Emily Mortimer has revealed her reaction to watching her White Lotus star son Sam Nivola’s first sex scene.
Sam, 21, starred in the third season of the hit show, and alongside Patrick Schwarzenegger and Charlotte Le Bon had one of the most shocking scenes in the drama – when his character Lochlan Ratliff had a threesome with his own brother.
Sam’s mother Emily, 53, is no stranger to sex scenes during her illustrious 30 year career, with one of her most memorable being the controversial moment in the 2003 movie Young Adam when Ewan McGregor doused the naked actress in custard and ketchup.
And now Emily has admitted that watching her own son in erotic scenes isn’t as crazy as watching his career soar.
‘It’s so crazy, all of it. It wasn’t particularly crazier than having my boy go off to Thailand for so long,’ Emily pointed out of the intense seven month shoot Sam embarked on for The White Lotus.
‘Of course it was a bit bizarre, but being married to an actor [Alessandro Nivola], we’ve all had to watch each other do strange things.’
Emily Mortimer has revealed her reaction to watching her White Lotus star son Sam Nivola’s first sex scene – She shares son Sam with her American screen husband Allesandro
Sam, 21, starred in the third season of the hit show, and alongside Patrick Schwarzenegge r and Charlotte Le Bon had one of the most shocking scenes in the drama – when his character Lochlan Ratliff had a threesome with his own brother (pictured with Charlotte Le Bon)
Emily added that Sam had given his parents a warning but failed to disclose how many threesome scenes were shown.
‘I had been warned — although Sam said that the worst bit was the first ten minutes, but they kept flashing back. So I’d relaxed and then it wasn’t true at all,’ she told The Times.
The proud mother gushed that so far Sam is handling fame better than she and his father ever could, admitting ‘he just sort of owns it, which isn’t thanks to either of us. I’m biased because I’m his mum, but he doesn’t need any guidance.’
Sam has plenty of mentors he could lean on should he need it though, with celebrated actors Jason Isaacs and Parker Posey playing his parents in The White Lotus, whilst Nicole Kidman and Liev Schreiber were his onscreen mum and dad in 2024 Netflix hit The Perfect Couple.
When asked who is the best onscreen mum to her boy, Emily was quick to decide, laughing: ‘Oh, he’s had a lot of great actresses be his mum. Parker Posey was a bit more maternal.’
Emily has already acted alongside Sam and his sister May, 15, after she cast her children and mother in the BBC’s The Pursuit of Love (which she wrote and directed and in Doll & Em, the comedy series she wrote with her best friend, Dolly Wells.
Doll & Em was Sam’s acting debut.
Sam, 21, moved from Britain to the U.S. when he was young after spending his early childhood in Notting Hill, London, before growing up in Brooklyn, New York.
There he attended Saint Ann’s School in Brooklyn, where fees cost between $48,000 and $52,000 per year, before earning a place at the prestigious Columbia University.
Emily has admitted that watching her own son in erotic scenes isn’t as crazy as watching his career soar. ‘It’s so crazy, all of it’
Emily has already acted alongside Sam and his sister May, 15, after she cast her children and mother in the BBC’s The Pursuit of Love (the family pictured together in 2018)
Rising star Sam has worked with Nicole Kidman who played his mum in 2024 Netflix hit The Perfect Couple
The rising star is dating fellow nepo-baby Iris Apatow, 22. The pair looked smitten as they took to the red carpet together at the White Lotus premiere earlier this year, and the actress even joined her beau in Thailand while he filmed the HBO series last year.
But Sam claims he’s not like other nepo babies, as he told Vogue last month: ‘My parents aren’t, like, total celebrities. They don’t get recognised in the street.’
Next up for Emily is Disney+ drama Suspect, about the wrongful killing of Jean Charles de Menezes, in which she plays former Metropolitan Police commissioner Cressida Dick.
Sam meanwhile is pivoting to comedy after a run of streamer dramas, and is currently filming the Bobby Farrelly film Driver’s Ed.
