‘The White Lotus’ Actor Walton Goggins On His Troubled Character

So far on The White Lotus season three, the character of Rick Hatchett is arguably the most enigmatic guest at the Thailand resort – yet, as this season’s storyline continues to unravel, the two-time Emmy nominated actor Walton Goggins believes that HBO and Max viewers are about to have a change of heart with his troubled character.

Since arriving in the Southeast Asian country alongside his unconditionally supportive and noticeably younger girlfriend, Chelsea (played by Aimee Lou Wood), Rick has clearly been dealing with something and has bottled up a lot of pain & frustration. If you have yet to make it halfway through season three, watching at least the first four of eight White Lotus episodes premiering on Sundays, I suggest you come back to this interview article at a later date.

In episode four, the audience realizes why Rick has come to Thailand – to find the man, who he believes, killed his father years ago. Now, the story finds Rick traveling to Bangkok, determined to be face-to-face with the suspected murderer.

Previously known for his outstanding performances in projects like Justified, Sons of Anarchy, The Righteous Gemstones and Fallout, when sitting down with Goggins, 53, for a new conversation about The White Lotus season three, I expressed that Rick is a rather difficult character to initially like and wondered what it was about Rick’s evolving storyline that allowed Goggins to perhaps “flex” a different kind of acting muscle in this latest role.

Goggins said, “I mean, he starts off – he’s very taciturn, right? He’s quiet. The audience doesn’t find out the reason why he’s here [in Thailand] until episode four, so he’s very hard to understand the chaos and the sadness that he’s carrying with him. He has been running from his past for a very long time. He operates on the fringes of society and his life changes in a moment. He begins to take inventory and wants the person responsible – that he thinks is responsible – for his life now, to hear it from him and to pay for it – has to be consequences. He’s incapable of taking any responsibility for himself.”

Compared to his previous on-screen characters, Goggins added about playing Rick: “Yeah, it is different for me, although I’ve played quiet and troubled and all the rest of it. I hope that when you say it’s a difficult person for you to like, by design – nobody else likes him, either. He doesn’t want to be liked by anyone. It’s like when he lets the snakes go in episode three, it is like they are him. He is freeing himself by freeing them, because he is vilified. People like him are vilified by the general population and they make no room for him, right? And so, once he gets to Bangkok, all of a sudden you meet a very different guy. Hopefully, when you find out the motivations of why he’s there, hopefully your dislike of him turns into, if not liking, understanding and then empathy and then hopefully rooting for him and then falling deeply in love with him. I hope that’s where your heart ultimately nets out.”

In real life, Goggins is also a small business owner with his brand Walton Goggins Goggle Glasses, which he has called “a sexy pair of shades that move with you as you dance to the rhythm of life” and was featured with him during a recent Super Bowl ad for GoDaddy.

Now following his elevated recognition on the 15-time Emmy-winning The White Lotus series, led by creator Mike White, how would Goggins describe his time getting to work alongside the modern TV mastermind throughout this third season?

Goggins said, “Look, I think Mike White is one of the great observers of the human condition. Nobody writes an existential crisis quite like he does. I think that in some ways, he’s a horror filmmaker. I was really thinking about what genre Mike fits in, especially The White Lotus – what does it really fit in?”

Briefly chiming in between Goggins’ response by saying, “It’s a reflection of our own society” – he then added: “It is a reflection of our own society, but what’s interesting about the horror genre is the monster isn’t hiding in a closet or under the bed. The monster is ultimately revealed to be us. We are our own reckoning. And so, [Mike] is everything that I hoped he would be. The thing that I was so excited about the most, being on this journey, was getting to experience a Mike White existential crisis.”

With only a few episodes left until we learn whether or not Rick’s Thailand travels will set him off on a healthier, more peaceful path, a character that he says “does need love – he really does,” Goggins concluded our conversation by revealing what he never anticipated happening during his filming experiences on The White Lotus.

“I felt like I was in my own Apocalypse Now. I sound like a narcissist saying this because I’m speaking about my experience. I don’t feel like I have the right to speak about somebody else’s, but I do feel like I was in my own Apocalypse Now. I was Willard in a boat, heading upriver to meet my own Colonel Kurtz. I think that anyone who endeavors to unearth greater meaning in this life will ultimately meet the same fate. If not fate, we’ll go through the same process. That’s what this journey is all about.”