When Walton Goggins’ agents told him that The White Lotus creator Mike White wanted him to play the brooding Rick Hatchet in the HBO hit’s third season, the actor called wife Nadia Conners in tears.
“It’s a golden ticket, but more than that, it was just the opportunity to go on a journey that comes from [White’s] imagination,” Goggins explained in a new interview with You Magazine. “Things that are interesting to him are interesting to me.”
Besides, Goggins said, he’s an emotional person. “I cry with my friends,” he said. “I cry with my wife. I hold my wife. I kiss my wife. I also do a job that allows me access to what I’m feeling constantly. And I’ve been blessed to do that for a really long time.”
Production on The White Lotus’ third season also afforded Goggins the chance to revisit Thailand, where he traveled with his mother after his first wife died by suicide in 2004.
“It was hard,” he said of returning to the country. “I was telling a story that was different, but not so dissimilar from my own. It is a pain that I think so many people can relate to. The majority of us have experienced something traumatic that we become obsessed with, and for a period of time our story is defined by it. And you’ll either move past it or you won’t.”
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Now Goggins is moving past The White Lotus. “I’m so relieved [the finale is] out in the world,” he told the magazine. “It’s been uplifting getting to finally talk to people about it. For the first time in a long time, I can exhale. A big exhale. Rick Hatchett was a lot to carry.”
The actor currently stars in the fourth and final season of the HBO comedy The Righteous Gemstones, and he’s filming the second season of the Prime Video drama Fallout.
“I can tell you that I thought [Fallout] Season 1 was extraordinary. Personally, I was very pleased with it,” Goggins previously told Deadline. “[Season 2] blows it out of the water, what these writers have done and the artisans that have come together to tell this story. It’s really gonna be something. I can’t wait for people to see it. We’re working really hard to make that happen.”
If you or anyone you know is having suicidal thoughts, please contact the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline by texting or dialing 988. If you or a loved one are in immediate danger, call 911.