'The White Lotus' star Jason Isaacs says everyone had juicy moments cut from season 3, but he's glad Tim didn't lose 'a whole storyline'

• Jason Isaacs starred as Timothy Ratliff in "The White Lotus" season three, which wrapped on Sunday.
• He told BI that every actor had important scenes cut from the final edit, but he was luckier than others.
• "I missed a couple of big laughs I had," he said. "I didn't lose a whole storyline, at least."

HBO's anthology series "The White Lotus" is known for generating strong reactions from its rapt audience, but even season three star Jason Isaacs — who's known the fate of his character, Timothy Ratliff, for over a year — was left with misty eyes after watching the finale with his costars.

"It's like the end of summer camp when you're 11, but I'm not 11," Isaacs told Business Insider on Tuesday. "I was surprised how emotional I got, how we were all on the edge of tears all night."

Sunday's finale featured several heart-wrenching interactions and deaths the cast has had to keep a secret — but not even the actors, who spent about seven months filming on location in Thailand, knew exactly how their characters' stories would end, as lots of scenes they shot never made it to air.

On Monday's episode of "The White Lotus Official Podcast," the show's creator and director, Mike White, revealed the 90-minute finale originally included a scene where Timothy's daughter Piper (Sarah Catherine Hook) lost her virginity to Belinda's son Zion (Nicholas Duvernay).

"It would have added like 10 minutes to the thing," White said, so it was left on the cutting room floor. ("I'm glad," Isaacs joked. "I don't want to see my daughter have sex.")

"Everybody had things that felt like limbs and organs chopped off," Isaacs explained. "But I mean, that's part of the process. Mike's writing is so brilliant, you can't bear to lose a semicolon." Ultimately, Isaacs said, "you just had to swallow it and trust that he made the right decision in the edit."

Isaacs included himself in that count, replying "Oh God, yes!" when asked if he filmed anything crucial or juicy that ultimately got scrapped. Overall, however, he said his character's arc was kept more intact than others.

"For me, because Tim's having such a catastrophically terrible time, I missed a couple of big laughs I had. Because everybody else got laughs. Obviously, Parker [Posey] got a ton of laughs," Isaacs said, referring to his onscreen wife. "The great reward on the show was when Mike would go into one of his hysterical cackles behind the monitor. And there were a couple I know that I had that are gone."

"I feel like I lost possibly less than some other people, like Sarah Catherine, who was very upset about the whole storyline," he added of Sarah Catherine Hook's Piper. "I didn't lose a whole storyline, at least."

While the Ratliff family has a complex, tragic dynamic onscreen, Isaacs grew very close with his costars in real life — especially Hook, Patrick Schwarzenegger, and Sam Nivola, who played his character's sons, Saxon and Lochlan, respectively. He said the four actors have a group chat and regularly check in on each other.

Aimee Lou Wood, who played the fan-favorite character Chelsea opposite Walton Goggins' Rick, recently said the cast "accidentally" went Method while filming the eight-episode sequence, blurring the line between fiction and reality.

Though Isaacs agreed the experience created a "really intense intimacy" between costars, he said Wood's comments don't apply to everyone.

"I think she's speaking for herself and Walton. They had their own storyline, which is very different from our storylines," he explained. "Walton and Aimee Lou built that beautiful and brilliant relationship in whatever way they did."

"We were not 'Method,'" he continued, referring to the Ratliff family. "I mean, we just hung out a lot together. We had a great time together. We went out on boats, went on trips, we ate together, we watched movies together, and played cards together and stuff. I don't know if that feeds into the work or not."

"The White Lotus" is streaming in full on Max.