Arnold Schwarzenegger is opening up about his son, The White Lotus star Patrick Schwarzenegger, following in his acting footsteps.
“Patrick never asked me a question about acting,” Arnold, 77, said in an interview with The Sunday Times published on Saturday, June 14. “But he came many times to me and said, ‘I just did an interview with this magazine and two thirds of the questions were about you.’ But I was just in New York and a journalist comes up and says, ‘What’s it like being the father of Patrick Schqarzenegger?”
He continued, “All of a sudden, everything has changed around. I walk into the gym now and it used to be the girls would come up and give me their contact. And then after White Lotus comes out, the girl comes up and says, ‘Here’s my contact, give it to Patrick.’ So it’s wonderful. If I go to my grave and know that my son has outdone me, I’m in heaven.”
Patrick was one of the breakout stars of HBO Max’s White Lotus season 3, playing incestious older brother Saxon Ratliff. Schwarzenegger, for his part, is an iconic 80s and early 90s action star, embodying some of Hollywood’s most memorable characters in films like The Terminator, Predator, Running Man and Twins.
Despite his White Lotus character being a toxic, mansplaining rich kid, both Patrick’s dad and mom, Maria Shriver, swear he is the exact opposite in real life.
“The only thing Patriick does do like Saxon is push the button on the Vitamix,” she told TODAY.come in an April interview. “Both my boys are like, you know, it’s quiet in the morning and then, “Boom!’ That blender goes off, and I’m like, ‘Really? Really?’ He and his brother, both, are like, ‘Zzt,’ and early. It’s the worst. I’m just, like, ‘Excuse me?’ And they’re like, ‘What? IT’s just the blender.’ I’m like, why doesn’t somebody make a quiet blender? I don’t know why they don’t do that.”
In the same Saturday profile interview, Arnold also opened up about his less-well-known son, Christopher, and his recent weight loss journey. The actor admitted that it was difficult for him to watch his son struggle with his size.
“I could never go and say to him, you’re overweight. We just kept introducing healthy foods,” Arnold said of his son. “We introduced him always to the gym and all of that kind of stuff. And then, out of nowhere, he decided that he wanted to be lean. And now he is. So that is of course fantastic, the self-discipline and the self-motivation. I always felt one day it will have to come from him — and it did.”
