CONTENT WARNING: This article discusses suicide.
The White Lotus‘ Walton Goggins has opened up about a deeply personal connection to Thailand after this latest season, revealing long before he joined the series, he’d visited the country as part of his own spiritual journey after the death of his wife.
Goggins plays the tormented Rick Hatchett in season three of the hit HBO show, who visits Thailand to seek out his father’s killer while he grapples with decades of pain and unresolved trauma.
In the end, unfortunately Rick’s need for revenge takes over, sparking a shootout in the dramatic season finale that results in four deaths, including the tragic passing of his partner Chelsea (Aimee Lou Wood).
Speaking to Vulture, Goggins described his deep understanding of the haunted character, explaining: “I went to Thailand 18 years ago after a trauma in my life, looking for peace, looking for some resolution that was not so dissimilar from what Rick was looking for.”
While he called the circumstances “dramatically different” to Rick’s struggles, Goggins said he was “as lost” at the time of his travels, referring to the tragic death of his first wife Leanne Knight.
“The circumstances were dramatically different. I was a year into a relationship with my now-wife [Nadia Conners], and I was as lost as Rick is lost. I had nothing for my partner. I understood, intimately, Rick’s frame of mind. I read it on the page and I thought, ‘The universe brought this to me for a reason, because I understand him, and I love him, and I love people like him. I don’t think he’s alone in the world.'”
Prior to this, the Justified actor had opened up about the emotional Asia trip to GQ in February this year, sharing that his first wife had died by suicide in 2004.
“It’s a very complicated story […] Ultimately it was revealed the decision that she’d made. And yeah, I thought it was really unrecoverable for me,” Goggins told the publication.
“And I spent the next three years looking for an excuse — not to end it, but certainly putting myself in situations that were questionable, not with drugs or anything like that, just life experiences and traveling. And I really went all over the world.”
His travels took him to Vietnam, Cambodia, and India, although he started the trip in Thailand. In a full-circle moment, filming The White Lotus in the country led to a flood of memories rushing back.
“The first island we were staying on, I realised I’ve been on this road before. And then the next island we went to, I realised, I’ve definitely been on this beach before. And all of the things kept coming back,” the 53-year-old explained.
On his last night of filming, which took place on the banks of the Chao Phraya River in Bangkok, Goggins said the truly personal experience of filming The White Lotus in Thailand came to a head when he recognised a dock and a room he’d stayed in two decades prior.
“We pulled up to this dock and I was like ‘I know this dock. Oh my God. That’s the room I stayed in 20 years ago. That’s my balcony’. That’s where I was the very first day I came here, 20 years ago, and in so much fucking pain,” he described.
“We got out of the boat and that’s where we were filming, man — all of the equipment was literally right in front of the hotel that I’d picked 20 years ago on the internet, on this little bitty road in this little bitty neighborhood.”
I’m not crying, you’re crying.
Reflecting on this flood of emotions while filming The White Lotus on location, Goggins said he wished he could hug his former self, knowing the pieces would eventually fall into place, despite the immense hurt at the time.
Goggins has been married to filmmaker Nadia Conners since 2011, with the couple also welcoming a baby boy that year.
“I wish I could whisper in his ear, ‘You’re going to be okay. Life continues, and it continues for everybody if you can just hold on and lean into it and keep walking the walk that you’re walking, and keep looking for the answers’,” he told GQ.
But the deeply personal nature of playing Rick didn’t end there, because according to Goggins, he worked to apply the “hard-won” lessons from his loss to the complicated character.
“I think most of us start off not having the tools to love ourselves, not having the space to even contemplate what that really means. Some people are never able to transcend in that way and love themselves,” Goggins pointed out, adding that he, too, spent three years searching for this feeling.
“It was like, ‘This is it. Just forgive yourself. Forgive your circumstances. Forgive the people that fucking were doing their best, and just be okay with it. You don’t have to be anything other than what you are, and you’re enough, man. If you can love you, then you can love anybody’.
“Those were lessons I learned 15 years before this experience, and they were hard-won. Reading the scripts, I felt like this guy will realise it too late.”
Okay, fine I am crying, SOBBING. As if this season of The White Lotus wasn’t enough of an emotional rollercoaster.
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