Few actors carry the gravitas of Scott Glenn. With a career spanning five decades, Glenn has carved out a legacy defined by his signature toughness and unmistakable voice. From rugged turns in “The Right Stuff” and “The Hunt for Red October” to layered work in “Silence of the Lambs” and “Training Day,” he’s long been a figure of authority on screen. His Emmy nomination for “The White Lotus” marks a first, an acknowledgment of an actor whose presence has always demanded attention.
In Mike White’s acclaimed third season, Glenn plays Jim Hollinger, an American expat who has lived in Thailand for half a century. We learn early on that Hollinger owns the White Lotus resort with his wife, Sritala, a former actress and singer portrayed by Lek Patravadi. Though Hollinger doesn’t appear until late in the season, his shadow looms large. Rick (Walton Goggins) travels to Thailand to confront him, believing Hollinger killed his father — a buildup that makes Glenn’s eventual arrival as a commanding antagonist all the more powerful.
To bring Hollinger to life, Glenn focused on more than dialogue or physicality. “I realized I was playing a guy who’d lived steadily in Thailand for 50 years,” Glenn explained. “So I thought, how do I access the Thai rhythm? … I wanted that to creep into what I was doing.” That attention to cultural detail, combined with his natural presence, grounds Hollinger as more than a villain. He becomes emblematic of the season’s collision between privilege, history, and power.
“The White Lotus” recieved a stunning 23 Emmy nominations this year, including Glenn’s recognition for Guest Actor in a Drama. For the veteran actor, the nod was as unexpected as it was meaningful: “It feels great,” he shared. “It’s a bunch of people who do the same stuff I do deciding to nominate me. I’m super happy.”
Glenn spoke candidly with Awards Focus about discovering the show, working under Mike White’s unstructured creative style, and how he brought Thai rhythms and cultural texture into his portrayal of Jim Hollinger.
Awards Focus: It’s great to meet you Scott. Congratulations. I’ve watched you for years, of course, and I was reading that this is actually your first Emmy nomination. How does it feel at this stage of your career to be recognized by the Television Academy?
Scott Glenn: It feels great. It’s a bunch of people who do the same stuff I do deciding to nominate me for this thing. I’m super happy.
AF: Your role in “The White Lotus” was a small guest appearance, yet it struck such a chord with voters and viewers alike. Given the iconic performances throughout your career, why do you think this particular turn resonated so deeply?
Glenn: The real answer is I’ve been doing this pretty steadily for about 50 years, a long time in TV and movies. But I’ve never had the rush of excitement from people needing to know what was going to happen in the final episode of “The White Lotus.” It’s not a mistake that so many nominations come to this show. Mike White is not only a brilliant writer but also a phenomenal director who brings the best out in people.
It’s also the phenomenon of the show itself. I’ve never been involved in anything where so many people called me before the final episode asking, “You have to tell me what happens.” Of course I’d say, “Stay tuned, I can’t do that.” Some speculated — “We think you’re Walton’s father” — and I’d just say, “That’s a good thought, maybe so, maybe not.”
“The White Lotus” is unique. A lot of other Emmy contenders have hooks like sci-fi, “Star Wars”-type worlds, or zombie apocalypses. I kept asking myself, what’s the hook here? It’s the sensual dance that happens between people, often in dark places. And when I watch, I find myself uncomfortably laughing at things I probably shouldn’t — even at a guy thinking about killing his family. But nevertheless, there I am. That’s what makes the show unique.
AF: With so much television to choose from, had you watched the earlier seasons of “The White Lotus”? Were you a fan of Mike White’s work before this role came along?
Glenn: That’s a great question. The honest answer is no, I wasn’t. When I got offered the part, I was given just a quick description: “Old, recently suffered either a heart attack or a stroke, walks with a cane, but still mentally sharp.”
In the last two years, I’ve done three jobs: a running part on “Bad Monkey,” which I hear is coming back for a second season, an indie thriller called “Eugene the Marine,” and then “The White Lotus.” I had just finished “Eugene,” and part of my character’s description there was someone dealing with ageism. So when I read “old, carrying a cane,” I thought, in the last five parts I’ve turned down, three were people dying of Alzheimer’s, one was in an iron lung, and all of them walked with canes or walkers. I said, screw that, I’m not going to do it.
My agent said, “Have you seen the show at all?” I said no. He convinced me to watch at least one episode. That night, my wife Carol and I watched episode one of season one. Within ten or fifteen minutes, I was sucked right in. I understood the whole show was a dance, and I thought, wow, I could be a part of this. And it was going to shoot in Thailand, a country I know fairly well and really love.
The next day I told my agent it was great and maybe I should talk to Mike White. The day after that, I got a call from Mike — I’m in the mountains of Idaho, and he’s calling from Bangkok at what must have been 4:30 or 5 in the morning. After talking to him, I realized I really wanted to do it, if nothing else just to work with him. That’s how it happened.
