Tayme Thapthimthong did not have the typical actor’s path. He didn’t study the craft at Juilliard or plug away in off-Broadway shows before getting noticed. Instead, his path to prestige television—and a role in the new season of The White Lotus—went through the Royal Thai Army. Thapthimthong, now 35, served as an infantryman and later as a physical training instructor for the army’s counter-terrorist team in his twenties. He also spent time with the Armed Forces Security Center, the Thai version of the CIA.
As you’d expect, that led to a fitness-heavy lifestyle, one where he was running, jumping, and training his body for any situation imaginable. After leaving the army, he was cast in Farang, a Swedish-Thai crime series that propelled his on-screen career. He never lost his dedication to exercise, though, finding ways to integrate one of London’s most famous landmarks into his routine. For The White Lotus, he finds himself in familiar territory. This season is set in Thailand, and he plays a security guard—yet another one of the many jobs he held before Mike White came calling. Thapthimthong is thrilled about the setting because “it just allows for so much chaos to unfold,” and because it gave him a chance to watch his co-stars fall in love with a classic Southeast Asian dessert.
Tayme Thapthimthong: Mike White actually asked me to not go to the gym so much. My character is a security guard, so there is a little toughness to him. But because of some events that happen, and the other characters that are supposed to be more tough guys than my character is. He was asking, “Please don't get too buff or anything. Just maintain what you have right now.” I never really go to the gym to get that big anyway. I've always enjoyed calisthenics and more boot camp, military-style training, where it's more for functional fitness, rather than just to bulk up.
Not so far, no, but I would absolutely love that.
Exactly! Yeah, for sure. Like when Tom Hardy had to bulk up for The Dark Knight Rises, I think he had to put on so much muscle. I remember reading that he ate a lot of ice cream and stuff like that. It sounded pretty fun!
Mostly I've been in Thailand, but I do still have bases in London because my parents and brother are still living there. For the last 12 years of my life, I have been back to London maybe, I don't know, three times.
Well, personally, when I was in England, because I was doing a lot of military training, I would mostly run outside. I was only a member at the gym for a little while when I just wanted to bulk up. But after that, I just went straight to bootcamp training. I had to train by myself. I’d just run along the river. I lived in a place called Barnes, and it's quite near the River Thames. There's a little bridge called Hammersmith Bridge there, and I would just go down to the riverbank and run all the way to Putney Bridge and back, or sometimes go a little further.
I would just do a lot of body weight training, push-ups, pull-ups, stuff like that. They had little public parks where they had pull-up bars. That's all I really needed, because at the time I knew that that's all the stuff that was in the military fitness test. I didn't really benefit so much from bicep curls, or Olympic lifting, or anything like that. That came later.
So, that's what I did mostly in London. But when I moved to Thailand, at the time, all these kinds of boutique gyms started opening up. I think it's kind of similar to Barry's Bootcamp. That's when I got into those classes. I really enjoyed it, because it gave me an element of just being with other people, and having a little sense of community, rather than always training by myself and being in my own head. It's nice training with other people and having music blasting in the gym, and an instructor to just do the program for you, so I don't have to write out my own programs every single day.
Exactly. It requires a lot less motivation. Because I have found myself, especially in the later years, going through phases of being a little lazy. Like, Oh, I can't really be bothered to write my own program today, but hey, there's this class at five that I just sign up for. I turn up, really, almost half asleep.
It was, yeah. I just trained a lot. At that time also, I didn't really smoke or drink. Not that I smoke a lot now, but back then, it was a really clear focus. I knew that once I got through selection, that I would be deployed to Afghanistan. That is life or death. I had to stay focused.
And also then, every time I ran, I could sprint the whole time. Usually when you hit that wall, you feel tired. Back then when I hit that wall, I’d get a second wind, or whatever you call it, another lung kicks in. It's just like, Oh, yeah, keep going, and I never got tired, just felt amazing. I think, if you ask a lot of guys who are training for the military, they'll all tell you the same thing. There will be some point where you feel like Superman. In the beginning, you feel like, Damn, how am I going to get through this? But then I think your body just adapts, and lets you know that you can take a lot more than you think.
Most people that have gone through training for any unit like that—Marines, or especially any special force units—they always go through that. Every single day you wake up, and before every meal you've got to run six miles to get to the canteen. In the Thai military, they actually rewarded you with water, which should be a necessity. When I was in counter-terrorism in the Thai army, that's when I actually was closest to getting as fit as I was when I was 21. We trained in such high heat and humidity, that that really saps your energy a lot. I do wonder, being that fit when I was at counter-terrorism, if I went to the UK and started running in cold weather, if I would last longer, just because you don't have to deal with the heat.
I have been at some points in my life, especially back in England. But in Thailand, I can find healthy food a lot easier and cheaper, because there's street food that's cooked right there. You're never having to eat these microwave meals or anything.
I don't cook at all, really, because it's so convenient to just get a hold of any healthy kind of normal food. I have a lot of garlic chicken with rice, which is straight up just chicken, stir-fried with garlic and a bit of soy sauce, and then put it on top of rice. I’ll add two boiled eggs or two fried eggs. I'm pretty easy with eating. I wouldn't say I'm a foodie where I have to go and hunt for the next interesting thing to eat. I’m pretty happy with eating the same things every day.
