Just when you thought bonkers new series The White Lotus had peaked at Jennifer Coolidge being a champagne-slinging legend, last night’s episode saw an ass get eaten by an Aussie actor. Mates, what a peachy era of television we’re in.
The episode ends (spoiler alert!) with White Lotus hotel manager Armond (played by Aussie bloke Murray Bartlett) munching on the glorious behind of staffer, Dillon (Lukas Gage).
Throughout the episode I was wondering where I’d seen the lad’s striking face before, and then it hit me (not unlike how his tattooed butt hit Murray’s face).
He’s the poor guy who was doing a Zoom audition last year and heard a jackass director mocking his apartment because the imbecile director didn’t put his speaker on mute before mouthing off.
In a video, which Lukas Gage shared to Twitter last November, the director can be heard saying:
“These poor people live in these tiny apartments. Like I’m looking at his background and he has his TV, you know…”
Lukas took it like an absolute champ, responding to the director: “It’s a shitty apartment – give me this job so I can get a better one!”
psa if youre a shit talking director make sure to mute ur shit on zoom mtgings pic.twitter.com/PTgMZcRhEw
— lukas gage (@lukasgage) November 20, 2020
The “mortified” man apologised, and the audition seemingly continued in good spirits.
After the video subsequently went viral, the director was revealed to be Tristram Shapeero, who has worked on such series as The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Brooklyn Nine-Nine and Never Have I Ever.
He later penned an open letter apology to Lukas via Variety, where he wrote: “First and foremost I offer Mr. Gage a sincere and unvarnished apology for my offensive words, my unprofessional behaviour during the audition and for not giving him the focus and attention he deserved. My job is to evaluate performers against the part I am trying to cast. Lukas deserved better.”
He most certainly did deserve better, and I’m happy to see that he ultimately received it by landing a role on the hit HBO series that’s gone gangbusters.
What a turnaround from being the butt of this director’s joke to literally having his butt become a global sensation. We love to see it.
The White Lotus is now streaming on BINGE.
Matty Galea is the Senior Entertainment Editor at Pedestrian who also dabbles in woo-woo stuff like astrology and crystals and has been penning horoscopes since the start of his career. He also Tweets about pop culture and astrology and posts spicy content on Instagram.
