Southern Charm’s Patricia Altschul Has Thoughts on The White Lotus

I notice that they get their cabana shirts from the same place as the staff. I looked it up because I wanted a monkey shirt, and it’s very understated in a very, I don’t like the word classy, but it’s a very distinctive look. I think that their mannerisms, their attitudes in general, the wife is, obviously, I stay at home housewife. The father is a well-to-do businessman. All of their pursuits are those of people who have money and expect, they expect things. The son couldn’t believe there wasn’t a blender for him for shakes.

I feel like if you put out into the universe in this article you want a White Lotus monkey shirt, you can get one. I can try and make that happen for you.

Oh no, I got one. I found the company that makes them, they’re like $120.

That’s so meta.

Anyway, I think that, for example, the family’s polo shirts are not Ralph Lauren or like, I dunno, whatever the little whale is. It is like reverse trendy. It’s no labels.

I also think that Patrick Schwarzenegger’s character, the Ratliff son Saxon, is inspired by Shep Rose. Do you agree?

Well, every once in a while when he smiles, he’s got a very toothy grin and he smiles at the most inappropriate things that he says, and Shep does do that. It reminds me a little bit of Shep.

I feel like Whitney should be jealous that you have a whole character inspired by you. I haven’t picked out one of the Ratliffs as a Whitney character yet.

Please don’t (laughs). Well, thankfully, people think they’re a composite of Shep, Austen and Craig—early Craig. So they’ve kind of left Whitney out of the mix, for which I’m very happy.

Any other thoughts on Victoria’s character?

Well, she could be a villain because she was speaking Thai [in episode 2].

Yeah. What was up with that?

I don’t know. I’m just wondering. And she was uncomfortable when the woman knew who she was from years ago…I’m just wondering if it wasn’t just being snobby and rude but if she just didn’t want to be recognized for some reason.

I clocked the Thai thing as well and did think that was weird, but then they just kind of glossed over it. So who knows? Maybe she could be the villain of the entire season. That would be kind of iconic.

What’s interesting about the show is that there’s so many things that are symbolic, and maybe they’re meaningless and maybe they aren’t. I keep seeing images that reappear and that maybe they’re just thrown in there because they’re representative of the culture and don’t have any underlying meaning. But that’s an interesting thing about the show, is that everybody’s looking for all of these symbols and what it could possibly mean.

The White Lotus and season 10 of Southern Charm are both airing at the same time. Are you enjoying the rollout of this season so far?