Ethan Spiller is spiraling. Once cool, calm, and collected (perhaps too much so), Will Sharpe’s husband to Aubrey Plaza’s Harper can’t stop imagining his wife being railed by his college roommate, can’t convince his wife he didn’t cheat on her, and, worst of all, can’t find any spark left in their relationship. While their travel partners Cameron (Theo James) and his wife, Daphne (Meghann Fahy), lust after each other all around Taormina, Sicily has become a paranoia-inducing hell on Earth for the Spillers in season two of Mike White’s The White Lotus. What started as a happy-enough vacation with a vaguely annoying couple has led to the collapse of a marriage — and not the one Harper began the vacation looking for cracks in. “The deeper fear is, Are we falling out of love?†says Sharpe. “But alongside that is this question of, Are we still physically attracted to each other?â€
I want to go back to something that happened earlier in the season that reads differently later on: Ethan’s blasé reaction to Cameron undressing in front of Harper. Ethan confronts Cameron about it in the latest episode, so we know it stuck with him. How did you read his initial reaction?
In one early conversation with Mike, we were trying to think about how they ended up on this vacation, in this terrifying matrix. Cameron is someone who’s grown up in privilege and has always been wealthy, whereas Ethan had to fight for more. He got into college because he was smart. He made the money because he’s smart. So this luxury vacation is like, Maybe I deserve a piece of that.
My impression is that before Ethan came on the vacation, he’d been crazy busy at work, so when they arrive, it takes him a minute to catch up and reengage with his actual life. Harper is quicker to see all the cracks in Cameron and Daphne’s relationship, but Harper is also the first to question their own relationship, which is terrifying for Ethan. What starts to bubble through is that he’s also worried they’re not as good as they tell themselves they are. When she confronts him with that, he’s not ready. He’s not ready to imagine that his friend Cameron is still the exact same guy if not worse. He’s scared of what it could mean about the rest of the vacation, and he’s scared of confronting the cracks in his own relationship.
It’s a very up-front confrontation, when there have previously been a lot of sideswipes in this foursome. What is Ethan trying to accomplish with that directness?
He can’t help it. Ethan is like a pot that is gradually boiling — he internalizes so much that, at some point, it’s got to come out. He’s so furious at the thought of it, and he’s trying to hold on to what makes him a good person. There’s also a gradual feeling of realizing that he has something to fight for and that he wants to fight for it when the time comes.
So we know he has these neuroses around Cameron, or at least had them at one point. Did those play into why he’s there?
That’s something Harper asks him at one point. It could be. If it is, though, I don’t know how conscious it is. Maybe he feels like it’s safe to hang out with Cameron now, but, in a tragicomic way, that dynamic has not changed at all. Toward the end of the series, you see that Ethan’s “one thing,†being smart, drives Cameron insane. Cameron knows he has one way of getting anything, and that’s his way of pillaging Ethan.
Ethan and Harper believe the one thing holding their relationship together is “honesty.†I’m interested in the difference between the factual lies, which they apparently didn’t tell prior to this trip, and the emotional lies they seem to have been telling for a while.
There are a lot of big changes here. They’ve gone on a vacation, and that invites a certain kind of self-reflection — it puts you in an existential space. They’re set against a really different couple in Cameron and Daphne. They also have this newfound wealth that’s changed the way they operate. They’ve been in cruise control, and on this vacation, they’re realizing they’re in a rut. They’re not actually honest about the difficult things. It takes a lot for them to confront it.
Cameron and Daphne are a lustful couple — that’s the strength of their relationship. We don’t see that from Ethan and Harper. How do you see love and lust playing out in their relationship?
They are sort of intertwined. Aubrey and I would talk about what their day-to-day is like because you meet them in a marital crisis. We wanted to communicate that there is a longing for something that was there, so there are stakes to this because they do love each other.
Cameron says that there’s this idea of a bro code, and that’s convenient for Ethan when he withholds the information about himself and Lucia and what happened with Cameron that night. He’s like, It doesn’t feel like Harper and I are in a good place. This doesn’t look good. I showed some willpower, but I was still curious about it, and I still invited this stuff to happen. He’s scared of what it says about where they’re at.
