Walton Goggins
Appearances
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
2024 Memorable Moments: Celebrity Interviews
Did I tell you this story about the... David Gordon Green was directing that episode. And the very first time you meet baby Billy, he's in a bathtub.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
2024 Memorable Moments: Celebrity Interviews
Yeah. Yeah. Hot tub, bathtub outside, looking out at his land, looking out over his empire. Yeah. And at some point in the scene, he stands up and, you know, he's fully naked.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
2024 Memorable Moments: Celebrity Interviews
The viewer sees everything, and then he turns around, he puts on his bathrobe, and then steps out of the bathtub. Well, they call then a body double to do that, who was 76, 78 years old, something like that, to be in the tub, right? And they flew him in from Chicago, and I'm like, how did you... What's the audition process? You couldn't find him in South Carolina? Really?
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
2024 Memorable Moments: Celebrity Interviews
You had to go to Chicago? So he comes in and I meet him.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
2024 Memorable Moments: Celebrity Interviews
This guy's top of his game.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
2024 Memorable Moments: Celebrity Interviews
And, uh, And I met him on that day and he was dressed like me, kind of looked like me. And I'm thinking like, who are you? He said, I'm you, you know, I'm your body dub. I'm standing in for you. And it's like, oh, okay. Cut to the show comes out. There it is. And I get a phone call from this friend of mine who says, oh my God, baby Billy Freeman. I just, I can't stand it. I love it so much.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
2024 Memorable Moments: Celebrity Interviews
And can I just say how good your body looks? Yeah. And I said, what the fuck are you talking about? He's 76. 76 years old. You think that's my fucking body?
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
2024 Memorable Moments: Celebrity Interviews
Beautifully lit. I mean, it's a nice penis. I don't know. It's definitely a Chicago penis.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
2024 Memorable Moments: Celebrity Interviews
Does not have a southern accent. Yeah. Oh, very, very Yankee.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
2024 Memorable Moments: Celebrity Interviews
Oh, my God. Jesus. Still pulling in the trim?
Fresh Air
Walton Goggins Was Raised By A Village
And I already started working. Yeah. I'd done like In the Heat of the Night and then this big movie of the week called Murder, Mississippi about the three slain civil rights workers.
Fresh Air
Walton Goggins Was Raised By A Village
Certainly, that was going to be a part of my experience was trying it, endeavoring to do it, endeavoring to learn what it is that you're asking yourself to do. Absolutely, I would be lying if I said otherwise. It was really also to have an experience. I just wanted to get out. I just wanted to see the world. I wanted a passport that was filled with stamps from all over the world.
Fresh Air
Walton Goggins Was Raised By A Village
And that's what I wanted. And coming to Los Angeles, being able to at least try to become a storyteller was going to be a part of my journey. And then if that didn't work out, I don't know what I would have done, but it would have I would have had a passport filled with stamps from other countries. That I do know.
Fresh Air
Walton Goggins Was Raised By A Village
I still say my per diem. I understand the value of a dollar.
Fresh Air
Walton Goggins Was Raised By A Village
And I will spend $1,000 on a meal, but only after I've eaten for free for 10 days. You know what I mean? Just the insecurity of, even though I never lost a house, my mom never lost her house or anything like that, but the insecurity of not being able to provide for my family.
Fresh Air
Walton Goggins Was Raised By A Village
Well, he gave me some advice and he gave me a compliment that I certainly wasn't expecting. We were at lunch and he said, I want to tell you something. Hey, hey. He said, you know, not many people can do what you just did. Not many people are willing to do what you just did. And because you're not thinking about it and you're just coming from your heart, there is no filter on you.
Fresh Air
Walton Goggins Was Raised By A Village
And you're turning yourself over to an imaginary set of circumstances. But he said, don't lose that. He said, I don't even think you're fearless. I don't even think fear comes into it. I think maybe you're fearful, but I don't think it's a decision for you to be fearless. I don't think you came to this job thinking, I'm going to show people, I'm going to just let it all hang out.
