{"id":103941,"date":"2025-08-28T21:06:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-28T21:06:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/103941\/"},"modified":"2025-08-28T21:06:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-28T21:06:08","slug":"how-white-lotus-star-walton-goggins-buried-rick-hatchett","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/103941\/","title":{"rendered":"How ‘White Lotus’ Star Walton Goggins Buried Rick Hatchett"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tIt\u2019s five in the morning. Walton Goggins<\/a> sits on an airplane. He\u2019s flying from Los Angeles to New York City, possessing one of the most protected artifacts in all of modern Hollywood: the full collection of scripts for the latest season of The White Lotus<\/a>, the hottest show in town. Soaring across America, Goggins pours over Mike White<\/a>\u2018s third season, on a collision course with a dark fate meant to unfold in Thailand. It\u2019s a secret to everybody \u2014 even if the secrets themselves are somewhat lacking in security.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI had the scripts for these five episodes on my computer, just as PDFs,\u201d he says, Negroni in hand and his voice rich with the enthusiasm\u00a0of someone who\u2019s just unearthed a buried treasure. He can\u2019t help but reiterate: \u201cJust as PDFs, dude!\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThis point in time was a few days into the now-Emmy nominee\u2019s White Lotus<\/a> adventure. Earlier that week, he was at lunch with his agents hearing about the opportunity for the first time. Goggins wasn\u2019t the first choice for the role of Rick Hatchett, the storm-clouded man destined to die at the end of White\u2019s latest rendition of the one-percenter tragicomedy. But the actor originally intended for the role, Woody Harrelson<\/a>, as Goggins remembers it, had officially turned it down.\u00a0(THR revealed this in a White Lotus season three oral history<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThis is second hand, so certainly not gospel,\u201d he says with a laugh, \u201cbut I\u2019m pretty sure he thought it was too much of a fucking drag. Rick is so sad, I don\u2019t think he wanted to play him. I think that\u2019s how the story goes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOne man\u2019s drag is another man\u2019s treasure. This isn\u2019t Goggins\u2019 first rodeo with a bummer of a character, after all \u2014 and if you think so, The Shield<\/a>\u2018s crooked cop Shane Vendrell would like a word. So when the actor was on that flight from LAX to JFK with the first five episodes in hand, he was on the edge of his seat, all in on the torment and all in on keeping the secret, even under insecure circumstances.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe password protection wasn\u2019t working,\u201d he says of the scripts. \u201cBut I said, \u2018Buddy, I\u2019ve done two Tarantino movies. If anyone\u2019s hermetically sealed, it\u2019s me.\u2019 So they sent it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tGoggins unsealed the scripts. He read the first five episodes. He landed in the greater metropolitan area and it was 8 p.m. when he sat back down to dig into the rest \u2014 it was 2 a.m. when he finished. In the span of less than a day, Goggins lived the entire recorded lifespan of Rick Hatchett, the man who wanted nothing more <\/a>on earth than a score settled <\/a>\u2014 nothing, of course, except maybe a hug.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt was like bingeing the show,\u201d he remembers. \u201cI was alone. And I was so deeply moved by it, by what Mike was saying with this character and the ways it mirrored some of my own journeys in life, and so many other people\u2019s journeys.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn Rick, Goggins saw a heightened version of a common tale. Early in his life, the character learns from his mother about a man called Jim Hollinger (played by Scott Glenn)<\/a>, who killed Rick\u2019s father before he was born. Years pass. Rick gets involved in \u201cthis and that,\u201d and all the criminality such a job description implies. Three weeks before what would be his death, as it played out in the heartbreaking April season finale<\/a>, Rick sees Hollinger\u2019s name in a paper and learns he\u2019s become a hotel magnate who lives in Thailand. Hatchett books a flight. All that happens next? Amor fati, some might say.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cEveryone walks around with so much pain,\u201d Goggins says. \u201cYou mask it and you get by, but whether it\u2019s a breakup or you lost a job or you left something unsaid, everyone\u2019s got some measure of low-grade trauma. It just so happens for this character, it crescendos in this moment that\u2019s spectacularly horrific.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tTayme Thapthimthong with Walton Goggins and Aimee Lou Wood in the season three finale of The White Lotus.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMax<\/p>\n

