Lukas Gage about memoirs, diagnosis of borderline personality disorder

Lukas Gage lives his real authentic life like never before.

The openly homosexual 30-year-old actor-best known for ‘The White Lotus’, ‘You’ and ‘Companion’-tells it all in his new memoirs: ‘I wrote this for Attention.’

He writes frankly and with humor about his traumatic youth, substance abuse, STDs, checking in a treatment center for mental health care and his short -lived marriage to the famous hairstylist Chris Appleton.

“I am an oversharer,” Gage tells me during a Zoom video interview from the office of his publisher Simon & Schuster in New York City. “I probably say too much. But I love memoirs in which they share too much and maybe cross the border, but they seduce people to conversations about things that might be taboo.”

This includes revealing his diagnosis of a borderline personality disorder. “It is very stigmatized and is experienced quite negative, but I was so inspired after Julia Fox and a few other artists I visited. I felt less lonely because of it,” says Gage. “It gave me the feeling that I had nothing to hide and that I was fulfilled with shame. The two most difficult things for me to talk about were the shame related to my sexuality and the shame that was related to my mental health care. I hated how little I felt when I talked about it and I did not have that moment I thought that I thought I was”. “

About the fateful romance with appleton – Kim Kardashian led their wedding in Las Vegas – Gage says: “If I am completely transparent, it was a lot less difficult for me to talk about than about mental health and my sexuality and the addictive behavior and my family.”

Gage grew up in San Diego. He and his two brothers were raised by his mother after their parents were divorced and his father with his new wife founded a different family. Gage’s acting career started when he was 18. His big breakthrough was in the first season of ‘The White Lotus’, specifically for a scene in which his character Dillion is raged by Armond (Murray Bartlett).

But it is what gage did outside the camera while filming ‘The White Lotus’ that earned him international headlines for the first time. In 2020 he released a video, a fragment of a zoom audition in which director Tristram Shapero did not realize that the actor could hear him express criticism in his apartment because he was not on Mute.

Read below an exclusive fragment from “I wrote this for Attention”, in which the Gage describes its decision to release the audition images on social media.

Extract from ‘I wrote this for attention’ from Lukas Gage. Copyright © 2025 by Lukas Gage. Reprinted with the permission of Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.

Doing an audition is the most cut that you can put on an artist. Usually you get a few pieces of paper the night before and the next morning at 9 a.m. you are expected to sell your soul – with charisma. Pre-Pandemie meant that you and your competition had to be placed in a waiting room, all of which look like rough sketches of you. Some are hotter, bigger or more experienced. You may actually be a rough sketch of it.

Now we have all missed that room. At least you didn’t have to worry about all the technical problems of virtual meetings.

So when I was sitting with my Cast Mats, it only felt natural for me to show

them the audition video. I expected a few smiles. He came. What I did not expect was how much it would hit at home.

“I can’t believe you have a documented moment of how terrible actors can be treated,” said Molly Shannon.

“I wanted to post it, but I feel that I would be canceled?”

“Why would you be canceled?” someone asked.

“Or on the blacklist? I don’t know. I don’t want to ruin someone’s life?”

We kept talking all night, but I still got the feeling that I was peering over the edge of a cliff and tried to decide if I had the balls to jump.

Outside the sound of the waves that gently stood on the coast started to get the feeling that they were encouraging me. Maybe I should write a concept of something to post. I’m going to cosplay and get everything out of my system.

I started to type out a sincere message full of sentences such as ‘shed light’. Then I removed it all. It didn’t feel good. It felt too serious, too cheap, too insincere. So I let myself be guided by my instinct.

PSA, if you are a bad talking director, make sure you dampen your nonsense during zoom recordings

It was a bit too strong, but fuck itI said to myself.

Tweet. Copy. Slices. After.

I sat up in bed and listened to the waves that became more and more violent. You are such a damn idiotThey seemed to say. You shouldn’t have done that.

