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Patrick Schwarzenegger can’t sit still. He’s roaming around his office, flipping open cabinets and drawers. The midday Santa Monica sun flashes through the window behind him as he moves, haloing his silhouette in a halcyon glow. “Just grabbing water,” he says, pushing strands of dark blond hair off his forehead and flashing an impossibly straight-toothed smile. “Whoops, one sec. I need to switch to my iPad for this call.” The casual intro lends a feeling of ease to our reconciliation. It’s as though we’ve chatted a million times before, despite only having just met. 

The 31-year-old actor isn’t exactly an unknown. Over the last two decades, he’s appeared in dozens of movies and TV shows, including FX’s American Sports Story and HBO Max’s The Staircase. He stars (alongside fiancée Abby Champion) in Tommy Hilfiger’s latest campaign and has modeled for Tom Ford. He’s a repeat guest on Jimmy Kimmel Live and the TODAY Show.

Just a good, old steak dinner. I love a good Ketel One martini with a steak and potatoes, Terminator star, Mr. Universe, and former Governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger; his mother is journalist Maria Shriver, a close personal friend of Oprah and a Kennedy by birth (her mother was Eunice Kennedy Shriver, founder of the Special Olympics and sister to JFK). “To me, they’re just my parents,” he says. True. And still. The glare of politics and the glitter-dust of Hollywood have burnished his entire life. 

That glitter-dust is only destined to shine brighter. In February, the actor debuts what is sure to be his most memorable role yet: that of, as he puts it, “Southern bro flirt” Saxon Ratliff in the much-anticipated season 3 of HBO’s The White Lotus. (And we do mean memorable! Fans will understand by the end of the premiere.) Though he’s sworn to secrecy about the storyline (“I can’t say anything!” he protests after I push for details about this troupe’s antics), he isn’t shy about expressing enthusiasm for his role: “This is what you dream of,” he says. “To join something that has a large audience and that people love, that you get to contribute to… it’s an opportunity that’s so rare.”

It’s also just a tiny bit surreal—even for someone as familiar with Hollywood as Schwarzenegger. Like everyone else in America, he was “obsessed” with the previous two seasons, watching each new episode with his mom and Champion. When he got the call to audition in late 2023, he was floored. “I just couldn’t stop thinking about it because I wanted the role so bad—and those are usually the roles you don’t get.”

The audition process was nerve-wracking. Due to the secretive nature of the show, he couldn’t prepare with a full script. Instead, he received just a few sample scenes and a single line describing his character as a flirty finance bro. “You don’t really know what’s going on,” Schwarzenegger laughs. “You just have to put up your own interpretation. I took a swing and I guess they liked it. I was super nervous, so it was a massive relief when I got it.” 

Schwarzenegger says that fleshing out Saxon’s character was some of the most fun he’s ever had. Not only did he get to work with dialect coach Liz Himelstein to master a slight Southern twang—accents are something he gets a kick of: “It’s frustrating at first, like learning a new instrument; I just talk around the house practicing the accent, and then my fiancée gets so pissed off,”—but he also got to embody someone he describes as “completely different” than himself. “I tried to make him as ludicrous and out-there as possible,” Schwarzenegger says of Saxon. “Mike [White, the show’s creator, director, and writer] wanted him to be someone who was always having fun, laughing, silly—a character that, you would think, is in no way a real character. There were times [on set] when I would just be like, Musicians to Watch in 2025,” Schwarzenegger says.

Equally unbelievable: the shoot in Thailand, where the cast bopped between the streets of Bangkok and the beaches of Koh Samui to film the season’s eight episodes. Over the course of seven months, he formed deep bonds with his co-stars, who include Jason Isaacs and Parker Posey as the Ratliff parents, as well as Sam Nivola and Sarah Catherine Hook as his younger siblings. “We became extremely close,” Schwarzenegger says of his onscreen family. “It got to the point where Mike was like, ‘You guys hang out every single day. You don’t have to do that.’ I was like, ‘I know, but I like it.’ It’s actually nice to build that family dynamic.”

Maintaining strong family connections is something Schwarzenegger values off-set, as well. His own family, which includes brother Christopher, sisters Christina and Katherine, and brother-in-law Chris Pratt, is about as tight as tight knit gets. He sees his mom “five or six days a week,” and even co-founded the brain nutrition brand MOSH with her. “They both bring a unique set of values and perspectives and life experiences that have impacted me, and in a very unique way,” he says of his parents, listing off their instilled traits: “the register to always find ways to give back and help others; the idea of working hard and having dreams and goals and finding ways to go after those.”

