Because he looks at them and he realizes how much he loves them. The actuality of it breaks through the fog of the drugs and terror and catastrophe that had been filling his head for so long. In that moment, he loves them more than he wants them to die.
I think he accepts it completely. Ironically, of all the characters who arrive in Thailand, he’s the one that becomes closest to those Buddhist principles. He gets massive spiritual enlightenment.
What’s a villain? Tim is Tim. He did a deal that went wrong. It was technically illegal. Many people do illegal things all around him, I’m sure. It wasn’t even a big deal to him. Is he a villain when he fantasizes about killing his family because he thinks that’s an easier way out for them, because of the shame that he knows he’s going to face? I think any talk of villains around Mike White’s writing is to misunderstand how humanist he is as a writer.
It was because what are you going to confide? Our life is over, as we know it. We are all going to be broke and poor. We won’t have a house, a car, a phone. I will be in prison. Our family name will be in tatters. I mean, it’s unimaginable to him.
Because we shot completely out of order, that was my particular job, to work out how out of his head he is at any point. I needed to have my head exploding with terror and yet layer on top of it a drug that was trying to blur things. I do whatever prep I can, research, accents. Then I just try and be that person. I don’t know what acting is, and I don’t know how I do it. It’s an animal instinct.
We were sticking pigs every day. No, but it wasn’t entirely blissful. Obviously people formed friendships, but we weren’t one great big homogenous happy family. It was a large group of people away from home, unanchored from their normal lives. I’m not going to break ranks and say who did what to whom, but it certainly wasn’t a holiday.
Oh, I have no idea. I can’t even think about it, let alone talk about it. Sex is embarrassing; nakedness is embarrassing. It’s embarrassing at any age. But it’s harder to be heartbroken, terrified, homicidal, suicidal — to be at the edge of life and think that I would be better not existing. Taking my clothes off is just a physical thing. I mean, it’s as horrible and awkward as someone asking me to get naked in the street. But it’s all part of the job.
I didn’t need “The White Lotus” to make me think about those things. I think about them constantly, particularly as my children grow. It’s impossible not to think about, as a parent and as someone getting older, being aware that you’re closer to the end than the beginning.
I doubt he’s going have the resources. I think he’s going to be completely wiped out, which at that moment feels OK to him. He’s looking forward to being a member of the human race and not feeling like he needs to be better than anyone else. When he looks at the water, right at the end, the water flying in the air and joining the ocean again, there’s some part of him that feels less alone than he’s ever felt.
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