Patrick Schwarzenegger has revealed that his White Lotus co-star Sam Nivola was concerned about being labelled a “nepo baby” after the show came out.
It’s been well-documented that Patrick is the son of the action star and former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and the journalist Maria Shriver, who both attended the show’s premiere with him last month.
However, what fans might not realise is that Sam also has family connections to the entertainment industry.
The Perfect Couple star’s mum and dad are the actors Emily Mortimer and Alessandro Nivola, which seemingly led to him worrying about accusations of nepotism once the show began airing.
During a recent interview with IndieWire, Patrick was asked whether he and Sam ever spoke about their backgrounds as the children of actors, and while he said that conversations were had with creator Mike White about his own history, it wasn’t something that ever came up between himself and his on-screen brother.
“We never talked about it through the lens of Sam and I in the story,” Patrick explained. “I’m embarrassed to say that I didn’t even know who Sam was or who his family was until like six months into the thing.
“He was, like, ‘Oh, I hope they don’t call me a nepo baby’. And I was, like, ‘Why?’.”
“I didn’t know really at all, so there you go,” he added.
Last month, Patrick voiced his frustration at the suggestion that he “only got this role because of who my dad is”.
“They’re not seeing that I’ve had 10 years of acting classes, put on [high] school plays every week, worked on my characters for hours on end or the hundreds of rejected auditions I’ve been on,” he claimed (although many critics expressed the opinion that he’d somewhat missed the point of the discourse surrounding Hollywood nepotism).
“Of course, it’s frustrating and you can get boxed in and you think at that moment, I wish I didn’t have my last name. But that’s a small moment.”
Since then, his on-screen dad and friend Jason Isaacs has also downplayed the suggestion that Patrick is a “nepo baby”.
Update: This article has been amended to correct a factual error.