Jason Isaacs, the actor from The White Lotus, has opened up about his personal experience with stalking, drawing a parallel to the Netflix drama Baby Reindeer. He described the experience as an ordeal that the police initially didn’t take seriously.

In an interview with the UK’s i newspaper, Isaacs shared that the events occurred in the late 1990s while he was in recovery from drug addiction. He recounted:

“I went mad with it. I should have written a film about it. Baby Reindeer maybe slightly more dramatic but not much. I was terrified my house would be burned down or I’d be stabbed. And because it was a young woman the police didn’t take it seriously for a long time.”

Isaacs went on to explain that the police were not particularly helpful, offering suggestions such as changing his name and occupation to escape the harassment. One officer even suggested he “just knock her out.”

Reflecting on the experience, Isaacs said, “They were next to useless, the police. They kept insisting I must have had an affair with her. And I’d never met her.”

According to The Daily Mail, Isaacs previously revealed that the stalking ordeal, which began in 1998, spanned several years. During that time, he had to take the woman to court multiple times to enforce restraining orders, only for the fan to continuously contact him once each order expired.

Best known for portraying Lucius Malfoy in the Harry Potter series, Isaacs currently plays Timothy Ratliff, a financier from North Carolina, in the third season of The White Lotus.

He shared that being confined to a Thai hotel resort for seven months while filming was “quite the experience.” He added, “Friendships and alliances and ends of friendships and romances and all the rest. There’s an off-screen White Lotus as much as an on-screen White Lotus.”