The credits have barely rolled on episode one of HBO’s The White Lotus and already it’s clear that one actor – and one salacious plotline – is set to be the season three standout.
Previous seasons have been filmed in Hawaii and Sicily, this year the setting for the fictional luxury resort is Thailand, and it’s Patrick Schwarzenegger, 31, who has drawn fans’ eyes and piqued their interest.
By the end of episode one viewers had been treated to a fully nude Patrick and a plotline hovering on the brink of gay incest.
As Saxon Timothy, the eldest son of an uber wealthy family – his parents are played by Jason Isaacs and Parker Posey – Patrick plays a sex-addled Lothario who spends most of his time flexing by the pool, hitting on women and stripping down for some of the most graphic sex scenes the show has ever aired.
But, while some parents might find all that ever so slightly awkward, when Arnold Schwarzenegger walked the red carpet alongside his son at the Hollywood premiere of White Lotus 3 last week, his barrel chest was further puffed with paternal pride.Â
Schwarzenegger, 77, was so proud of his son that he took to social media after the event to say: ‘What a show! I could claim to be surprised to find out he has a nude screen but what can I say – the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.’
When Arnold Schwarzenegger walked the red carpet alongside his son Patrick at the Hollywood premiere of White Lotus 3 (pictured), his barrel chest was further puffed with paternal pride.
It’s a comment which has become the talk of Tinseltown as many speculate that the younger Schwarzenegger may have gleaned some of his inspiration for playing a sex addict….from his dad.
Ask anyone who was in Hollywood in the 1990s, when Schwarzenegger Sr. was at the peak of his acting career in hits like Terminator, Total Recall and Kindergarten Cop, and they will tell you ‘Arnie’ had a reputation as one of the biggest flirts in town.
I remember a publicist friend warning me shortly before I interviewed him for 1993’s Last Action Hero: ‘He might get handsy so be on your guard.
‘Don’t end up in his trailer alone with him.’
Of course, that is exactly where I ended up and, as warned, he was wildly flirtatious.
At one point he reached under the table to touch my knee. When I moved to sit on a sofa he came and sat next to me, pressing his giant thigh against mine.
In these post #MeToo days his behavior towards a young reporter 20 years his junior might well prompt a complaint.
But they were different times and it wasn’t the first – or last – time an older male star had flirted with me.
Back then, it was common for female reporters to compare notes about lecherous A-listers. We all knew who they were.
My encounter with Schwarzenegger was mild compared to another I had around the same time with a globally-renowned Oscar winner who pushed me against a wall and forcibly tried to kiss me.
I put Schwarzenegger’s behavior down to the fact he was an incorrigible flirt and left his trailer with my story and reputation intact.
But a few years later, when he ran for Governor of California – a job he held from 2003 to 2011 – his womanizing almost derailed his campaign when six women came forward with allegations of sexual misconduct over a three-decade period that started in the 1970s.
One of them was British TV presenter Anna Richardson who met him at the Dorchester Hotel in London in 2000: ‘I went to shake his hand and he grabbed me onto his knee and he said: ‘Before you go, I want to know if your breasts are real’. At that point, he circled my left nipple with his finger and he said, ‘Yes, they are real.’
Three women alleged he grabbed their breasts while a fourth claimed he reached under her skirt and fondled her buttocks.
Another alleged he tried to remove her swimsuit in a hotel lift while a sixth said the actor grabbed her, pulled her onto his lap and ‘asked whether a certain sexual act had ever been performed on her.’
Four of the women made the allegations anonymously with one saying: ‘What could I do? He was the highest-paid actor in the world. I was a peon.’
Another said: ‘Did he rape me? No. Did he humiliate me? You bet he did.’
