The dust has settled on an explosive, divisive and hugely entertaining third season of The White Lotus. It’s been two months since the blood-ridden finale and almost every cast member has said their piece, dropped hints about what the show was like to work on and gushed about their co-stars, boosting their profiles in the process. Then there’s Jason Isaacs.

The Liverpudlian actor, perhaps best known for his turn as Lucius Malfoy in the Harry Potter series, is a little looser lipped than his colleagues. Not only has he had plenty to say about The White Lotus backstage dynamics, the salary equity and, of course, his prosthetic penis, but he’s recently done an interview with Vulture appropriately titled, ‘Jason Isaacs might say too much.’

So, what exactly did he say? Before the Thailand-set series aired, Isaacs, who played the disgraced businessman Tim Ratliff, told The Guardian, ‘There’s no question that sometimes it is absolutely fabulous and sometimes it’s Lord of the Flies.’

Fast forward to April when the series ended Isaacs told Vulture that there was an off-screen White Lotus with ‘fewer deaths but just as much drama’. He likened production to a ‘theatre camp’ but also ‘an open prison camp’. The actor added, ‘Some people got very close, there were friendships that were made and friendships that were lost.’

Naturally, until their own joint Variety interview at the start of June, viewers were likely to suspect Isaacs was referring to Walton Goggins and Aimee Lou Wood. They played on-screen partners Rick and Chelsea in season three, who both perished in the final episode, but it was their off-screen relationship that piqued interest. Goggins, for his part, shared an 18-slide Instagram Story of his time with Wood set to ‘Silver Springs’ by Fleetwood Mac – the song about Stevie Nicks and band guitarist Lindsey Buckingham’s breakup – after the final episode. That would have been intense enough if Goggins hadn’t also gushed about Wood in a press interview and then unfollowed her on Instagram.

Anyway, it turns out Goggins is just an incredibly earnest guy, and he and Wood remain good friends. As for the unfollow, Goggins explained that part of his process of saying goodbye to a character is to shed all traces of them from his personal life, which included unfollowing Wood on social media, apparently.

In Isaacs’ most recent Vulture interview, he said a little more about his time in Thailand, but still not enough to land him in hot water. When asked about his relationship with his onscreen wife, Parker Posey, he simply said: ‘She’s Parker Posey. She’s everything you think she would be.’ When asked about the hullabaloo surrounding the scene when his character flashed his penis at breakfast, which turned out to be a prosthetic penis, he said, ‘Other people thought I was bothered by it. I thought that was funny.’ He then admitted his strategy of joking about it as a way of diffusing the story backfired. ‘I thought that would kill it and instead it made that be the only thing people asked me about for a week until the brothers’ hand job came along.’

Next up came a question about the infamous White Lotus salaries – all stars are paid $40,000 per episode, which is surprisingly low by global hit TV show standards. Isaacs was the first to admit that the salary is still ‘ridiculously disproportionate’ to what actors do, which is why he doesn’t like discussing or complaining about it, but it is a comparatively ‘very low price’. The Hood actor admitted, ‘The fact is, we would have paid to be in it.’

‘Everyone is treated the same on The White Lotus,’ producer David Bernad told The Hollywood Reporter. ‘They get paid the same, and we do alphabetical billing, so you’re getting people who want to do the project for the right reasons, not to quote The Bachelor. It’s a system we developed in the first season because there was no money to make the show.’

However, the juiciest part of the interview was not even about The White Lotus, even if Isaacs has dropped heavy hints that he’s sitting on salacious BTS stories. Instead, it was about another actor, or rather actors, that he has worked with in the past. Isaacs was reminded of the time he told an interviewer that a prominent actor pushed him out of the shot while working on a film. ‘Oh Jesus,’ he replied. ‘Did worse than that. Was the worst bully ever and a global icon. […] It sucked. I’d never seen anything like it. Before, I would’ve licked the ground that this person walked on.’

Unfortunately, according to Isaacs, poor behaviour from A-listers is far from uncommon. ‘It’s selfishness, cruelty, bullying, or people complaining to the person who’s getting them dressed, who doesn’t get in a year what they earn in a day to pick their filthy underwear off the floor. That, or not turning up, or going home early, or thinking they know better than the director, or being on crack and calling prostitutes to their trailer,’ he went on. ‘I come across all that stuff.’

Even so, Isaacs might shame, but he certainly doesn’t name. At least not yet. He said he’s not ‘stupid’ enough to ‘even give hints’ about who said industry villains are, despite plenty of memoir offers over the years. ‘Not in a million f**king years until everybody is dead,’ is his response, admitting that he fantasises about doing a junket and ‘telling the truth’, but wouldn’t dream of doing so until he’s won the lottery. ‘There is no value, other than masochism and sabotage, in telling people the truth about people I’ve worked with or experiences I’ve had. Acting is all about secrets.’

Isaacs is perhaps the worst kind of secret keeper of all. He is keen to tell us just how many secrets he’s sitting on, and quite how salacious they are, but he has no interest in elaborating. If this is all subliminal promo for a forthcoming memoir, however, then it’s working – and we’ll be the first in line.