‘White Lotus’ Star: Why Our Incest Is Worse Than ‘Game of Thrones’

Viewers are clutching their pearls with more vigor over The White Lotus’ incest storyline than they did in response to other popular shows who took that particular taboo plunge—and cast member Natasha Rothwell has a theory about why.

Rothwell, who plays Belinda in the HBO series, said she believes this season’s tryst between brothers Saxon and Lochlan Ratliff is hitting audiences harder than Game of Thrones’ sibling-lovers Cersei and Jaime Lannister. “I think it’s because you can’t really project yourself onto one of the characters of Game of Thrones and be like, ‘That could really happen to my children,‘” she said on Wednesday’s Las Culturistas podcast.

In the case of White Lotus, Rothwell explained, “You’re watching, you’re like, ‘I might be dating a guy who f---ed his brother,’ you know?”

Some social media users expressed that the show had become “too much” for featuring a sexual encounter between the Ratliff brothers on last week’s episode, while others had already started their hand ringing the week prior, when the brothers kissed for the first time on screen.

Rothwell, like co-star Jason Isaacs, praised show writer-creator Mike White for pushing boundaries, whether its through nudity or incest. “It’s Shakespearean, right?” Rothwell said on the podcast. “To me, I feel like that’s the cool thing about the motifs he’s using this season. It feels very classical.”

As the season has foreshadowed, the unraveling of the resort’s guests will culminate in an explosive finale that puts each of the season’s scandalous moments into perspective. Rothwell insists that she will not be spilling the beans, no matter how much fans “harass” her about what will happen next.

“I’m not telling you f--- s--t about the show,” Rothwell jokingly announced as a message to impatient fans. “‘No,’ man in Target, the bellboy, the guy in the cab. People have been harassing me,” she said, adding, “Get your answers by watching the show like everybody else!”

For more, listen to Natasha Rothwell on The Last Laugh podcast.