\n\tCut to the spectacularly horrific crescendo. It\u2019s months since Goggins first read Rick Hatchett\u2019s final scene. Now, he\u2019s living it. The actor has spent three days in these trenches, soaked in blood and sweat of his own making. His character has gunned down the man he long believed had killed his father, only to learn that \u2014 surprise! (and cue the Vader voice): He is his father. Hatchett\u2019s soulmate, the vibrant Chelsea (fellow Emmy nominee Aimee Lou Wood), is dead, killed in the crossfire<\/a>. Goggins holds the actress, with whom he says he formed an immediate connection <\/a>with upon arriving in Thailand, right in his arms. And he does this again, and again, and again and again. Goggins is alive as Rick Hatchett is dying, fighting against a tide he can\u2019t possibly defeat.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe shot it over three days,\u201d he says of the tragic ending. \u201cIt\u2019s the Rubicon. You know you have to cross it. I knew it eight months earlier when I read it. And you can\u2019t escape it for those 72 hours.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s hard to imagine wanting to embody the bone-deep agony at the core of a guy like Rick Hatchett. Then again, it\u2019s hard imagining embodying the bone-deep intensity at the core of a guy like Walton Goggins.<\/a> Gainfully employed on television and in film for decades now, the actor\u2019s star is threatening to go supernova, whether it\u2019s putting his soul on the line for The White Lotus, dancing his heart out on The Righteous Gemstones<\/a> or taking a sultry bite out of a Dorito\u2019s commercial. (Pro-tip: if you\u2019re ever feeling blue, imagine the words \u201cGolden Sriracha\u201d in your best Goggins impression and you\u2019ll feel right as rain.) At the mid-50s goalpost of his life, Goggins is not only thriving, he\u2019s actively questing for a range of experiences as an actor, even if those experiences invite a sizable dose of misery into his life.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cSome of the best actors I\u2019ve ever worked with crack jokes and keep it light between scenes,\u201d he says. \u201cBut just as many enjoy staying in it. And that\u2019s what I\u2019ve gravitated toward.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn other words, while Goggins isn\u2019t a Method actor, he is an actor who stays as present with his characters as humanly possible. And so we return to the past, to that moment at two in the morning in New York City, on the other side of Goggins first experiencing Rick\u2019s ending. He\u2019s in the present with Rick. And he\u2019s also peering into the future, knowing what it will require for him to take on this tragic figure\u2019s life and death.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tSo he makes a call. Literally.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI had [producer David Bernard\u2019s] number in my phone, and I suppose I was fully prepared to lose the part,\u201d he says, \u201cbecause the first thing that came out of my mouth was: \u2018This has touched me in a very profound way, but what I\u2019m going to have to do in order to get to this ending I just read\u2026 it\u2019s going to be very, very painful.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThere are other obstacles in the way. The dreaded beast known as \u201cscheduling\u201d rears its head. Goggins, with an assist from longtime collaborator and best friend Danny McBride, slayed that beast, however, at least as it pertained to the final season of HBO\u2019s beloved comedy The Righteous Gemstones, which he filmed on the immediate other side<\/a> of finishing White Lotus. But it was trickier with his other series regular gig on Amazon\u2019s Fallout<\/a>, with press obligations for season one having directly coincided with the White Lotus production schedule.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhen I give my word, I do everything I can to keep it,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd Fallout required all of us to get the word out.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFor a beat, it seemed over. Goggins, who at this point has already allowed himself to take on the burden of Hatchett \u2014 and who has woken up at seven in the morning and spent hours daydreaming about Rick\u2019s life and death for the past several weeks on end \u2014 realizes he might not be able to live that life and die that death after all. And it nearly breaks him. Until Goggins gets the thing Rick never finds: a moment of tenderness between father and son.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI was alone in a room at home, looking out into space. My son, who was 12, asked me, \u2018Dad, are you okay?\u2019 And I said, \u2018No, man. I\u2019m really not okay. I\u2019m not okay.\u2019 And the tears came. That\u2019s the first time that had ever happened in front of my child. The man that he was \u2014 a young man at the time \u2014 he came over and hugged me and he said, \u2018I love you, and I think you\u2019re the best actor in the world. It\u2019ll be okay.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tCut to the final scene that Goggins films. It\u2019s not Rick\u2019s death. It\u2019s the moment of triumph that happens first. Rick Hatchett is in Bangkok, finally face to face with the Six-Fingered Man to his Inigo Montoya, with Scott Glenn as the proverbial Guest. The actor is as iconic to Goggins as he is to anyone, and yet, in this moment, he can\u2019t allow himself to see the legend in his presence. He can only allow himself to be Rick Hatchett, across from Jim Hollinger, an old and bitter man at the end of an old and bitter road. No one can stop Rick from doing whatever it is he\u2019s about to do to his nemesis. But someone at least can stop the actor from going too deep into the character\u2019s dark heart: Sam Rockwell<\/a>, Goggins\u2019 longtime friend and colleague on The White Lotus. On the other side of their unforgettable Bangkok bar scene<\/a>, Goggins and Rockwell have an equally profound moment that never gets filmed.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tScott Glenn with Goggins in The White Lotus.