I threw the phone away to the foot end of the bed. For five minutes I stayed there – naked, with the blankets under me pulled up and my head on the mattressly – waiting for the worst. But my phone remained silent.

Maybe this is to go Unpleasant are Okay. This shall just are A pleasure memory Unpleasant attempt Unpleasant to make this process for actors a little easierI kept repeating before I finally fell asleep.

“Where have you been?” Phoebe shouted at me on the phone when I woke up a few hours later.

“What do you mean? I slept.”

“Lukas, you just left the most insane viral video and went to sleep?”

“WHAT?”

“What have I done? What am I going to do?”

“This is amazing,” she said. “Joe Jonas has just given you his full support.”

“Wait, really true? Hot.”

“Yes! You have to listen to me. This is a good thing. You are completely viral.”

“But what if I don’t want to be viral?”

“Why wouldn’t you want to be viral? Especially for something so funny.”

“Well … what if they turn against me?”

“Why would” they “do that? They love you, and they hate him.”

It is a no-loose situation. “

“Exactly. I don’t like that. This is all going too much out of hand. I have only posted it to be funny, and now are people … in a panic. What if they find out who it is? I don’t want to ruin someone’s life …”

“Relax. You didn’t give him a name. And you didn’t do anything wrong. You have posted a funny audition bond.”

“I don’t want to be known for the rest of my career as the man of the viral audit tape.”

“Lukas. People don’t have the attention span to worry about something for more than a day. Enjoy your moment in the sun, and also enjoy the literal sunshine in Hawaii.”

My phone was practically a vibrator, constantly buzzing with reports. Every second brought a different text message, phone call and e-mail.

The first few minutes I was excited. It felt like an extremely itch that had been there my whole life was finally scratched. Every ping was a microdosis approval. The praise came from everywhere: Seth Macfarlane, the Jonas Brothers, people I never expected to exist. Foreigners around the world congratulated me on how calm, strong and courageous I was. Did I believe deep down that these things were true? Well no, but …

Then an all -wasting fear began to strike: I had begged all my life to be seen, and now they had seen me and I wanted to hide.

I was terrified that they would discover ‘the truth’. What ‘the truth’ was, I did not know exactly, like what if a naked of mine suddenly appeared in a non-flattering position online.

When I was back on the set, the actors supported me and they were happy to see me. Some were even proud. I avoided the producers like the plague, which was tiring, since we were in a real scourge.

The well -known lights and sounds should have been a routine. But they didn’t. The only thing I could imagine was the discussion they would have after work about what a risk I was. I just knew they would fire me and seek someone else who would have him eat in front of the camera.

I stared at myself in the mirror and made the cliché ‘splashing water on your face’ after something had happened very traumatic. It didn’t help, it only broke my AirPods.

I also received messages from other producers and directors; Apparently do all British sound the same? Because they all asked me to confirm that they were not and that they did not deserve to be canceled. I answered some of their requests and confirmed who it was Was not. However, it only caused a chain reaction of strangers, who demanded that I would say who it was.

This must are What Real known people feelI thought. So I went to the most reliable famous person who was available to me, Jennifer Coolidge.

“Coolidge, what did I do?” I asked while I was in her corner at the breakfast bar.

Then she stepped away from the pressed celery juice and gave me the best advice I have ever received. Words I’ve been living at since then.

“What does it matter?!” “She said, looking at me with a cheeky, conspiration grin. What does it matter?! It was as if she had just given me the meaning of life. And at that moment, God, I believed it.

The next day I told myself that I would not check my phone. That I would surrender to the universe, or whatever that meant. The moment I sat in a beach chair with my ass, my phone rang. An unknown number.

I ignored it.

Then it went again. The same number. And again.

And again—

“Yes? Hello? What do you want …” I said.

“Lukas, this is Covid compliance. You have been tested positively. Please go in quarantine for the next fourteen days and do not come into contact with anyone.”

Fuck. I had gone viral. Again.