While appearing Friday’s (Dec. 2) broadcast of The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, Theo James opened up about his buzzy nude scene in the debut episode of The White Lotus Season 2, in which his character revealed his “ginormous” penis — which James says is donkey-sized, since we’re all supposed to know what that means…
The actor, who also starred in Divergent and Mr. Malcolm’s List, confirmed to Fallon that he did, indeed, wear a prosthetic for the highly discussed scene, in which his character was caught in the nude by Aubrey Plaza’s Harper while changing into swim trunks.
“The truth of it was, you go into these scenes, and you have a conversation with the director and the producers and they go, ‘Okay, for this, we’re going to use a prosthetic,’” he recalled, adding that his response was, “Okay, that sounds good.’”
James went on to say that her requested a prosthetic that was reflective of the “regular joe” since he didn’t want the reveal to be distracting, telling Fallon, “Because the scene is not about the pee-pee. It’s about power play and sex. It’s about whether he did it deliberately or whether it was an accident and what that means. She says, ‘I got you. Yeah, I got you. Regular Joe.’”
However, as we’ve all seen, that was definitely not the case.
Rebecca Hickey, who serves as the head of the show’s makeup department, arrived to set with a larger piece that was “nine inches flat and about four inches wide.”
James joked, “So, we get to set and she’s got, like, a hammer or something. I mean, it’s bigger than that. It’s like she stole it off a donkey in the field. The thing is ginormous.” He continued, “And me and the director, Mike White, are sitting there going, ‘That’s average?’ We’re calling our respective partners, like, ‘I’m so sorry.’”
Ahead of the episode’s premiere, James spoke with Decider’s Meghan O’Keefe about the nude scene. The actor insisted that the scene leaves room for interpretation, saying, “[Mike White] plays that line between whether Cameron has done it deliberately, was it cunning, was it manipulative, or was it simply he’s a kind of fairly bombastic, body confident person who is innocent?”
He also shared that the scene was supposed to be “more graphic,” but said it was edited down by White.
Last month, the HBO series was renewed for a third season after accumulating over 7.6 million viewers with its Season 2 premiere and hitting an all-time weekly high on HBO Max.
The White Lotus airs Sundays at 9/8 on HBO and is available to stream on HBO Max.