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMax<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHe\u2019s wrapped,\u201d Goggins remembers, \u201cand he says to me, \u2018Don\u2019t. Let it go. You\u2019ve got a long way to go. Tell them to give you a 20 minute warning before you have to do the scene. You\u2019ve been living with this for seven months now. It\u2019s not good. So let it go. And then just let it happen how it happens. Just let it explode how it\u2019s going to fucking explode.’\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSo Goggins does exactly that. He retreats. He waits. He\u2019s warned, and he arrives. He sits across from Glenn, hears \u201caction,\u201d then gives himself all the time in the world to become Rick again.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI didn\u2019t say a fucking word for, I\u2019m going to say, two minutes. Didn\u2019t say anything. Mike never cut. I just sat there in this space with this person because \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAt this moment during our interview, Goggins has to pause, because in reliving this moment \u2014 and he knows it might sound overly dramatic \u2014 but it\u2019s the moment of transcendence, where actor and character truly become one.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s going to sound so fucking weird,\u201d he says at last. \u201cBut I didn\u2019t want it to end there. You know what I mean? I\u2019m thinking, I won\u2019t have him as my villain anymore after this conversation is over, because I\u2019m going to kill this motherfucker. And so, it was that moment you want as an actor. Actors, we want that moment of sublime, where you see between the spaces, and you access the silence in between, which is Nirvana; that\u2019s heaven, that\u2019s spirituality, that\u2019s God. And I\u2019ve had that a few times over the course of my career, but it doesn\u2019t happen that often for anyone really. And in that moment, I got it.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI sat for the longest time, and then I looked at [Glenn] and I think the first thing I said was, \u2018I\u2019ve been following you for a very long time. I\u2019ve been a fan of yours for a long time.\u2019 And Scott just sat there in it, sat there in that fucking silence. What do these two people have to fucking say to each other? They don\u2019t even know each other. He doesn\u2019t know me at all yet, and I don\u2019t know him, but I feel like I know everything about him. And it was so spontaneous. It\u2019s so freeing and so volatile at the same moment. And then the conversation kind of began in earnest, and it\u2019s one of the greatest feelings I\u2019ve ever had in my life as an artist. That conversation and how that conversation ended, the things that I said to him were a little bit longer. And on the day, Mike instigated it. We cut some of what I said to him, because it was really just looking at this person who was a lion in my mind, who was responsible for a life of pain, who was this God in some ways, who ultimately became just insignificant. That person where, once you face it, you just think, \u2018Why? I wasted my entire fucking life worried about the old man behind the curtain.\u2019 And so then, he\u2019s free.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBut the story doesn\u2019t end there for Rick. And even though it\u2019s the last scene he films, the story of Rick doesn\u2019t end there for Goggins, either. Because then the press tour begins, and then the show airs. Now awards season heats up, and here we are. And even when Emmy night wraps on Sept. 14, Goggins will never quite bury Rick Hatchett. He knows this because he hasn\u2019t fully buried Shane or Justified<\/a>\u2018s Boyd Crowder or any of the other number of extraordinary figures he\u2019s lent his talent toward realizing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tA few hours before our interview, Goggins was sitting down for a different press opportunity altogether. He was watching scenes from across his career, some of them for the first time in decades. These shows are over. Many of these characters are dead. And yet, they are all as alive as Rick Hatchett on the final night Goggins wore his skin.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIm watching the scenes. But I\u2019m not just thinking about the scenes,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019m thinking about the moments in between. It\u2019s about the experience of that day, about the days leading up to that day and the days after that day. I\u2019m thinking about what happened in my life between this job, this job, this job and this job. It\u2019s all wrapped up. There are needle points, and there\u2019s a lot of thread in between.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tGoggins considers the needle points and sits again in the silence.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cYeah,\u201d he says. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of thread in between.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s five in the morning. Walton Goggins sits on an airplane. He\u2019s flying from Los Angeles to New…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":103942,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[49,48,361,75,35767,59642,59643,18110,59644,59645,38554,49631,59646,59647],"class_list":["post-103941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-fallout","tag-justified","tag-mike-white","tag-sam-rockwell","tag-the-righteous-gemstones","tag-the-shield","tag-the-white-lotus","tag-walton-goggins","tag-white-lotus","tag-woody-harrelson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103941"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103941\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/103942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}