The White Lotus may be a fictional minefield of problematic relationships, but in real life, its cast members are basically just as loved up as everyone else in Hollywood. Take Patrick Schwarzenegger, for instance: engaged to Abby Champion and following in his father Arnold Schwarzenegger‘s footsteps, the actor just so happened to get down on one knee one week before he had to leave for Thailand.
Luckily, the couple knew exactly how to support one another from afar. “I think one of the best things that we’ve had is that we’ve grown a lot together and we’ve grown our personal relationships, but also our careers together,” Schwarzenegger told People. “And it’s been kind of fun to climb that journey as one.”
Ahead, the real-life romances of our favorite cast members from The White Lotus season three.
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Leslie Bibb has a semi-mysterious Texan husband on The White Lotus, but in real life, she’s actually coupled up with Jojo Rabbit actor Sam Rockwell. The duo met almost 20 years ago at the Chateau Marmont in West Hollywood and have been going strong ever since—despite the fact that they never officially tied the knot.
“Leslie and I are very happy,” Rockwell told The Standard in September 2022. “[We’re] basically married. She’s in my will. I feel like we are married. We live like a married couple.”
Most recently, Rockwell made a cameo on season three of The White Lotus when he appeared in Bangkok to spend an evening with Rick, a.k.a. Walton Goggins. Rockwell’s character is newly sober and delivers quite a memorable monologue at the hotel bar.
“I just read [the monologue] over and over and over and over and over again,” Goggins told Entertainment Weekly. “And when Sam signed on—Sam is one of my best friends, and Leslie [Bibb], his partner is also one of my best friends—I was nervous that Sam was going to do it, and relieved that Sam was going to do it.”
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Speaking of Goggins, the Fallout actor has been married to fellow Hollywood veteran Nadia Conners since 2011. The couple first began dating in 2005 and welcomed their son, Augustus, just a few months before their wedding.
“I’d say like father like son but truth be told, in my case, I prefer like son like father,” Goggins wrote in a 2020 Father’s Day tribute on Instagram. “He is kind and earnest, thoughtful and funny As shit. He is insatiably curious, empathetic and has taught me more about being a man than anything that has happened in my life.”
While Goggins has spent his career in front of the camera, Conners has spent hers behind the scenes. She is perhaps best known for her 2007 film The 11th Hour. Most recently, the pair collaborated on The Uninvited, a 2024 film written and directed by Conners and starring Goggins that premiered at SXSW.
“20 years she’s been working towards this moment,” Goggins wrote on Instagram. “To be by her side… with this cast… in this story… has been so emotionally overwhelming…I love you @nadiasomerset. I’m so very proud of you.”
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The youngest Ratliff sibling may not have much of a dating life in The White Lotus, but IRL, Sam Nivola is happily coupled up with fellow actor Iris Apatow. The pair’s relationship was made public roughly one year ago when Apatow joined Nivola in Thailand while he was on set.
“I brought my girlfriend for a few months, which was amazing,” the actor later told People. “It was so great to have a taste of home because it was 10,000 miles away from home, and it was so nice of her to sacrifice that time to come be with me and I’m incredibly grateful to her.”
Both Nivola and Apatow are technically nepo babies, a label they readily claim. Apatow, of course, is the daughter of Judd Apatow and Leslie Mann; Nivola, meanwhile, is the son of The Brutalist actor Alessandro Nivola and actress Emily Mortimer.
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Fellow nepo baby Patrick Schwarzenegger celebrated a new milestone in his 10-year relationship with model Abby Champion when the couple got engaged in December 2023. More recently, they also appeared together in a Skims ad campaign to promote the brand’s new line of wedding lingerie.
“When we first met, I was 21, she was 18. So you’re very different people and humans when you’re that age versus now I’m 31, she’s 27,” he told People. “Over the course of the years, I just continuously fell in love with her more and more, with the kind of human that she was becoming and that the relationship was becoming.”