Fresh Air
Walton Goggins Was Raised By A Village
It's just in your body. And don't ever, ever, ever lose that. Be that open always. What he was saying was, you're not jaded. It's not like you don't have obstacles that you need to overcome and deep insecurities. But what you do have is an open heart and don't Don't lose that, man. You know what I mean? Always come from that, even if you get it wrong.
Fresh Air
Walton Goggins Was Raised By A Village
But don't lose that love and passion for this work or that you appear to have in life.
Fresh Air
Walton Goggins Was Raised By A Village
Well, I just never – I've been around for such a long time. Based on my looks or my personality, I'm not like a conventional leading man or I haven't been my whole life. And the people that knew what to do with me knew what to do with me early on. But I just didn't have those opportunities in film making. you know, a couple of like kind of leading roles that movies that no one saw.
Fresh Air
Walton Goggins Was Raised By A Village
And I, and I'm, I'm still so proud of them. And I just, I made the most out of every single opportunity that I was given. And because the only thing that you can control in this business is Is the work that you put into it, right? Expecting nothing in return. And I have had that. I just didn't have those opportunities.
Fresh Air
Walton Goggins Was Raised By A Village
And it was only once television kind of opened up for me that I began to carve out a space for me. with these opportunities that went in many different ways. But for the most part, if you get the opportunity to go to work, you go to work. Whenever you've been away from it a little long because your ego got involved and you think, oh, well, that's beneath me. Is it? Really? Go to work.
Fresh Air
Walton Goggins Was Raised By A Village
Oh, man. You know, after The Shield, you know, I mean, it was prestige television at the dawning of this last iteration of that.
Fresh Air
Walton Goggins Was Raised By A Village
Yeah, it would have been. We did the pilot before 9-11. And then they picked it up and we went to work, whatever, six or seven months later. But after that experience, you know, seven years later. Having that experience after that, you know, I couldn't get a job for anything, you know, nothing kind of came my way.
Fresh Air
Walton Goggins Was Raised By A Village
And I guess because just like when people saw The Apostle, we had a premiere at the Toronto Film Festival. And I remember my manager's friend leaning in and whispering my ear, this is going to be a big movie for you. Even though you have a smaller part, you take it emotionally. Get ready.
Fresh Air
Walton Goggins Was Raised By A Village
Nothing happened because people thought I was just from New Orleans and from Louisiana and I just got this local hire or whatever. And people thought about me like for a really long time.
Fresh Air
Walton Goggins Was Raised By A Village
I didn't think too much about it, to be quite honest with you, Tanya. I just thought, just go back to work. And so after The Shield, nothing happened. And then a friend of mine was doing this movie. It offered me a really, really small part. And my ego was in the way. It was like, man, I just want more. And I was walking with my wife. She looked at me and said, you need to go to work.
Fresh Air
Walton Goggins Was Raised By A Village
And I said, yeah, that's exactly what I need to do. I'm going to call him right now. And I did. I took it. And work begets work. And so for me, that's happened two or three times in my – after The Hateful Eight. I could – phone didn't ring, you know, for a long time. And it's like, man, this is Quentin.
Fresh Air
Walton Goggins Was Raised By A Village
I mean, that's pretty good people in this movie. I mean, like, right.
Fresh Air
Walton Goggins Was Raised By A Village
A second one. Right. With Sam and with Kurt and Jen and Tim. Like – and I couldn't get a job. And then – I got a phone call to do something. And I just thought, yeah, you know what? I can do that. And it was just, it's almost like God just said, okay, well, you're just going to have to keep moving. You know what I mean?
Fresh Air
Walton Goggins Was Raised By A Village
You're going to have to keep swimming upstream and all of these different ways and go off on this little tributary or this one here, because those are the opportunities that you're getting. So just say yes.
