Why Patrick Schwarzenegger was born to scandalise The White Lotus

Telegraph

24-02-2025

There has always been a shrewd, knowing quality to Mike White's casting on The White Lotus, his darkly comic anthology series in which wealthy people do ugly things in beautiful places. The five-star resorts it's set in are, after all, the kind where a successful actor might well be found holidaying. That irony affords him a little fun.
So it was that in the first two series, set in Hawaii and Italy respectively, the role of Tanya McQuoid, an eccentric and glamorous older woman who's wilier than she looks and most at home in the company of gay people, fell to Jennifer Coolidge – an actress who fits that bill perfectly.
In the second, checking into the part of Dominic, a suave and sybaritic New Yorker intent on investigating his Sicilian heritage, was The Sopranos' Michael Imperioli – a suave and sybaritic New Yorker deeply proud of his Sicilian heritage.
The third series of The White Lotus started last week, with a new setting in Thailand, and an (almost) entirely new array of characters White had to cast. One was Saxon Ratliff, a young, gym-obsessed nepo baby with a geometric jaw, an eye for the ladies, a close relationship to his siblings and a father, played by Jason Isaacs, he clearly idolises.
Once again, White chose very shrewdly. So step forward Patrick Schwarzenegger, 31, who meets that particular set of criteria with aplomb. Yes, he's the son of. Yes, he's a right hunk off the old block. And on the evidence of the first few episodes, he may end up this series' standout star. He's already responsible for the first viral moment, in that nude scene. 'At the end of the day, this character, from start to finish, is ridiculous and the type of person who would absolutely walk around his room naked without a care in the world,' Patrick said recently. His proud father had a slightly different take: 'I could claim to be surprised, but what can I say – the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.'
Schwarzenegger Jnr is about as close as you can get in America to minor royalty. His mother is the journalist Maria Shriver, whose own mother was Eunice Kennedy, sister of John F Kennedy, Robert F Kennedy and Ted Kennedy. Her father was Sargent Shriver, a member of his own political dynasty and the Democratic Party's nominee for vice president in 1972.
As for Patrick's father, he is, of course, the Austrian-German superstar strongman, action movie icon, one-time billionaire, seven-time Mr Olympia and 38th governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger. But it goes on: his sister, Katherine, is a bestselling children's author; her husband is Guardians of the Galaxy and Jurassic World star Chris Pratt.
Patrick's casting in White Lotus was practically demanded. 'Every time we would watch, my family would just be yapping at me: 'Why aren't you in this show? Why didn't you audition for this show? You need to talk to someone to get you on this show,'' he told Vanity Fair.
He recently posted a video of the moment he told the family he'd finally got a part. It's heart-warming stuff – they burst into tears, their pride in him achieving what will surely be his big break obvious – but you cannot fail to notice the setting. The Schwarzeneggers, sans Arnie, are enjoying a nice long lunch on a terrace, a gorgeous ocean vista behind them. It could almost be a scene from White Lotus.
Patrick has already been asked about this, of course: the fact that, if anything, he was born into far greater wealth and influence than even the characters in a show built around satirising the super-rich.
'I think there are similarities and crossovers there, except this family is so far away from what my family was growing up – or probably any normal family is [...] You try to think of [things] in your own personal life: things you can draw on and through to bring elements of this character to life,' he said.
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'There was a storyline that I related to, and resonated with, of living in the father's shadows. This character had a very successful family, a very successful father. He worked under his father; he was always trying to make a name for himself, make a path for himself, was constantly vying for his dad's attention and acceptance and approval.'
The third of Arnie and Shriver's children, after Katherine and Christina, Schwarzenneger was born in 1993. At the time, his father had just moved beyond his box office peak – the zenith, Terminator 2: Judgement Day was released in 1991 – and into his lucrative but lazy action comedy era.
The young Patrick was obsessed with those movies, sleeping in the trailers on the sets of Terminator 3 or Batman & Robin, and enrolling in acting classes while at the prestigious Brentwood School. Later he was coached by Nancy Banks, who taught scores of Hollywood A-listers, including Margot Robbie, Jennifer Anniston, Emma Stone and Josh Brolin.
