‘Being in The White Lotus was hugely helpful in terms of opening doors that were harder to open before’: Theo James wears blazer, sequinned shirt and trousers, all from amiparis.com.‘Being in The White Lotus was hugely helpful in terms of opening doors that were harder to open before’: Theo James wears blazer, sequinned shirt and trousers, all from amiparis.com., the British actor wasn’t immediately sure what he could bring to the part of Cameron.
“The central conceit is that old-world Britannia is on its last breath,” says James. “And the crumbling house, this crumbling dukedom, is underpinned by criminality. On the face of it you have the upper class winning. But underneath that, ultimately, they’re controlled by organised crime, which is obviously the other end of the spectrum in terms of class. So it’s subverting that.”
Initially, James responded by turning against anything that wasn’t acting: he found industry parties “frivolous” and didn’t much enjoy doing press. “I’m quite a private person,” he says, “and you’re expected to give a piece of yourself now. That’s OK, but you need to understand that that is part of a deal one must do with the devil, as it were, whoever the devil may be. But that was my defence mechanism for being nervous.