The White Lotus Star Theo James Felt Trapped
The latest season of HBO’s The White Lotus features an eclectic cast, including British actor Theo James who is finally enjoying this more diverse stage of his career after getting typecast from being in the Divergent franchise.
James talked about this in his interview with Vanity Fair, saying “I felt I didn’t have the fluidity to move in the directions that I wanted. You’re very much in a certain type of role — and those roles can be pretty f***ing boring.” Now James is at the point where he can flex his acting muscles, rather than playing a more archetypal character in a YA film.
The White Lotus is definitely a step in this direction, as the Mike White-created series depicts the upper-class guests and the employees at luxury resorts. Season 2 saw the series move to Italy and a new cast that included Theo James, Michael Imperioli, Aubrey Plaza, F. Murray Abraham, Adam DiMarco, Tom Hollander, Haley Lu Richardson, Meghann Fahy, Will Sharpe, Leo Woodall, Beatrice Grannó, Sabrina Impacciatore, Simona Tabasco, and the returning Jennifer Coolidge. The series managed to score a ton of Emmy wins for its first season, so maybe an Emmy could be in the future for James.
Of course, The White Lotus isn’t the only notable step in the right direction Theo James has made since moving on from the Divergent franchise. He starred in another series for HBO with The Time-Traveler’s Wife and had some notable voice roles as Vesemir in Netflix’s The Witcher: Nightmare of the White Wolf and as Hector in Netflix’s Castlevania TV series. With his performance and the fan acclaim for his role in The White Lotus, there are likely only going to be more great roles for him in the future.
Theo James is far from the only actor who wanted to take their career in a more eclectic and interesting direction after appearing in a YA franchise for years. Some other notable examples include Harry Potter’s Daniel Radcliffe and Twilight’s Robert Pattinson. Radcliffe went on to take extremely interesting roles like a farting corpse in Swiss Army Man and Weird Al Yankovic in Weird: The Al Yankovic Story.
Meanwhile, Robert Pattinson went on to become a highly acclaimed indie actor while also taking on major blockbuster roles in films like Tenet and The Batman. If the careers of Pattinson and Radcliffe are anything to go by, Theo James is certainly heading in the right direction. While we likely won’t be seeing him in another season of The White Lotus, there is surely going to be more interesting projects to see him in soon.
If you missed the second (or the first) season of The White Lotus, you can stream them on HBO Max. The second season is still in progress and you’ll be able to see the sixth episode when it hits the streaming platform on December 4. That should give you plenty of time to catch up before the season finale of The White Lotus hits the platform on December 11.
You can also catch Theo James in his next project The Gentlemen. The TV series is based on the Guy Ritchie film of the same name and will also star Giancarlo Esposito, Kaya Scodelario, Peter Serafinowicz, Vinnie Jones, Daniel Ings, and Joely Richardson. There’s no word on a release date yet.
