and I almost had to pull out.
Why did you decide to go back for a second season of Survivor?
You’re part of a legacy if you go for season 50. And part of me, selfishly, was very tired. It’s really cool how many people are watching White Lotus, but it’s also feedback overload. I needed to be somewhere where I had no phone, where I was just one of a group of people, and where it wasn’t about me. But it didn’t feel like that. There was a big week of press junkets on the island prior to shooting. I was captive there with People magazine. There was a moment where I was like, I’m still the White Lotus guy doing all this press.
Will you go back for a third season?
No. I feel like I’m Parker Posey in White Lotus. At this age, I don’t think I’m meant to live an uncomfortable life.
In every season of The White Lotus, you’ve given a former Survivor castaway a minor role. In season 3, you had Natalie Cole and Carl Boudreaux, both of whom you voted out. With Natalie, you were actually the deciding vote in kicking her off the island.
Obviously, I felt bad voting Natalie out. She was a little salty about it. I was like, This could be a way to make it up to her and Carl.
Would you ever put Jeff Probst on The White Lotus?
He could only play himself. I would cameo him if there’s the right situation.
You shot Survivor about six months before prepping season 4 of The White Lotus. Did it inform the upcoming season?
I came up with the concept of the show and the characters while I was there. But I don’t know if the experience itself really influenced it. Shooting Survivor was hell. The second time, it feels like you’re going through it with a lot of reality show contestants. They’ve crowdsourced their personas. There’s relationships to the fandom. A lot of conversations are about experiences playing the game and life as a Survivor contestant.
When you first meet people, there are no phones, there’s no social media. It’s completely unmediated. Then you come back from that experience, and you realize that they have strong social media presences. It’s why I got off social media around my first season of Survivor. People who I really liked on the island, I came back home and I was like, I’m blocking them. Just because of the way I experienced their social media presence. I don’t know if that’s exactly the theme of the next season of White Lotus, but it’s definitely something I’ve thought about a lot—prioritizing likes or the attention of strangers over creating real relationships.
With The White Lotus, you’ve said the first season is about class, the second is about sex, and the third is about spirituality. What’s the fourth about?
It’s a bit about fame, about who has the world’s attention, who is the plus-one, and how that can organize a relationship. Some people are satisfied with the love of just an intimate partner, and some people need the love of strangers and a bigger kind of attention.
At what point in writing a season of The White Lotus do you decide who will die?
When I started writing the first season, I didn’t know who was going to die. I didn’t even know the show was gonna get made! In the second season, the whole concept was to kill Jennifer Coolidge. I just thought that’d be funny. For this upcoming season, it was one of the early thoughts I had.
You’re in Paris right now casting, scouting, and prepping. Will the season take place partly in Paris?
It doesn’t. We’ll shoot supplementary things here, but we’ll be shooting in Cannes and throughout the South of France.
You have to think about every single thing that could go wrong on a vacation. Has that ruined going on vacation for you?
What ruined vacations for me is that I’m so spoiled with all these beautiful hotels. Everywhere I go, there’s a little cake in my room with my name on it. At the beginning, I was like, Oh my God, this is so cool! I’d take videos of the room and send them to my mom. Now I’ll go into a hotel and be like, They want me in this room? Are you sure? Usually my rooms are bigger, and there’s no cake here.
Grooming by Richard Blandel at B Agency; photo assistant: Sebastian Mittermeier; retoucher: Tricolor; fashion assistant: Terry Lospalluto.