He was what you might generously call a 'high achiever'. By 10 he'd appeared in the film The Benchwarmers; by 15 he'd started a clothing line; by 17 he'd begun modelling, including in a Tom Ford campaign featuring other celebrity offspring such as Gigi Hadid and Ian Mellencamp. In acting, however, he insists he didn't use his father's connections.
'My dad was like, 'Let me introduce you to an agent or manager,' but I purposefully didn't use his agent or manager,' Patrick once told the Los Angeles Times. 'I didn't want to feel like I was getting used by – not used – but that the reason I was getting things was because of him. And he totally got that.' Whether casting agents might have put two and two together based on the bone structure and surname is a mystery. On winning his part in The White Lotus, he's since said: 'I know there are people who'll say I only got this role because of who my dad is... Of course, it's frustrating and you can get boxed in and you think at that moment, I wish I didn't have my last name.'
Being a Schwarzenegger has not always been easy. Throughout his life, Arnie's bulk has blundered his way into controversy. Allegations of sexual misconduct dogged his initial campaign for governor in 2003, and in 2011 his 25-year marriage to Shriver ended when she confronted him about fathering a son in 1997 with their long-time housekeeper, Patty Baena. The product of that affair, Joseph, was born five days after Shriver gave birth to their youngest son, Christopher.
Memorably, Clive James described Arnie as looking 'like a condom full of walnuts', such were the ludicrous contours of his bodybuilder physique. Throughout the 1990s, plenty of desperate screenwriters considered cloning him (one even managed it, for the science-fiction box office bomb The 6th Day). In Patrick, who has an all-American, Kennedyesque look to him, Arnie hasn't replicated himself. Awkwardly, Joseph, who he supported throughout his childhood, is the one who took on most of the Schwarzenegger genes.
That upbringing, and that face, mean Patrick's early roles have been of a type. In 2013 he played 'Romeo' in an Ariana Grande video. A few years later, after he matriculated at the University of Southern California and then graduated to dating Miley Cyrus (he's now engaged to model Abby Champion, delaying their wedding to shoot The White Lotus), he played supporting roles in various teen dramas before starring in Moxie, Amy Poehler's Netflix coming-of-age drama, and Gen V, a satirical superhero series.
In both, he was a handsome, arrogant, privileged sort – or, in the latter case, 'a 22-year-old big name on campus who possesses thermonuclear power and pure charisma' – who could do with being taken down a peg or two. In The Staircase, he was Todd, the son of Colin Firth's Michael Peterson, the real-life writer convicted of murdering his wife. And in American Sports Story he was Tim Tebow, the former professional American football player.
Clearly, the young Schwarzenegger gives off 'clean-cut frat boy scion' or 'charismatic former athlete', or both. In Hollywood, it is possible to be too conventionally good-looking. He is also possessed of near-superhuman earnestness. That his heart is in the right place is unquestionable: in 2020, he and his mother, who campaigns for Alzheimer's awareness, set up MOSH, a brain nutrition and wellness brand.
In the same year and two weeks into the pandemic, he posted a social media video from a supermarket, urging us to be kind and marvelling at the human spirit shown by a woman who'd just offered him some loo roll. He turned it down, which was probably wise for a man whose father is worth $1.1 billion.
Nor is he shy of impressing this healthy sense of perspective on others. Every January, he once said, he invites a group of friends over to watch Simon Sinek's TED talk about focusing on the 'why' instead of the 'what' – and keeps a whiteboard by his bed on which he lists his family, friend, finance, faith, physical, mental and work goals.
'My first thing is taking three minutes out of my day to not use my phone and just be thankful that I'm healthy and alive,' he said. 'People laugh at that, but I'm like, 'OK, you wake up and you look at Instagram.''
One of those goals, of course, eventually became 'getting cast in The White Lotus'. According to Vanity Fair, Schwarzenegger was once told by Pratt, his box-office-gold brother-in-law, that the first few seconds of an audition are the only bit that matters.
Following that advice, he got the role of Saxon – described to him as 'this kind of douchey, flirty finance guy that was a despicable human' – by 'for lack of a better word, eye-f------g, or kind of checking out the camera, and then approaching it as if the camera was a girl. They thought that was really funny and weird and cool.'
Schwarzenegger, it seems, knows his appeal, has worked out how to subvert it, appreciates the value of occasionally mislaying your shirt, and is clearly far smarter than he looks. The apple really doesn't fall far from the tree. After The White Lotus, he'll be back.