Fresh Air
Walton Goggins Was Raised By A Village
I think one of the most important takeaways for the movie for me is that the uninvited is actually an invitation to live your life more meaningfully. And that's what all of these characters do. They have money, but as they say in the movie, Most of this is borrowed anyway. They're just renting. They bought a house that they'll never be able to pay for. It's just a facade.
Fresh Air
Walton Goggins Was Raised By A Village
They're on a treadmill like everyone else. And then this woman shows up at their house and is the great disruptor to society. Shake all of these people out of walking through life numbly without kind of experiencing everything that's kind of going on around you. And she's a great catalyst for change for all these people. And it happened to us.
Fresh Air
Walton Goggins Was Raised By A Village
We were at a party that we were throwing at our house and a woman showed up. In her 80s and rang the buzzer and said, I need to get in my house, please. And yeah, so it's predicated on that. And it's a great story. People have really responded to it. I'm really proud of my wife.
Fresh Air
Walton Goggins Was Raised By A Village
Rufus Sewell, Lois Smith, Elizabeth Reaser. Yeah, some really, really great people.
Fresh Air
Walton Goggins Was Raised By A Village
So, so happy to be here. Thank you for the invitation.
Fresh Air
Walton Goggins Was Raised By A Village
I think so. Thank you very much for saying that, first and foremost. But I do. The art of storytelling, the job of storytelling, the privilege of storytelling, for me, it is a religion. And the way that I was raised, the people that raised me, and their empathy for the world around them and for their fellow men and women... is how I approach every job that I do.
Fresh Air
Walton Goggins Was Raised By A Village
I just, I love getting close to these people that I get to play, that I've had the opportunity to play and understanding the world from their point of view. But that's always been with me since I was a kid. Because that's how I was raised. It makes you emotional.
Fresh Air
Walton Goggins Was Raised By A Village
Okay, well, I think about the shield, you know, and I think about the ending of that. And I think about the tragedy of this person who... who was under the influence of this guy, Vic Mackey, so brilliantly played by Chiklis. And I think about the way that his life ended. And I think about him being on the run.
Fresh Air
Walton Goggins Was Raised By A Village
And I think about the conversation that he had once he found love in his life and he was his own man without much time left to live. Because he found peace and something to live for.
Fresh Air
Walton Goggins Was Raised By A Village
And I go right back there every single time I talk about it. I look at Boyd Crowder's journey, and it is not so different from my own. It is a dude who is just trying to get out of poverty and reinvent himself, not so that other people can see him in a certain way, so that he can see himself in a different way. And his whole journey is something that is so profoundly intimate to me.
Fresh Air
Walton Goggins Was Raised By A Village
Just like the Rick and the White Lotus, every single thing, the role in the Hateful Eight. Chris Mannix is dying on the bed thinking about what does it take to change the heart and mind of one white dude? You know, what does that mean, really? And all of these people, they mean something to me. And what's so exciting about my life is that I'm not done. There are more people for me to meet.
Fresh Air
Walton Goggins Was Raised By A Village
Whether I get it right or whether I don't get it right is irrelevant to me. I will always strive to understand these people with the level of empathy and curiosity that was instilled in me from my childhood and that I moved through life with.
Fresh Air
Walton Goggins Was Raised By A Village
It's very true. And my mom's life story is so interesting and the journey that it took her, the life that she led up until having a child and then the life that subsequently we had together to be kind of on that stage in that moment after not seeing my mom for a year. Really? Why?
Fresh Air
Walton Goggins Was Raised By A Village
I mean, you know, we dug coal is a metaphor for so many things in our lives, right? Yeah. But yeah, there were people that I grew up with that died or friends that just went a different way. I don't think that that was ever, ever going to happen for me. I don't think I had a choice.
Fresh Air
Walton Goggins Was Raised By A Village
Well, you know, I really and I genuinely mean this. I've said this so many times, but I don't believe in playing a character. I don't believe in making choices. I don't sit in a room and go, oh, is it is Baby Bella right here? What is he? Oh, he's a baby Billy here. Like, where is he? How does he walk? I don't really think about those things.