No, never. I've just kept a very simple rule for myself. Every meal I have, I'll just try to have about 60% protein, 30% carbs, and the rest is just fat. That's why chicken and rice, and a bit of vegetable, or an avocado or something, it just kind of works for me. Just not too much sugar or too much carbs, and I don't eat very much processed stuff.
Not really. I mean, I’m pretty happy with the way I train. I guess, when I tried CrossFit, what I found very difficult was the Olympic kind of lifting, all those heavy cleans and jerks. When I first tried CrossFit, I was like, Damn, this is hard! I realized that I can't really do the men's Rx weight and do it safely, so I started going with the women's Rx weight. That helped a lot more. I felt like it was more effective for me.
I can get the techniques, but so far, for everything I've had to use my body for, calisthenics has been the most useful. It made me really good at obstacle courses when I had to do them in the army, because it just makes you feel light on your feet, just getting used to carrying your own weight. But when I was at counter-terrorism, I did see the purpose of strength training more. I worked as a PTI there—physical training instructor—for the special operations guys. I trained them every day from 3 pm to 4:30 pm. We would obviously do a little 5K warmup run, and then I'd set up a circuit for them, like a 10-station circuit, 30 seconds on, 15 seconds off. Then we'd do two kilometers of swimming after that in the pool.
I just told them: lunges with some dumbbells or barbells on your shoulder, front lunge, back lunge, squats. I felt like the simple movements were the ones that helped them the most. I saw a lot of good in that, because with these guys, doing functional training is one thing. But because they carry so much weight when they have to run—because of all the equipment that they have to carry with them—strength training was very important to them too. I started seeing that I couldn't just do calisthenics, [that I had] to do a bit of strength too. I still enjoy calisthenics the most, because I can do it anywhere, like in hotel rooms.
Mike White said, “I don't want you to get any bigger. I don't really want you big at all, I just want you kind of lean.” So, I was like, Well, that's perfect. I won't go to the gym. I just did a variety of push-ups and squats and stuff like that, kept myself in shape in my room, and ate a lot of fruits and veggies to keep lean. I think it worked out. But when I saw some of the episodes, I did see myself a bit bulkier than I thought I would be. When I asked Mike White and his team, they're like, No, actually, it works. We don't want you to just be some skinny security guard. It's good that you have a bit of bulk.
It was talked about a lot between other actors who had to take their shirts off in the show. But for me, I am wearing my uniform the whole time, so those questions weren't really thrown at me so much. Usually, I'm always up for talking about fitness. But this was the first time where that wasn't the focus of my character. There were other characters in there, who you will see a lot of shirts being taken off. Everyone looks very ripped.
When I went out to dinner with some of the cast, the guys would definitely be talking about, “Oh yeah, I went to the gym today. Then I went to do some Muay Thai, just to sweat it out, and then ice bath.” That’s what I'd usually be doing, but I didn’t think I could work out that much, otherwise Mike wouldn't like it.
Oh my God. No is the simple answer. I already find it a little hard to sleep, because my mind is quite active. I find it hard to switch it off at night. But, especially filming this series, and being so immersed—we’re filming in the same hotel we’re living in—the lines became so blurred. Also, I'm just so excited the whole time. Because to me, this is surreal. I was a bodyguard last year. Now I'm an actor on a very big show!
It just kept on hitting me more and more as the filming went on, how big this show is in the U.S. I never got the scale of it when I was in Thailand. But when I went to dinner and I met all the main cast, they were more excited than I was. They were like, It's amazing. I can't believe it. This is going to change all of our careers. That's when I really got the scale of, Damn, if these guys who are already superstars in my eyes are this excited about being on this show, then this show must be really big.
I couldn't sleep at night because I was so excited. When they say, “4:30 am call time tomorrow,” I just can't sleep. I'll stay up the whole night. It wasn't like a bad feeling, where I'm like, Oh, God. It was just lying there in bed like, what's tomorrow going to bring? I did suffer a bit when we did consecutive days of filming and it’s all my scenes. That week I would've slept a total of maybe six to eight hours. I guess that's where a bit of military training came in, where I'm like, Just get the job done, man, and nap when you can. They go, Lisa's got to do a costume change. I'm in pretty much the same costume the whole way through, so I’d just take a nap on the floor. It’s pretty easy.
Well, I know America likes chicken. I always love the Thai-style grilled chicken. I'm trying to think of something more adventurous. Just from being on the show, I'm trying to think what amazed people the most…I mean, it was mango sticky rice. But I think you've already been introduced to that, right?
Everyone goes for that. Do you know papaya salad?
That's a go-to of mine. When I even think of it right now, my mouth is watering for that kind of sharp tang. The thing is, they can make it with so many different ingredients that's not papaya. They can do it with pomelo. They can do it with long string beans and stuff like that. You can even do it with raw mango. I've really enjoyed just mixing up the ingredients.
In Real-Life Diet, athletes, celebrities, and other high performers talk about their diet, exercise routines, and pursuit of wellness. Keep in mind that what works for them might not necessarily be healthy for you.