That idea of “bro code†invokes a masculine bond. How do you view Ethan’s relationship to masculinity?
He doesn’t want to engage in what he sees as stereotypically masculine interactions. If he gains status, he wants it to be because he deserves it and he’s worked for it and not because he’s demanding it. And he still does fail in a traditionally male way through the series.
What do you mean by that?
He’s not showing up for his marriage. He’s internalizing problems and not communicating well. Nor is Harper, arguably, but Ethan certainly isn’t. He doesn’t tell her about the incident with Cameron, and then, when he does tell her, the way he tells her is uncomfortable. It was uncomfortable to play, too, in that deliciously Mike White way.
The elephant in the room with Ethan’s masculinity is that he doesn’t want to have sex with his wife.
Right.
Not wanting, or being unable, to have sex with your wife would classically be conceived of as emasculating. Does that factor play into his character?
If you think about the times when sex could happen: The first time, he’s just been walked in on jerking off and he’s kind of on the back foot, so I can understand why that’s not the best time. There’s also the moment where Harper is trying to seduce him. I remember talking with Mike about it, and he wanted to play it like Ethan just hasn’t noticed. He’s been for a run and he’s going about his day. That’s heartbreaking for Harper.
The deeper fear is, Are we falling out of love? But alongside that is this question of, Are we still physically attracted to each other? Early on, Aubrey, Mike, and I had conversations about the relationship and decided they had probably been together for at least seven or eight years. Mike always said he didn’t want the problem in the marriage to be anything too specific. He didn’t want it to be their newfound wealth or some incident from their past; he wanted it to be that they’ve been together for a long time. That’s the hardest thing for them to confront.
I don’t know how that relates to the question of his masculinity. It relates to his role as a husband, and that is a masculine role, traditionally.
At one point, Ethan has a vision of Harper and Cameron coming into the room ready to bone. Is his fear about Harper cheating or about Cameron winning with yet another girl?
It’s ultimately more about the former, but it is both. Maybe he’s not ready to be angry at Harper about it yet. It’s easier to be angry at Cameron.
You’ve mentioned that, this season, the scale felt bigger in part because you were in Sicily. Is that a fair paraphrasing of you?
It’s something about the emotional scale. It’s a tonal thing. It’s darker and Mediterranean. It felt operatic or like a Roman tragedy that unfolds with volcanic energy. The grandeur of the locations in that environment, the context of it, and the sense of history had that mythic feeling to it.
I’m interested in you invoking Roman tragedy. Do you see Ethan as a tragic figure?
It’s difficult to talk about that at this point.
There’s something theatrical about how badly things go for Ethan: that moment Harper happens to look at him just as he’s talking to Lucia. Or the fact that his lie about what Cameron did that night got him in more trouble than Cameron.Â
Some of that is his own fault and some of that is not. Maybe there’s a part of him that can’t believe the misfortune and thinks, How has this got fucked up so quickly? It takes him a minute to realize the things he’s putting in his own way. He definitely has the potential to be a tragic figure. The question is whether he’s going to do anything about that.
The White Lotus has only had a few visitors who are not American. Is the show specifically American in its focus?
The skewering of privilege is fairly universal. I know that people in the U.K. find it funny and uncomfortable. The privilege adds a layer of absurdity to all their problems, but they are human beings with problems, which makes it accessible.
Sometimes I felt like this dynamic between Cameron and Ethan is quite American. Status is important all around the world, but there is a particularly American way of giving status.
What is that particular way?
Just how important it is. There might be a quiet, inherent competition in any kind of interaction even if it’s not well discussed. Of course, that is something that exists in England and in Japan, and it manifests in different ways. But it’s that bit louder.
If that relationship as a foursome is all about status —
I don’t think it is all about that; I think it’s part of it.
Is that what your relationship with Cameron is about?
At times. At times, that is a thing.
How does the change of status, with Ethan now having money, affect the relationship?
They both have a different kind of status. Ethan is comfortable, or tells himself he’s comfortable, with Cameron having his version of status because he thinks, I don’t want that status anyway. But Cameron doesn’t want Ethan to have any status. Subconsciously, he’s like, I don’t like that you’re good at even one thing.