Fresh Air
Walton Goggins Was Raised By A Village
I don't stand in front of a mirror and go, well, wouldn't it be interesting? Like from a cerebral kind of analytical point of view, you just put on the costume and put on the clothes and then you're just that person. I just spent so much time in my imagination, imagining these people are real.
Fresh Air
Walton Goggins Was Raised By A Village
Absolutely. So, okay, my father, there's an... A bit of the belly of your dad. Yes, absolutely. Yeah, just kind of like a big flamboyant personality that can just fill up a room. And my father's an amazing guy and a really entertaining guy. He was a tough guy for a long time when I was growing up, but... he's a very, very, very interesting person. I'm Walton Sanders Goggins Jr.
Fresh Air
Walton Goggins Was Raised By A Village
and my half-brother is Walton Sanders Goggins III. My father is probably by definition a clinical narcissist, but he's also, he's a good man. My father has a really good heart. And like all of us, And he just did the best he could, you know, with his trauma. And I do have a lot of forgiveness in my heart and not even forgiveness, just understanding at this point.
Fresh Air
Walton Goggins Was Raised By A Village
I had just been on the road for a year and a half and It just so happened that she came to our home and stepped in when I was out of town to help my wife. And she's obviously really close to her grandson, our son. But I just missed her. And I kept missing her by like a day or something. So I saw her in her dressing room at 30 Rock for the first time. I mean, that was the reunion I had.
Fresh Air
Walton Goggins Was Raised By A Village
Well, you know, I can tell you that my own relationship with my own father, I was very angry at my own father.
Fresh Air
Walton Goggins Was Raised By A Village
That I had to move through. And it wasn't all gone, you know, like a miracle in that moment. But it did open the door and it did allow me to begin that process. And it did speed it up because I wanted to have that forgiveness. And Rick...
Fresh Air
Walton Goggins Was Raised By A Village
For the first time in his life, two weeks before this show started, he is someone who is in a moment of doing inventory in his whole life, in a sober moment, looks around and says, how did I get here? Why am I here? Why am I living this life? And there in his mind is one person that is responsible for that, that permanently altered the course of his life in a very negative way.
Fresh Air
Walton Goggins Was Raised By A Village
And Mike White, with all of these stories, but this one in particular, he brings such a deeply nuanced observation of these experiences in the world. And he's able to tell them with humor, but with pathos and with anger, you know, in a way that very few people can.
Fresh Air
Walton Goggins Was Raised By A Village
It has been such a pleasure to be in your company. Thank you so much for this conversation, truly.
Fresh Air
Walton Goggins Was Raised By A Village
And five minutes later, were doing the first run-through of the monologue and the dancing. And all of the emotions, all the feels were happening like in real time in front of other people. And it was really remarkable. And obviously the tears kind of in her eyes. My mom has no stage fright.
Fresh Air
Walton Goggins Was Raised By A Village
Right in. Like, give me a crowd. If I'm dancing for one person or I'm dancing for a million, it doesn't matter to my mom. And she's had such an amazing spiritual journey that she knows exactly who she is. And that's rubbed off on me.
Fresh Air
Walton Goggins Was Raised By A Village
I mean, I have a single mother, and she had some amazing boyfriends that were extremely influential in my life. But she also had three sisters, my aunts and my grandmother. And then I had my grandfather, my father's father, and my grandmother kind of on that side too. But I wasn't raised, honestly, Tanya, by anybody. And if my mom was sitting here, she would say the same thing.
Fresh Air
Walton Goggins Was Raised By A Village
I've always kind of had the moniker that Walton raised himself. Yeah. And what I mean by that is it wasn't neglect. It was the opposite. There were always people around. It was like a village. I was raised by a village of people.
Fresh Air
Walton Goggins Was Raised By A Village
Yeah, I mean, you know, my mother wasn't, you know, young, young when she had me. I mean, she had me at, I think she was 23 or something like that. But, you know, my parents got divorced when I was three. And, you know, we lived in Decatur, Georgia, you know, downtown, a little duplex. And then eventually we, you know, got this little house out in Lithia Springs, Georgia.
