Steve Zahn on The White Lotus, Life on His Farm, and That Prosthetic

Steve Zahn has played all kinds of guys. “I’ve played bad guys, I’ve played good guys, dumb guys, smart guys,” he says. “Now I’m just all those guys, but they have kids.”

In The White Lotus—Mike White’s bitingly funny HBO satire about a group of guests at a Hawaiian resort who are as spectacularly miserable as they are privileged—he portrays Mark Mossbacher, a platonic ideal of a Zahn role: one part clueless slacker, one part befuddled dad. While in paradise, Mark surfs through an existential crisis (first obsessing that he could have cancer, then learning that his late father was closeted and died of AIDS), while struggling to connect with his Lean In power wife Nicole (Connie Britton), his sweetly dopey, device-addled son Quinn (Fred Hechinger), and his terrifying daughter Olivia (Sydney Sweeney). In short, he’s the poster dad for washed masculinity. 

When Zahn and I talk ahead of the show’s finale, the beloved character actor (lately I’ve been seeing the word “Zahnaissance” floating around) is at the Kentucky farm his family moved to in the early aughts. He’d been hunkering down there during the pandemic, light on work, when the script for The White Lotus came his way. “At that point, I was about to have some big old yard sales,” he jokes. Filming in Hawaii wasn’t a bad deal either, and at least the cast seemed to appreciate it more than their fictional counterparts.

“Every night, we’d be down on the beach, watching the sunset,” he says. “If you were late, you were sprinting.”

GQ: In one of your more memorable scenes, you pretend to be a drunk ape seducing Connie Britton. Tell me about filming that.

Steve Zahn: It was so difficult. It was just so raw and weird. I remember having to ask Mike, “Just total raw, primitive?” I don’t think I was doing it correctly at first. But the irony is that I played a chimpanzee in Planet of the Apes.

Right! Did you channel that performance?

Well, I couldn’t be really good.

You had to dial it down.

I did more of a silverback gorilla. That made me laugh: “Oh, I’ve been a monkey in two films. Awesome.”

So how’s life on the farm?

Kind of laid back. When I’m not working, I get up early and feed all the animals, then I get most of my stuff done by noon. Then my wife wakes up and starts her writing. We’re kind of opposites—she writes well into the night. I pick tomatoes, I go grocery shopping. I do the dishes, do the laundry, and stay busy.

What appealed to you about the role of Mark and what sort of personal touches did you want to infuse in the character?

You could play him so many different ways, but I wanted him to come off just as this vulnerable guy that you could adhere to. All these characters are so flawed, man, and they’re so bruised. I wanted his honesty to come off as a good thing, even though it’s really his Achilles’ heel. He doesn’t edit himself, which gets him in trouble. But he has good intentions. He wants his family to be this amazing, connected group. He just doesn’t know how to do that. He’s so myopic about the world. It’s sad to me to see him try to connect with his son. It’s kind of too late, it’s too far down the road, but they do have this connection. Any glimmer of hope is beautiful in this show. They’re far and few between, but they stick out.

It just makes you look at how trivial so much of our problems are. We sit and we get so wrapped up in our little worlds, and compared to what most people have to go through, it’s ridiculous. And that’s what I love about the show. It always goes back to the water. It always goes back to a huge tortoise. You’re always reminded of how small and insignificant we are, and I think that’s what’s liberating about it.

You mentioned to GQ the last time we talked to you that you’re now cast as “the dad in everything.” Do you draw from your own experiences as a parent in these roles?

Oh, sure. If that doesn’t affect your work, having kids, then you’re not human. I have kids this age [of Mark’s], a little older. We sit around and have these crazy conversations with these people who are smart and educated and think critically and challenge you. It’s not even your kids anymore, it’s these people who live in your house. And I’m kind of like Mark in a way. I’m the activities director here … I mean, I’m not like Mark. I take that back.

I’m guessing raising your kids on a farm probably helped you avoid having kids like the ones on the show.

Yeah, totally. I never had to restrict games and stuff like that because there was a lot of shit to do. They were always out doing stuff. My kids don’t even sit on social media, which is really kind of insane. My son’s 21. He has nothing. It’s about filling it with something else, you know what I mean? And they followed suit, man.

Mark is going through this big existential crisis. He thinks he has cancer, then finds out his dad is gay and died from AIDS. He literally says the words “what is real?” at one point. Have there been any times in your life when you’ve worked through something similar?

