Emily Mortimer Gets Real About Watching Son Sam Nivola's White Lotus Sex Scene

Emily Mortimer has admitted she found watching her son Sam Nivola’s racy scenes in the most recent season of The White Lotus a little on the strange side.

In the third season of the award-winning US drama, Sam – the son of Emily and her husband, fellow actor Alessandro Nivola – played Lochlan Ratliff, probably best remembered for a certain sex scene aboard a luxury yacht involving his brother, portrayed by Patrick Schwarzenegger.

Asked how she found watching the scene in question during a new interview with The Times, Emily said with a laugh: “It’s so crazy, all of it. It wasn’t particularly crazier than having my boy go off to Thailand for so long.

“Of course it was a bit bizarre, but being married to an actor, we’ve all had to watch each other do strange things.”

The Paddington In Peru star added that she “had been warned” about the scene ahead of time, with Sam insisting that the “first 10 minutes” of the episode in question might make for especially uncomfortable viewing.

“But they kept flashing back,” she added. “So I’d relaxed and then it wasn’t true at all.”

The White Lotus marked Sam’s first time shooting a sex scene, and he previously opened up about some of the difficulties he faced – although probably not for the reasons you might expect.

As well as motion sickness making things “fucking stressful”, Sam also admitted that the physical aspect of the scene was something he was not prepared for, quipping: “I didn’t realise how exhausting it is to have fake sex. I was sort of doing a one-armed plank, with my other hand jerking off Patrick.”

The Perfect Couple star claimed that at “one point” he was “on the verge of passing out”, as the threesome scene “took a couple [of] hours” to complete.

He also shared the highs and lows of working with an intimacy coordinator on the much-discussed sequence.

All three seasons of The White Lotus are available to watch on Sky and Now in the UK.