AF: What were your early conversations with Mike White like and what was it like to work with him?
Glenn: When we were talking, I told him something I’d realized. Over 50 years, I’ve sometimes thought, okay, now I know everything there is to know about acting — all I have to do now is relax, exercise those muscles, and do it. It’s like metaphorically climbing a mountain, thinking you’re at the top, and then the winds blow the clouds away and you realize you’re not even halfway up.
That happened recently going from “Bad Monkey,” which had a lot of improv with Vince Vaughn, to “Eugene the Marine,” where out of a 98-page script, my character’s on 96 of them. There was just too much work to spend nights memorizing lines, so I would read the scene once and treat every take like a one-act play called “now.”
I told Mike that’s where I am as an actor right now. I’ll do what the script says physically — if it says walk across the room and look out the window, I’ll do that. But if it says walk across the room whimpering in fear, I cross that out immediately. I told him, “When you say action, I’ll do what the script requires physically, but how it will happen, I don’t know. It may be exactly the same every time, or completely different every time.”
Mike laughed and said, “So you’re telling me when I say action, you don’t really know what you’re going to do?” And I said, “Yeah, basically.” And he said, “I don’t know what I’m going to do either, so let’s work together.”
For me, he always created an atmosphere of true permissive freedom. That’s rare. You don’t get that from a lot of directors.
AF: In your process, you weren’t just playing an older man in a wheelchair. There’s a lot of backstory packed into a limited appearance, and audiences had to understand you right away. When preparing for the role, what did you first latch onto? And when the cameras rolled, what did you most want audiences to take away?
Glenn: What I wanted to, and I hope maybe through osmosis I did, was play a guy who’d lived steadily in Thailand for 50 years, married to a Thai woman with two Thai daughters. To a great extent, he was more Thai than American. Not so much in terms of language, but in rhythm.
I’m going to name-drop here, but it’s true, so I don’t mind. Years ago, Marlon Brando taught me that every culture has its own rhythm, aside from language. Without changing pronunciation, he’d shift from a German rhythm, which he used in “The Young Lions”, to a Japanese rhythm, and he literally became German, then Japanese, just by rhythm. He told me that’s true not just of language, but of entire cultures.
So I thought, even though I’d spent time in Thailand, how do I access that Thai rhythm? Because I’m a very physical person, and I’ve been practicing martial arts since I was ten years old, I started at the beginner level with two Thai martial arts I didn’t know: Krabi Krabong, which is dancing or fighting with Thai short swords, and Muay Boran Nam, water boxing.
While I was practicing, in Koh Samui, I looked out the gym window and realized something. The Thai rhythm isn’t unconnected to the Philippines, Indonesia, or Hawaii. What they all share is the palm fronds dancing in the wind, something those cultures grow up seeing every day. That’s where the rhythm comes from. So that was my way in.
AF: That’s fascinating. So you approached the pace and presence of the character through rhythm — almost absorbed from the culture around him, as someone who had lived there for decades.
Glenn: Exactly. The other thing I leaned on was just my instinctive love of Thai culture and the Thai people. They call it the Land of Smiles, and it really is. I hoped that love would creep into what I was doing.
AF: Most of the main cast spent six or seven months filming in Thailand. How long were you there for your portion and what was it like to revisit Thailand?
Glenn: I was there for most of the time, but off and on. The hardest part of the job, for me, was the travel. And it wasn’t like I was stuck in coach, I had first-class flights on Singapore Air and Japan Airlines. But no matter how comfortable your seat is, I did four round trips to Thailand. That’s eight 22-hour flights. And that pretty much kicked the crap out of me.
The other thing I never really talked to Mike about was the symbolism of Thai Buddhism. In the Thai form, the symbols of awareness are lotus flowers. Blue for wisdom and intellect, red for passion and love, and white for spiritual perfection — the rarest and highest.
I realized the word “lotus” was everywhere. I knew Muay Thai, but one of the great Muay Thai fighters, for fifteen years, went by the name White Lotus. He still does demonstrations, though he’s in his forties now. That connection stuck with me.
AF: You’ve mentioned your martial arts background, which adds another layer of meaning to former roles like Stick in “Daredevil.” At this stage of your career, after five decades of work, how do you choose the projects you take on? What makes a role essential for you?
Glenn: Reading a script to me is kind of like walking into the kitchen and smelling food cooking. You either want to throw up or you start salivating like crazy, wanting to eat everything. Scripts hit me in that kind of sensual way.
It’s more appetite than thought. I don’t think anymore, “Oh, this is going to help my career.” It just has to hook me. Maybe it’s the challenge of accessing emotions I haven’t dealt with in a long time, or maybe it’s something else entirely. But it has to make me hungry to do it.
AF: That’s a fantastic way to put it. it’s been such a pleasure to meet you. The show is great and your performance was remarkable. I’m excited for you, and I hope you enjoy the Emmys.
Glenn: Thank you very, very much.