Oh God, all the time. Are you kidding? In the last five years, I’ve said it daily. “What is real?” This is what we’re living in right now, it’s absolutely insane. Cynicism is dead.

“What is real?” Yeah. As he’s in this kind of crazy Disney Land for rich people, where everything is fake, everything is false, they’re going to have a new group of people the next week and they’re going to treat them exactly the same way.

There’s been a lot of talk about that very graphic scene in the first episode. We’re actually seeing a body double wearing a prosthetic, but what did you think when you first read it in the script?

Oh, it made me laugh. I was like, “Oh geez, no, this is crazy.” And I remember asking Mike, “You don’t want full frontal, right?” He’s like, “No, no, we’re going to use a prosthetic.” I was like, “Oh, okay, cool.” And then I had to approve it. “Is this good?” I’m like, “Yeah, it’s fine. Great.”

I was going to ask if you were happy with the final product.

The funny thing is, Mike actually stopped by here. He was driving cross country. We were in the barn and I was taking care of my horse—he just had surgery, so I’m a vet. I said, “You know what, man? I didn’t think at all that that would be a thing.” It never occurred to me that people would go, “Penis!” And Mike was like, “Yeah, I didn’t either. I didn’t even think about it.” And then when it happened, it was like, “Oh right. Of course.” We’re kind of fucked up, aren’t we?

Well, I will say, it’s not something you see on TV a lot.

It’s true. And it’s so abrupt. The way he did it was just great. It’s like, “Bam!” First episode. So HBO, isn’t it? I did another show for HBO called Treme, and the first thing you see of me in the entire four years we did was my ass. And I remember telling them, “Hey, don’t get all crazy here. I’m not going to be doing streaking scenes down the street and stuff.”

What do you think happens to your character and his family after he leaves the island?

I want to think that there’s a glimmer of hope, but man, I don’t know. I mean, maybe Mom and Dad get closer, maybe they work. But the kids, man, they’re on their own.

This is a show about some of the luckiest and most privileged people in the world, who are completely incapable of being happy. You’ve worked in Hollywood for a long time—is that attitude something that you’ve encountered a lot and taken as a cautionary tale?

I mean, you see it everywhere. It’s not just in Hollywood. I mean, what happens in my business is, we’re telling stories about people. And sometimes we’re so disconnected from people that the stories we tell are movies about movies. I’m writing now with my partner, and you’re constantly thinking, “Have I seen this before?” But yeah, I think we lose touch, especially nowadays.

What are you writing now?

Rick Gomez is my partner. We started a company called Macaroni Art. We’ve got a script called Hot Fruit that’s being auctioned right now and we’re writing another one right now called She Dances, about a father and daughter going to a national dance competition. It’s kind of a fun chapter of my life being on this side. It’s very different.

And you’ve been on the other side a ton. What do you get recognized for the most these days?

Usually it’s That Thing You Do, which is having its 25th anniversary, which I can’t believe. That’s so insane. And all of us are going up to Erie to a minor league ballpark for Wonders Night, which is kind of fun. But That Thing You Do, Saving Silverman, Sahara. You know what’s crazy? I did one episode of Friends. One! People come up to me all the time about it.

What about when you were canvassing as a Revolutionary War soldier?

I think that was just too shocking for most people, to have a colonial soldier knocking on your door saying, “Did you go vote?” Some people were like, “What are you doing here?” That was actually for a Mardi Gras outfit. I lived in New Orleans for four years. I have a lot of wigs for Mardi Gras outfits. You’ve got to look for opportunities to wear it.

Are there any types of roles that you haven’t played yet that you want to get to one day?

I’m like a kid. I like Westerns and I like war flicks, and if I get something like that, I get really excited like I’m 12 years old. But yeah, I’ve talked to my friends and peers, the same age, actors. And we’re like, “Wow, we can’t play Hamlet anymore. Isn’t that weird?” I think of myself as Hamlet, but I’m not. We’re going to look like King Lear.

Your father-in-law is J. Peterman of J. Peterman. Is that pretty much all you wear now?

Yeah. I’m growing into the J. Peterman stuff, but I have everything. There are closets in this house they’re filled with coats that have never been worn and still have the paper over the buttons. When I was a lot younger, I was like, “I don’t know if I’m going to wear this.” Every Christmas was insane, getting J. Peterman stuff. And now I’m finding, “Oh yeah, no, I’ll wear this.”

This interview has been edited and condensed.