Jason Isaacs is offering clarification after saying there’s a “double standard for men” when it comes to onscreen nudity.
His character Timothy Ratliff’s full-frontal scene in season three of Mike White’s The White Lotus ignited more conversation surrounding genitalia being displayed in movies and TV shows. It was previously revealed that Isaacs used a prosthetic for the scene, however, the actor is tired of talking about it.
Last week, during an appearance on CBS Mornings, the Harry Potter actor was directly asked if he used a prosthetic, though he attempted to dodge the question. After being called out by the hosts for his non-answer, Isaacs responded, “Well, I’ll tell you why, because the best actress this year is Mikey Madison at the Oscars. And I don’t see anybody discussing her vulva, which was on [the screen] all the time … so I think it’s interesting that there’s a double standard for men. But when women are naked, Margaret Qualley as well, in The Substance, nobody would dream of talking to her about her genitalia or her nipples or any of those things. So, it’s odd that there’s a double standard.”
For someone attempting to pivot the conversation away from his genitalia, his remarks only fueled the online conversation.
Now, Isaacs is walking back his CBS Mornings comments: “The internet was having fun with whether I was wearing a prosthetic in my nude scene and so was I, but I wanted to avoid that being the only thing that I was ever asked about in connection with Mike’s brilliant series, as it has been with other actors, so I thought maybe I just would just bat away the question with a joke if it came up. If it came up?! When so many people were insistent, it seemed weird and inappropriate that what they were actually insisting on was that they and the public really needed to know whether they’d actually seen my real penis or not. So bizarre.”
“The point I then wanted to make, but made badly, is that women have been exploited and exposed and treated wildly inappropriately on and off screen forever and, even then, I’d never witnessed any woman being grilled so specifically about their genitalia,” his statement continued. “I shouldn’t have invoked any actresses or used the phrase ‘double standard,’ which was just poor phrasing — there has long been a double standard around nudity on film and it’s not men who’ve suffered from it — in fact it’s something White Lotus has been correcting! Somehow it either came out wrong or was misinterpreted.”
Isaacs concluded by teasing, “Either way, I’d say to anyone still bothered…please just enjoy the show — literally none of it’s real and there’s bigger and better shocks coming!”
The White Lotus airs new episodes on Sundays.
