You may have noticed that there have been a lot of penises in this season of The White Lotus. They’ve caused plenty of chatter, both welcome and unwelcome, including a heated debate about whether or not Jason Isaacs’s full-frontal scene featured a prosthetic or the real deal. Isaacs has been answering questions about it ever since the episode aired — and apparently, he’s pretty fed up with it. The actor recently apologized for talking about his female colleagues’ bodies in graphic detail while trying to dodge Gayle King’s question about his penis.
“It’s interesting because the best actress this year is Mikey Madison at the Oscars,” Isaacs said in a March 14 episode of CBS Mornings after being asked about the prosthetic. “And I don’t see anybody discussing her vulva, which was on television all the time.” As if that wasn’t bad enough, he went on to claim that “there’s a double standard for men. 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.” Who’s gonna tell him?
As you can probably guess, Isaacs got a lot of backlash for suggesting that women haven’t been scrutinized for showing their bodies on-camera and has since backtracked. “I said the wrong words in the wrong way. I used the phrase ‘double standard,’ which I didn’t mean at all,” Isaacs told Variety. “There is a double standard — women have been monstrously exploited and men haven’t.”
“It came out wrong, and I was tired — I’d done so many interviews,” he added by way of explanation. “I absolutely should not have mentioned those two actresses, whom I respect enormously.” Isaacs’s “point,” apparently, “wasn’t that men have had a harder time than women — that would be absurd. Women have had a monstrous time on camera forever, and I hope to God that is changing.”
Well, there you have it. There’s still three episodes of White Lotus left to air, meaning that there’s plenty of opportunities for Isaacs to give us more of his unhinged hot takes. Will he have something to say about his incestuous (fake) sons kissing? One can only hope.
