Jason Isaacs White Lotus ( Photo Credit – Wikimedia )
Advertisement
Jason Isaacs made waves in this season of The White Lotus, not just with his performance. The English actor, at the age of 61, became the center of social media whirlwinds for two very specific reasons – the surprising twang in his voice and the below-the-belt reveal that had viewers squinting at their screens.
The Accent That Sparked The Debate
While audiences debated whether his drawl was more Carolina than Texan, Isaacs cheekily stirred the pot by claiming his near-flawless accent was thanks to a prosthetic tongue.
“This I think I can tell you: I was wearing a prosthetic tongue to do the accent,” he sarcastically said on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” Wednesday. “Durham, North Carolina, is hard to get your lips around.”
The truth is, Isaacs based his dialect on Southern Charm’s Thomas Ravenel and years of soaking up the Durham, North Carolina cadence while filming The Patriot.
“Durham, North Carolina, doesn’t sound like South Carolina. It doesn’t sound like Charleston. It doesn’t sound like anywhere else,” he explained, adding that a few of their vowel sounds are actually very similar to an English accent.
“A lot of people on the internet were going, ‘He doesn’t sound Southern at all’ or ‘He doesn’t sound Texan,’” the Golden Globe nominee said. “I know I don’t sound f–king Texan because I’m not meant to be from Texas!”
However, on the contrary, the ‘Harry Potter’ alum wasn’t just faking it as people from the region apparently felt he nailed it, with some even saying he sounded eerily like their dad.
The Robe Scene Everyone’s Talking About
Yet, for all the chatter about vowel placement and regional nuance, it was a different prosthetic that really got people talking. Isaacs’ character, Timothy Ratliff, finds himself in a moment of vulnerable relaxation after sneaking a few of his wife’s pills. As he eased into a chair, his robe betrayed him, giving the fictional family and a massive television audience an unintended eyeful.
But fortunately, or unfortunately to many, the real kicker is that wasn’t the real deal. Sam Nivola, playing his son on the show, confirmed that viewers weren’t seeing anything truly personal.
The reveal was, in fact, all in good fun. Sarah Catherine Hook, who played Isaacs’ daughter on screen, shared how gleefully he embraced the day of the shoot. Apparently, Isaacs strutted around the set gleaming with pride, celebrating his “fake d–k scene” like a kid on Christmas morning.