Fresh Air
Walton Goggins Was Raised By A Village
And, you know, it was everything for my mom to buy a house. And but with that, my mom just had a lot of great friends.
Fresh Air
Walton Goggins Was Raised By A Village
Yeah, you know, yeah. No, we didn't go to see a lot of movies. I mean, we went to some seminal movies, but it wasn't certainly a big part of our life. I mean, we had a television, you know, I mean, Sanford and Son and, you know, The Jeffersons and TBS. Those were the ones you were watching? And The Braves, you know. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
Fresh Air
Walton Goggins Was Raised By A Village
Still watch them, you know, but but yeah, so we didn't didn't have a lot of screens kind of growing up. That really wasn't a big a big part of our life. My my my aunt Joan and her husband, my uncle Mark, they were both actors in the theater and in a regional kind of equity equity theater space.
Fresh Air
Walton Goggins Was Raised By A Village
usually like all over kind of the south, but they traveled a bit up north, and I grew up watching them on stage.
Fresh Air
Walton Goggins Was Raised By A Village
But this entire group of people that I'm talking to you about, all of them, like you could just hand the microphone to any one of these people, and they could just command the room for hours, and no one interrupted their story because they just wanted to hear it, and it was just a lot of laughter. And a lot of weed, you know. And they were all deeply empathic people.
Fresh Air
Walton Goggins Was Raised By A Village
And they wore their emotions on their sleeve. And they always cared about other people.
Fresh Air
Walton Goggins Was Raised By A Village
I do feel that being kind is important. I mean, it's not like, excuse my language, it's not like I can't be an asshole. I can, for sure.
Fresh Air
Walton Goggins Was Raised By A Village
It is something that I value, yeah, deeply. And this is the women in my family. This is my mother. We never had a washer and dryer when I was young. And so we'd go to the laundromat like a lot of people do. And there was a video game there, arcade game, centipede or whatever. And she would give me the change to play it. But spending those years in a laundromat. Just being around people.
Fresh Air
Walton Goggins Was Raised By A Village
My mother's dream in life was to be able to afford, to be able to take $1,000 out of the bank and go around to all these other people folding their laundry. And when they weren't looking, slip in a $20 bill. You know, like so that when they got home, it's like, wow, oh, my God, like in their sweatpants.
Fresh Air
Walton Goggins Was Raised By A Village
Yeah, absolutely. It's like, what would you do with a million dollars? This is what I would do with a thousand dollars, you know. And that led me to have this experience in Cambodia.
Fresh Air
Walton Goggins Was Raised By A Village
OK, ready for this? I was traveling in Southeast Asia. I was in Cambodia and then I was in northern Vietnam. I came back to Cambodia and I wanted to go work for an organization because I met this really cool backpacker. And she said, I just got back and this organization was cool. I called them and I said, I'd really like to come.
Fresh Air
Walton Goggins Was Raised By A Village
I'd like to give some money or I'd like to do something like a lot of people do. The guy, you know, never got back to me. But so then I had this driver. His name was Tang. And he had this tuk-tuk, right, that he drove me around. I knew enough about the country to know that there are families that still comb the trash pile looking for jewelry and things of value that they can make money off of.
Fresh Air
Walton Goggins Was Raised By A Village
Correct. So I stopped at the ATM. I got out $2,000. And small bills. And we spent, I want to say, 12 hours just walking that trash pile on top of it and then the tents and everything that are off to the side. And I just gave it out $20 at a time, just like my mama. And it was one of the greatest experiences of my life.
Fresh Air
Walton Goggins Was Raised By A Village
Skating rink. I think it's been downhill from there. Yeah, as a DJ in a skating rink. Yep, yep. Going into my summer before my ninth grade year. I sold bait. I worked with a roofing crew.
