Actor Jason Isaacs and Duke University will be intrinsically linked for the foreseeable future thanks to HBO’s The White Lotus and the school t-shirts he wore during particular moments. The season might be over but the memes are forever.
***SPOILERS AHEAD FOR SEASON THREE OF THE WHITE LOTUS***
Isaacs played Duke grad Timothy Ratliff in the show’s third season, which just ended. Ratliff spends most of the season in a stupor as he processes the reality that his financial empire has crumbled, he will be arrested when he returns home from Thailand, and his family is about to lose their lucrative lifestyle.
For much of his existential crisis, Ratliff wears a blue t-shirt with the Duke logo emblazoned on the front. That includes the various scenes where he handles a gun while contemplating suicide, one of which shows him putting the gun to his head. There were also multiple visions of murder-suicide scenarios involving his family. Screenshots of those moments, as well as various images of Timothy looking miserable while wearing his Duke shirt, made their way onto social media and seemed destined to become shorthand for Duke fans’ feelings when their men’s basketball team lost in the NCAA Tournament (which they did heartbreakingly for Blue Devils faithful).
The school was not a big fan of their logo’s usage on the show, especially given the context.
“Duke appreciates artistic expression and creative storytelling,” Frank Tramble, the vice president for communications, marketing, and public affairs at Duke, told Scott Cacciola of the New York Times, “but characters prominently wearing apparel bearing Duke’s federally registered trademarks creates confusion and mistakenly suggests an endorsement or affiliation where none exists.”
Tramble also wrote that the show “not only uses our brand without permission, but in our view uses it on imagery that is troubling, does not reflect our values or who we are, and simply goes too far.”
When an X post including an image of Timothy Ratliff in a Duke shirt holding a gun to his head went viral, the school felt the need to respond, calling out the insensitive nature of using a depiction of self-harm for laughs.
For his part, Isaacs was unfazed by the controversy. He even appeared at the season finale screening wearing a Duke T-shirt featuring the school’s Blue Devil mascot.
“I found the whole thing faintly amusing,” he said during a recent appearance on the Prestige Junkie podcast of the feud between the school and the show. “I don’t like anyone getting upset about anything, but clearly, it was just someone fancying seeing their name online and, in some department, wanting to go viral. Their real-life alumni are such a rogue’s gallery, many of them, that the notion that this rather spiritually enlightened character on television caused them any trouble is fanciful and ridiculous.”
Every new season of White Lotus brings a character or two from a previous season, so it’s entirely possible that Timothy and his Duke shirt could return, though we have to wonder how he’d be able to afford it.