The real-life love stories of The White Lotus cast
The White Lotus is powered by some dark relationship dynamics, from couples who seem to hate each other to inheritance thieves (we’re looking at you Gary). While Rick (played by Walton Goggins) seems to wince in pain every time his girlfriend Chelsea (Aimee Lou Wood) opens her mouth. Meanwhile there is a sinister sexual undercurrent between Saxon Ratliffe (Patrick Schwarzenegger) and his little brother, Lochlan (Sam Nivola).
Yet outside of the show, many of the cast are in endearingly healthy and un-White Lotus-y relationships. So who are their real-life partners?
Patrick Schwarzenegger and Abby Champion
Abby Champion and Patrick Schwarzenegger attend the 2025 Vanity Fair Oscar Party
Getty Images
While Schwarzenegger is eerily good at playing a fratty jock obsessed with his body count, in real life he has been with model Abby Champion since he was 21 and the pair are engaged to be married.
They started dating in 2015 when Schwarzenegger was a student at the University of Southern California and were often spotted around Los Angeles together.
Champion has modelled for brands including Calvin Klein, Miu Miu and Chanel and has been photographed for international editions of Vogue magazine. They announced their engagement in December 2023, with a ceremony set to take place this year.
Despite how close they are, Champion told WWD that Schwarzenegger still honoured his NDA about the plot of the White Lotus. “I offered a trade to Patrick: details on my wedding dress if he gave me clues on the ending to White Lotus. He wouldn’t make the deal, so I’ll be watching with the rest of the world,” she said.
They recently did a wedding themed photoshoot for Kim Kardashian’s shapewear brand, Skims.
Leslie Bibb and Sam Rockwell
Vince Bucci/Invision/AP
Are Leslie Bibb and Sam Rockwell quietly becoming Hollywood’s favourite couple? The duo have been together since 2007, after they locked eyes in what Bibb described as “the most cliché place”: the Chateau Marmont in West Hollywood. Fans have fallen for the pair’s sweet red carpet interactions and seemingly unflappable love for eachother.
Bibb and Rockwell have been together for nearly two decades and are not married and do not have any children together. “Leslie and I are very happy, we have good life,” Rockwell explained in an interview with The Standard in 2022.
“‘We just like it the way it is. We don’t want kids. It’s interesting when you tell people this. They get very upset with you. I know more and more couples who don’t have kids. Listen, if I knew they’d turn out great, then maybe — but there’s just no guarantee. Also, I don’t want to be selfish and be a bad parent. My dad was a single parent, it takes a lot to be a parent.”
As for staying unmarried, Rockwell said that they are “basically married. She’s in my will. I feel like we are married – we live like a married couple.”
Sam Nivola and Iris Apatow
Sam Nivola and girlfriend Iris Apatow attend the season three premiere of The White Lotus
AFP via Getty Images
21-year-old Sam Nivola is the son of Alessandro Nivola (who played Adrien Brody’s cousin in The Brutalist) and British actress Emily Mortimer (Paddington, Notting Hill).
He’s dating fellow nepo baby Iris Apatow, 22, who is the daughter of legendary American comedy writer and director, Judd Apatow, the man responsible for the likes of Knocked Up, Freaks and Geeks, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, and This Is 40, and actress Leslie Mann, who star in several of these movies.
The couple already live together in a flat in New York, and they have a cat named Kumo. The pair are very much in the honeymoon phase.
Speaking to Teen Vogue, Nivola said: “I’m so in love, and she’s so amazing. I think the thing about moving in with someone is that when you’re this young, it’s always like, ‘Oh my God, you’re going to get sick of them.’ You’re going to spend all day, every day together, and then it’s going to be routine, and you’re going to feel like you’ve been in a marriage for 30 years. I don’t think that would happen with her anyway, just because we’re so in love.”
Iris Apatow and Sam Nivola attend the Museum Of Modern Art’s 16th Annual Film Benefit on October 23, 2024
Getty Images
Nivola has called her a “lifesaver” during The White Lotus filming period and told People: “I brought my girlfriend for a few months, which was amazing.
“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.”
Michelle Monaghan and Peter White
Michelle Monaghan first met her husband Peter White at a bar in New York in 2001. “He had blue eyes and a Mohawk,” she told Women’s Health in 2010. “It did something for me.” The next day she asked him out and they have been together since.
They married in 2005 in Queensland, Australia, where White is from. White is a graphic artist and has always been supportive of his wife’s career, even when it gets in the way of their own life. The couple had to delay their honeymoon after Monaghan landed a role in Mission Impossible III, which started filming straight after the wedding. The first scene she shot included a kiss with leading man Tom Cruise.
Monaghan told Collider in 2023 that her new husband was unfazed. “I come home at the end of the day: he goes, ‘How cool is it that you were making out with Tom Cruise on our honeymoon?’ That is a testament to the man that I married, who has just been totally supportive and is excited and jazzed for the opportunities.”
Monaghan and White welcomed their first child, Willow Katherine, in 2008 and their second, Tommy Francis, in 2013.
Walton Goggins and Nadia Conners
Walton Goggins and Nadia Conners
Walton Goggins / Instagram
When Walton Goggins met Nadia Conners in 2005, he had no idea that he had been set up on a blind date. The pair had been sat next to each other at what Goggins thought was a business dinner to get funding for a film.
“I didn’t talk to anyone there that I was supposed to talk to, and at the end of it she said, ‘You’re going to take me home, right?’ And I said ‘Uh, yes,’” Goggins told The Talk. “So, then, I called her the next day, we hung out, and six months later she said, ‘Wait a minute. You didn’t know that we were on a blind date, did you?’ I said, ‘No, I had no idea! My friend never told me!’ So, for me, it was like I was getting all this attention and I didn’t know why I was getting it.”
In February 2011, Conners and Goggins had their first and only child together, a son named Augustus, and married in August that year. Conners is a writer and director, and Goggins starred in her film The Uninvited, which premiered at South by Southwest in 2024.