Fresh Air
Walton Goggins Was Raised By A Village
and going to school too well it was summer right and um but then we had a program once we got into high school where you know you could start working i think in the 11th grade or something like that for however many hours that you could work for a week it was very different back then and yeah i got in that program and uh and i just kept working and i worked uh at
Fresh Air
Walton Goggins Was Raised By A Village
And retail, you know, at the mall, like a lot of people do. But with one of my best friends, this guy Edwin, and a crew of guys that I grew up with, we sold newspapers, the Atlanta Journal of the Constitution, door to door. And we would only work like three hours a day. But we had that gift to gab, you know, and, you know, just to make people have a good time.
Fresh Air
Walton Goggins Was Raised By A Village
And we sold so many, so many subscriptions to Atlanta Journal of the Constitution. It was so much fun. Yeah.
Fresh Air
Walton Goggins Was Raised By A Village
Oh, God, absolutely. And I don't carry it with me so much anymore. But I think that's one of the most profound kind of insecurities that I had with me for a long time. Two things, really. But one, being this outsider, not having a lot as a kid and There was one moment where I was dating this girl, and I just liked her so much. I had the biggest crush on this person.
Fresh Air
Walton Goggins Was Raised By A Village
And I remember her mom was coming to pick me up, and I think I lied to my mom. She knew where I was going to go, and I said, Mom, I think she's going to be here pretty soon. I didn't give her my address. I gave her my neighbor's address. And I said, Okay, Mom, I think you're coming. I love you. Bye-bye. And I ran out and hid in the ditch.
Fresh Air
Walton Goggins Was Raised By A Village
And I saw these lights kind of coming and I, and I knew it was them. And so I just jumped out and like, as if I was walking down the driveway and they pulled in and then the porch light kind of came on behind me. And I just jumped in the car. It's like, okay, let's go. Let's go. Well, can't we meet your, you know, your mom? No, no, no. She's let's just get out of here.
Fresh Air
Walton Goggins Was Raised By A Village
And, and the other thing was not having a, um, not finishing college and not having those four years of deep soulful learning, um,
Fresh Air
Walton Goggins Was Raised By A Village
Yeah. Just being in conversations when I got out to Los Angeles, there was one ride in particular kind of coming back from San Diego to L.A. where I was with this group of people that – that all went to these fancy schools. And they were talking about literature and referencing all of these different authors and the characters in these books. And I just had no idea what they were talking about.
Fresh Air
Walton Goggins Was Raised By A Village
Nothing. And I just kept making these mental notes. Before cell phone, I couldn't put a note down. It was like, okay, yeah.
Fresh Air
Walton Goggins Was Raised By A Village
Somerset Maugham. All of these different things. John Steinbeck. And then I just kind of set out to do that on my own. But I would have given anything to have had that time. I wouldn't have traded my life because I wouldn't want anything to be altered in my life because I'm so grateful for the life that I have, not just in this moment. I've always been grateful for my life.
Fresh Air
Walton Goggins Was Raised By A Village
But if I could go back and not alter my life, I would take four years meeting, you know, kids in class and talking politics in a second.
Fresh Air
Walton Goggins Was Raised By A Village
Because I got this offer from American Express to go into debt.
Fresh Air
Walton Goggins Was Raised By A Village
I showed up to college like everybody else, and I began getting mail. And one of the first pack of advertising was this offer from American Express. That said, if you get this card, you will get two flight vouchers for $99 east of the Mississippi or $199 west of the Mississippi. And I looked at them and I thought, all I've got to do is get this card and I can go to Los Angeles for $199?
The Nerve with Maureen Callahan
Meghan And Harry’s Bizarre Outings, Taylor Swift's Blake Diss, And Glennon Doyle's Self-Help Scam
My character in White Lotus is pretty brooding, which the internet seemed to find attractive. Some of my friends have even asked me, Walton, what's it like to become a sex symbol at 53 years old? And you know what? If I'm being honest, it feels fantastic. It did until I Googled myself and read some of the headlines. Take a look. Are we all horny?
