Every generation gets the monologue that pop culture lovers can quote chapter and verse. '90s kids had Christopher Walken's Pulp Fiction soliloquy about a POW camp and a very special watch. The 2000s brought us Sean Astin's tear-inducing take on the tales that really mattered. (For the record, the '80s were also Astin's time courtesy of The Goonies.) And the 2010s crown has to go to Laurie Metcalf's barnburning nine-minute monologue from Horace & Pete — a once-acclaimed show that's disappeared into the ether following creator Louis C.K.'s fall from grace.
While there are still a few years left to go in the 2020s, it's looking unlikely that anyone will surpass Sam Rockwell's remarkable confessional in Season 3 of The White Lotus. The centerpiece sequence of the HBO Max show's fifth episode, "Full-Moon Party," the actor's lengthy monologue marries heartfelt soul-bearing with wild narrative zigs and zags. In other words, it's a pure Mike White creation — one that's in keeping with the writer-director's signature style. And it scored Rockwell an Emmy nomination for Best Drama Supporting Actor. (He was previously nominated for Best Drama Actor in 2019 for Fosse/Verdon.)
"Mike does something very clever with it where he summarizes the entire season in that monologue," Rockwell tells Gold Derby. "The philosophy of Season 3 is showing how the characters' search for enlightenment is in conflict with their selfishness and pleasure-seeking. That's also a central conflict in human beings: on your best way, you're a hero and on your worst day, you're a coward. Everybody has both of those things in them."
As Rockwell previously told us, he inherited the monologue from Woody Harrelson, who had to surrender his White Lotus room key due to scheduling conflicts. Rockwell's partner, Leslie Bibb, had already been cast as Texas housewife Kate Bohr, and she convinced him to step in on short notice as Frank — a former friend of revenge-seeking tourist Rick Hatchett (Walton Goggins) who has been on an extended spiritual (and erotic) sojourn in Thailand.
"I was scared to do it," Rockwell confesses. "I didn't have a lot of prep time. But Leslie told me, 'You must do this monologue.' There was no doubt in her mind that it wasn't just a good scene — it was going to be an important one. And Frank's monologue really has become this whole other thing that's beyond myself, Mike and the show itself. It hit this kind of zeitgeist."
For Rockwell, the trick to nailing Frank's monologue was working backwards from the last line — a technique that's often taught in acting classes. He also eschewed wearing an earwig for the sound department to feed him lines, something he says that he's only done once during his career — and it was for a Marvel Studios production.
"There was an emergency on Iron Man 2 where they had to write a speech for my character over lunch," he recalls, referring to the 2010 blockbuster sequel where he played Tony Stark's rival, Justin Hammer. "I had [writer] Justin Theroux in my ear prompting me, and then a Marvel executive prompting me. But in this case I had three or four weeks to memorize three pages."
For the actual White Lotus shoot, Rockwell remembers delivering Frank's monologue multiple times as White captured the scene from a variety of angles, starting with his close-up. Watching the scene again, the actor's facial expressions are almost as memorable as his words — whether its his eyes darting around the room or the way his mouth occasionally curls into a grin as he reveals details about his life to Rick that he hasn't shared with anyone else. Asked if part of his rehearsal process was performing the speech into a mirror to test out different facial tics, Rockwell says that's another assist that he generally avoids.
"That leads to self-consciousness," he explains. "Actors are incredibly vain, but when you're acting, you must leave all that behind. Sometimes it's a good thing for a character to lean into your vanity, again like in Iron Man 2. I decided that Justin was a guy who would probably get a spray tan, so I was self-tanning throughout that movie. It provided this insight into the character's vanity. But in general, once the camera's on, you can't think about how you look or it's going to get in your head."
Another challenge with Frank's monologue was ensuring that some of his more outlandish confessions sounded authentic, and not like the discarded pieces of a comedy routine. Rockwell carefully walks that line throughout the scene, giving a grounded account of his character's outsized experiences. That's long been the actor's general approach to balancing comedy and drama — save for one movie. Twenty years ago, Rockwell starred as Zaphod Beeblebrox in the 2005 big-screen version of the late Douglas Adams's seminal satire, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It's the biggest, wildest comedic performance he's ever given, and one that still holds a special place in his heart.
"That movie didn't become Ghostbusters, let's put it that way," he says of the Garth Jennings-directed movie, which famously underperformed at the box office. "A bunch of people turned the role down — Will Ferrell, Jack Black, Jim Carrey, the usual suspects. But I saw it as kind of an opportunity do to my own Jim Carrey performance; I was watching stuff like The Mask and consciously tried to do something like that. I also incorporated a little George W. Bush, Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson in there. But I like that movie a lot. It was a lot of fun to make with a lot of practical effects and sets."
Speaking of practical effects, one of Rockwell's first-ever film roles provided hime with a crash course in that kind of movie magic. The actor had a small role in 1990's live action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie and had to interact with the life-sized turtles and their rodent sensei, Splinter. "I met one of my best friends on that movie," Rockwell recalls. "Leif Tilden — he was in the Donatello suit. God bless animatronics and in-camera effects, right? I think it's coming back; we need in-camera effects to come back."
As Frank's monologue makes clear, though, Rockwell is already his own special effect in The White Lotus.
