John Owen Lowe Says He’s ‘Set a Lot of Boundaries’ with Dad Rob Lowe: ‘Therapy Has Been Very Helpful for Us’

For John Owen Lowe, art imitates life.

On the latest episode of SiriusXM’s The Jess Cagle Show, the writer and actor, 28, opened up about initially blurring the line between reality and fiction while working with father Rob Lowe on Unstable.

John Owen admitted that creating the character of Jackson, the son of eccentric entrepreneur Ellis Dragon (Rob), on the Netflix comedy was “really difficult,” adding, “I wanted it to be very reflective of my experience, but also not a direct pull of me because there was a version of the show we initially pitched that was honestly more Curb Your Enthusiasm-esque where we were playing Rob and Johnny.”

The pair decided they could “have more fun and get more out of it if we put it in a different world than ours,” John Owen explained of co-creating and co-executive producing Unstable with his dad.

“It’s why it’s in the biotech world and he’s playing this eccentric, insane billionaire and I’m playing somewhat more of an introvert that I am because we thought that that would highlight our differences even more because a lot of our banter is pretty subtle, so we were like, ‘How can we make this slightly less subtle?’” he explained. “But it’s also just more fun to create a character and put your personality into them and your relationship into that dynamic, but then you don’t have to go, you don’t have to get too introspective.”

However, in the show’s second season — which was released on Aug. 1 — the father-son duo were inspired by their off-screen dynamic.

“I would say in the second season, truly we really opened it up to like core memories from my childhood and pulled from a lot of real experiences from my dad and I,” he revealed. “There’s a lot of, if people knew how much of what they were watching were real things I’ve experienced, I think they’d be shocked.”

When asked for an example of a storyline lifted directly from his life, he pointed to Ellis’ interest in son’s romantic life on the show’s second season.

“Throughout the season, he’s trying to manipulate and control my dating life and pick who my partner is, and he has this absurd line in the season finale where he says like, ‘I get final breeding approval, which is absurd. He’s never said that, but he’s said things adjacent to that before,” John Owen admitted.

John Owen shared that his father also likes to dig into his love life off camera, sharing, “You know, he’ll call me, and he’ll be like, ‘How was that date last night?’ and I’m like, ‘How do you know about that?’ and he’s like, ‘I called one of your friends.’ Stuff like that.”

He explained that Rob is “really, really involved” but the pair have “since set a lot of boundaries.” He added, “You know, therapy has been very helpful for us.”

On SiriusXM’s Andy Cohen Live in July, John Owen opened up about working with father, sharing that he has found a “healthy perspective where it’s like you should feel grateful that you get to do this for a variety of reasons.”

“Namely this, you know, my dad won’t be around forever,” he added. “It’ll be amazing that we share this together and, it’s hard to work in the entertainment industry.”

Host Andy Cohen told John Owen that he thinks the experience “will weirdly be therapeutic for you.”

“I agree. I hope so and I believe so too, but you know, I’m walking through it right now,” John Owen responded.

Unstable is available to stream on Netflix.