Even though Jason Isaacs has checked out of The White Lotus, the actor still intends to honor his character Timothy Ratliff’s Duke University pride.
Isaacs appeared on Literally! With Rob Lowe on Thursday and unknowingly ran into a family member of a former Duke student — Lowe’s eldest son, Matthew, attended the university.
“I didn’t wear [a Duke T-shirt] today, if I’d known [Lowe’s son was a Duke alum,] I’d have it on now,” Isaacs added. “But I am intending to wear them whenever there’s a camera around, so sorry, Duke. There goes my honorary degree.”
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The topic of conversation prompted Lowe to discuss the show’s controversy with Isaacs’ character wearing a T-shirt with its logo while contemplating suicide. In response to Duke’s statement, he’s previously said that “the notion that this rather spiritually enlightened character on television caused them any trouble is fanciful and ridiculous,” now adding that the school should “be far more worried” about “real-life alumni” as opposed to his character on Mike White’s hit TV show.
“Someone at Duke decided that was really untoward and was not happy with the association,” he said. “Other people online were pointing out that there’s real-life alumni of Duke to be far more worried about than a fictional alumni.”
The English actor explained that he brought up the idea for Timothy to wear a Duke T-shirt to the show’s costume designer, Alex Bovaird. “I said, ‘Maybe he wears a Duke T-shirt to sleep in,’ so, we got a Duke T-shirt for me to wear when I’m sleeping in it,” he said, adding that he’s “pretty sure” the team “got it cleared” for him to be able to wear the apparel, despite Duke publicly disapproving of the show using its logo.
“I’m pretty sure they got it cleared because, as you know, you don’t ever go on television without getting all the logos cleared,” he said. “There are scenes in [White Lotus] in which I’m suicidal and even homicidal, and they are the ones in which I’m wearing my Duke T-shirt because it’s bedtime.”
Despite all the controversy, Isaacs affirmed he had no plan of shedding his Duke pride anytime soon. He recounted a story of fans gifting him more Blue Devil T-shirts and commending him for his “Durham, North Carolina, accent” during a recent convention appearance.
“I was in Virginia, and people drove from Durham, North Carolina, very sweetly, just to tell me that they thought my accent was accurate and I shouldn’t listen to the people who don’t know what a Durham, North Carolina, accent is,” he explained. “And they brought me Duke T-shirts, so now I have a selection of Duke T-shirts.”
After the Duke x White Lotus fiasco erupted online, The Hollywood Reporter spoke to Duke students to hear their take on the drama. Alex Berkman, a sophomore at the school, believes that while the show dealt with “very sensitive material,” the university releasing a statement “br[ought] more attention to Duke than they probably would have wanted.”
He added, “The statement doesn’t actually do anything. … I think Duke was so concerned that it was going to give us a bad reputation, that’s why they released a statement.
“To me, it’s never that serious,” Berkman concluded. “It’s television — it’s really high-quality television.”