The Nerve with Maureen Callahan
Meghan And Harry’s Bizarre Outings, Taylor Swift's Blake Diss, And Glennon Doyle's Self-Help Scam
Are we all horny for Walton Goggins receding hairline? I've had the same hairline since I was seven. It's not receding. It's holding its ground.
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 5: “Full Moon Party” with Carrie Coon and Parker Posey
I don't know.
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 5: “Full Moon Party” with Carrie Coon and Parker Posey
And that's how you get people to do what you want. Because most people don't know what they want, and a lot of them, here's a little secret. They just want to be used.
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 5: “Full Moon Party” with Carrie Coon and Parker Posey
No. What?
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 3: “The Meaning of Dreams” with Walton Goggins and Aimee Lou Wood
Well, even evil things shouldn't be treated like shit. It's only going to make them more evil.
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 3: “The Meaning of Dreams” with Walton Goggins and Aimee Lou Wood
Hey, y'all. Hi. Welcome to the Walton Goggins White Lotus Experience.
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 3: “The Meaning of Dreams” with Walton Goggins and Aimee Lou Wood
Yes, absolutely. So I want to ask you... No, go ahead.
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 3: “The Meaning of Dreams” with Walton Goggins and Aimee Lou Wood
Extremely antisocial behavior.
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 3: “The Meaning of Dreams” with Walton Goggins and Aimee Lou Wood
You know what, can I say this right out of the gate? I've been around a long time. I've done a lot of comedies over the course of my career. I've done a lot of dramas over the course of my career. What was the hardest part about this experience for me early on was being, excuse my language, but the fucking downer. in the room. My process is no different. It's evolved.
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 3: “The Meaning of Dreams” with Walton Goggins and Aimee Lou Wood
I find more pleasure in the experience of telling stories, but showing up to work every day with 18 people and a green room that's full of chairs of 18 people that are in a much different place emotionally than I am at the beginning of the story was very difficult.
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 3: “The Meaning of Dreams” with Walton Goggins and Aimee Lou Wood
you know i i'm i can be the one cracking jokes i can be the one having a good time more often than not my chair is separate i sit on my own i do my own thing i have played countless figures that move through the world as an island you know but this one was particularly hard because usually that's just with like two or three people
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 3: “The Meaning of Dreams” with Walton Goggins and Aimee Lou Wood
And this was with 18 people that have comedic chops and drama chops, but I just couldn't be around them. They didn't understand why I was there. This guy is isolated. He has moved through his life isolated. And that wasn't any fun to separate yourself from a group in that way. That was really, really challenging.
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 3: “The Meaning of Dreams” with Walton Goggins and Aimee Lou Wood
And I guess to speak to what you said, yeah, Rick is a person who has been running from his past for a very long time, who exists in the spaces in between, you know, in society, on the fringes of society. And he is angry and he is bitter about the hand that was dealt him by life. He's incapable of taking any responsibility for himself. And over the course of this experience, coming into it,
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 3: “The Meaning of Dreams” with Walton Goggins and Aimee Lou Wood
where everyone else's motivations are revealed right out of the gate, you know, pretty much. And with such elegance and such precision, these actors kind of interpreted it from Jason Isaacs getting that information and Patrick and, you know, where he's coming from, the relationship with his dad and this funny kind of very narrow view of the world.
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 3: “The Meaning of Dreams” with Walton Goggins and Aimee Lou Wood
and privileged view of the world, and all three of the ladies. And here I come in, you know, with Chelsea, played by Amy Lee Wood, and she doesn't even know. So it was more isolating than I anticipated, and it reverberated throughout the whole experience for me.
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 3: “The Meaning of Dreams” with Walton Goggins and Aimee Lou Wood
Amy and I talked ad nauseum about... the beginning of each day is kind of the worst part for them, right? But by the end of it, they come together and they see each other, regardless of the difference between their ages, that's irrelevant. It means nothing when you have a soulmate that sees you and your potential in a way that you can't see it for yourself.