I remember a publicist friend warning me: ‘He might get handsy so be on your guard. ‘Don’t end up in his trailer alone with him.’ (Pictured: Caroline Graham and Arnold Schwarzenegger in 1993).Â
I put Schwarzenegger’s behavior down to the fact he was an incorrigible flirt and left his trailer with my story and reputation intact. (Pictured: Arnold Schwarzenegger in October 1976).Â
The Austrian-born former Mr Olympia addressed the allegations saying he ‘behaved badly sometimes’ and apologized but added, ‘a lot of what you see in the stories is not true…but I have to say that where there’s smoke there’s fire.’
He said: ‘It is true that I was on rowdy movie sets and I have done things that were not right which I thought then was playful.
‘But now I recognise that I offended people. Those people that I have offended, I want to say to them I am deeply sorry about that and I apologise.’Â
Worse was to come in 2011 when his sexual recklessness torpedoed his marriage to TV presenter Maria Shriver, 69, mother of his four of his five children ages 35 to 27.Â
Schwarzenegger married Shriver, who is a niece of President John F Kennedy through her mother, Eunice, in 1986. They wed near the Kennedy family compound in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts with JFK’s daughter, Caroline as Maria’s maid of honor.
The couple did not divorce until 2021 (they spent years wrangling over their $500m fortune) but their marriage imploded a decade earlier when it was revealed that Schwarzenegger had fathered a love child with their maid Mildred Baena.
Joseph Baena was born in 1997, just five days after Maria had given birth to the couple’s youngest son Christopher, but the affair was not revealed by the media until the day Schwarzenegger’s term as governor ended in 2011.
Arnold later admitted ‘It was my f*** up. It was my failure. Everyone had to suffer. Maria had to suffer. The kids had to suffer. Joseph. His mother. Everyone.’
In a recent interview Patrick said his mother did most of the heavy lifting raising him and his siblings.
‘She sacrificed a lot with her career to take care of us kids. If you were to ask my dad, he would say it’s 95 percent my mom, 5 percent him.’
Friends of Maria tell me she was so devastated by the split she ‘barely spoke to Arnold about anything unless it was to do with their kids’.
One said:Â ‘Their relationship has improved over the years but even though she went to the premiere of Patrick’s show she posed separately from Arnold on the red carpet. I don’t think you ever get over a betrayal that severe.’
But while Patrick may have drawn on some childhood memories to play roguish Saxon in White Lotus 3, in real life he could not be further away from the philandering character set to make him a star.
He has been with model Abby Champion, 27, for a decade and the pair became engaged a year ago, around the time he learned he had won the White Lotus role and would be filming in Thailand for seven months.
He has been with model Abby Champion (pictured) for a decade and the pair became engaged a year ago, around the time he learned he had won the White Lotus role and would be filming in Thailand for seven months.
In a recent interview Patrick said his mother Maria Shriver (pictured with Patrick) did most of the heavy lifting raising him and his siblings.
In interviews to promote the show Patrick made it clear that any negative feelings towards his cheating father have long since disappeared.
He talked lovingly about how being on sets with him spawned his passion for acting.
‘Going to set with my dad, that’s where my first love for acting came from,’ he told People magazine.
‘He would always pull me out of school early. I would get to go to Universal Studios. I’d watch him go in as Dad, come out as Mr. Freeze (in 1997’s Batman & Robin). I would sit there all day and just be fascinated with everything about film.’
Friends say Schwarzenegger Sr. has long-since settled down and changed his ways.
He has been with his psychical therapist girlfriend Heather Milligan for a decade and these days he spends his time chasing after his miniature donkeys, four dogs and a pig called Schelly.
He still works out every day, has written a self-help book called ‘Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life’ and promotes fitness to his 26 million followers on Instagram.
Patrick responded to his father’s comments about his White Lotus nude scene with post on X saying: ‘Parents’ alongside two face plant emojis.
After the turbulence his father’s womanizing caused in the past it must come as some relief that these days all he has to worry about is an embarrassing remark.Â
Representatives for Arnold Schwarzenegger did not respond to the Daily Mail’s request for comment.Â
