Jason Isaacs is sick of being asked whether or not he wore a prosthetic penis in “The White Lotus.” It’s all anyone wants to talk to the actor about following the third season’s fourth episode, where Isaac’s character, Timothy Ratliff, had his penis hanging out of his bathrobe while in front of his children. Cast members Sam Nivola and Sarah Catherine Hook confirmed to TV Insider Isaacs was wearing a prosthetic, but that didn’t stop the actor from being the topic of endless debates.
“A lot of people are debating it. It’s all over the internet,” Isaacs said on “CBS Mornings” when asked if his full frontal nude scene featured a prosthetic or not. “And it’s interesting because the best actress this year is Mikey Madison at the Oscars. And I don’t see anybody discussing her vulva, which was on [the screen] all the time.”
“I think it’s interesting that there’s a double standard for men,” he continued. “But when women are naked, Margaret Qualley as well, in ‘The Substance,’ nobody would dream of talking to her about her genitalia or her nipples or any of those things. So, its odd that there’s a double standard.”
Isaacs admitted he was also dodging the prosthetic penis question “because I don’t think that people really want to know how the sausage is made. Genuinely, I think it would be odd when there are characters — and some of the women are naked in here — it’d be odd if you were sitting here. And you would never dream of discussing their genitalia, not for a second.”
“Mike White is a brilliant writer; it’s the best series on television for a long time. And what is the obsession with penises? It’s an odd thing,” Isaacs concluded.
Nivola and Hook, who play the kids of Isaac’s character, said “it was really funny” shooting the scene in which Isaacs wears his prosthetic penis.
“He was very excited to do it,” Hook told TV Insider. “I think he took pride in the prosthetic.”
He’s like, ‘It’s my fake dick scene today!’” Nivola added.
New episodes of “The White Lotus” debut on HBO and Max at 9pm ET on Sunday nights.