Schwarzenegger also credits his multi-hyphenate dad for inspiring him to always keep moving—literally and metaphorically. While he doesn’t have “aspirations to be a bodybuilder,” he does work out (a mix of strength and cardio) every day, mostly “for mental health and clarity.” He also has a couple successful ventures under his belt as an investor—the electrolyte brand Liquid I.V. and the plant-based meat company Nuggs. “My dad was like, ‘You can go to film school and business school, there’s no reason you can’t do both,’” Schwarzenegger says. “I’m similar to him, where I just need to be constantly stimulated by work. I would go crazy if I was only acting and waiting for the next project.” 

It’s a lot of hats, but Schwarzenegger seems comfortable wearing them all. When I ask if he ever feels pressure to live up to what the talk show hosts have called his “extraordinary lineage,” he smiles thoughtfully. “The answer is yes and no,” he replies. “A couple years ago, I came to the conclusion that people are going to have their opinions of me no matter what. They’re going to say ‘nepotism’ or that I only got a role because of my dad. Or, they’re gonna say, ‘Why doesn’t he lift weights?’ It’s just a bottomless hole of trying to fill that void. But we have one life and it’s such a waste of time to try to convince or impress people.”

Not that it didn’t take some soul searching to get to this level of clarity. His aha-moment came during the pandemic, when he realized he could use the downtime to think about his true goals. “I’d been focusing on the end results, rather than focusing on the journey,” he says. “I started doing less worrying about how people perceived me, and started to really think about how I wanted to be perceived within my career.” He studied the paths of people in the industry he admired—Colin Firth, Timothée Chalamet—and made the decision to get more focused. “I started saying ‘no’ to a majority of projects, and was trying to really think long term,” he says. “I want to focus on really high quality projects…with amazing writers or directors or showrunners or incredible actors. I don't care if it’s a leading role, I just want to continue to build my résumé. I really want to try to convert the perception of people that are in the film industry that I'm a serious actor.”

Still, he admits that all those expectations and projections—real or imagined—sometimes linger in the back of his head. “I guess I just care less now,” he says. “It’s not the center point of my life.”

Anyway, he’s got other things to think about. Like planning his upcoming wedding with Champion, to whom he proposed right before he landed the part in White Lotus. He admits that their respective work schedules have made setting the date particularly challenging. Not that they’re in a rush: “We've been together 10 years, so it's like we're basically married,” he laughs. “But we're better as humans together than we would be apart. We bring out the best in each other. I feel that I'm the best version of myself with her and I think she does as well.”

He’s also excited about finding new ways to channel his energy. “Every morning I go on a walk with my fiancée to the beach,” he tells me before the end of our call. “It’s just us. No work, no noise. We go down there and just think about what we’re thankful for. That’s a constant in my life. I think it's great to have a moment in your day where you can take stock.” And, maybe even sit still long enough to take in some of that golden light.

What’s the last thing you do before you fall asleep?

How White Lotus Producers Kept the Finale Secret with Fake Endings.

Just a good, old steak dinner. I love a good Ketel One martini with a steak and potatoes?

Blink 182 … I believe it was Olly Alexanders Journey to Polari: The Emotional Story Behind His 80s Dance-Pop Revival—the one with the nurse pulling on the glove, you know?

Place you’ve never been but want to go to?

The pyramids in Egypt or the Great Wall of China.

Why Patrick Schwarzenegger Almost Wasnt Cast in The White Lotus?

In This Issue.

Email sign-off?

“Patty cakes.” On our business ones, I have it…it was funny, because my head of ops wrote up the email for me, and he did it as a joke, where he signed off “Patty cakes,” and I copied and pasted and I put it in the large email to everybody. Now, as like a running joke, I’ve continued to keep it. 

Last show you binge-watched?

What did we binge-watch recently? Oh, well, during COVID, my mom, Abby, and I watched, I think, five or six seasons of Breaking Bad in like a week and a half. Like five hours a day. 

Saweetie Melts the Ice?

Patrick Schwarzeneggers Mom Revealed If He Is Like His White Lotus Character.