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 3: “The Meaning of Dreams” with Walton Goggins and Aimee Lou Wood
Unfortunately in this case, it's really one-sided, you know, and his grief descends into a level of narcissism really because he's occupied with it and can't kind of see past it. And there was one day that we were working and I just don't know how to not stay in it. You know, it's not fun. It's not fun for my wife. It's not fun for me, but we were all on this boat.
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 3: “The Meaning of Dreams” with Walton Goggins and Aimee Lou Wood
And I just had such anxiety about getting on this boat. Cause there's nowhere for me to hide. I'm a claustrophobic person by nature. And Rick is a claustrophobic person. And I knew there was no place for me to be alone right on this boat before I could take my chair. go out into the little jungle if I wanted to, you know? But on this particular day, it was really tough.
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 3: “The Meaning of Dreams” with Walton Goggins and Aimee Lou Wood
And so I just camped out on the front of this boat. The view was incredible. And I just filled it full of negative energy so that no one wanted to be around me, right? And there was a moment... Like for real, it's like just like buckets of fucking negativity. Here you go. Like no one will come up here. One person did, John Grice, who's a buddy of mine. And so we were able to talk.
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 3: “The Meaning of Dreams” with Walton Goggins and Aimee Lou Wood
But at one point, Amy, not being mean or anything, she said, you know, leaned over and just said, you know, you're no fun. I want to be with them. You know, meaning the, you know, Patrick and the other characters, you know. And I was like, thank you, God. Thank you for saying that, you know, because that's exactly how I want you to feel, you know.
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 3: “The Meaning of Dreams” with Walton Goggins and Aimee Lou Wood
Well, I felt that really early on. The first time I read it, I understood it. It was crystal clear for me. And I felt that in that moment, what he saw were these animals that were vilified. by myths, by experiences. They were misunderstood. They were marginalized as being the worst among us. And he saw the way that the gross homogenized culture wasn't seeing these animals for their true beauty.
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 3: “The Meaning of Dreams” with Walton Goggins and Aimee Lou Wood
They couldn't see them for what they have to offer. And they are so unbelievably disrespectful, drinking their drinks and eating their chips and manhandling them on a way as if they don't have a soul. And I think he sees himself in them, you know? And I think he sees them as his spirit animal.
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 3: “The Meaning of Dreams” with Walton Goggins and Aimee Lou Wood
And he sees that the way that he's been treated, whether it's self-inflicted or not, he sees himself in these animals and he just can't take it anymore. And so he goes out and releases all of these snakes in these cages because he himself wants to be released. And it's like, if I can help them, maybe somebody can help me. It's metaphorical, but it's deep. It wasn't without intention.
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 3: “The Meaning of Dreams” with Walton Goggins and Aimee Lou Wood
It wasn't just the weed. No, it wasn't just the weed. But, you know, a gateway drug to transcendent thinking. Yes.
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 3: “The Meaning of Dreams” with Walton Goggins and Aimee Lou Wood
I, I, I, you know, I look, I think this person's, you know, floated on the edge of, you know, questioning how long he has on this planet for years. But, but. Rick. Yeah. He's a, he's a dark dude, but you know what? I, I, I hopefully, you know, if I did my job and the way Mike architected it, hopefully you, you will, your empathy will continue. Yeah. And you will fall in love with him and Chelsea.
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 3: “The Meaning of Dreams” with Walton Goggins and Aimee Lou Wood
I certainly did. Oh, yeah. They're our favorites. They're our favorites.
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 3: “The Meaning of Dreams” with Walton Goggins and Aimee Lou Wood
I've been to a lot of countries in my life. Me personally, I've traveled a lot of different places and I think that they met in a bar because she's a free spirit. I don't want to speak for Amy, but she was running from her own things, you know, whether she was traveling alone or whether she was with a group of people.
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 3: “The Meaning of Dreams” with Walton Goggins and Aimee Lou Wood
I think she came up to the bar to order a drink and Rick was sitting there alone. I think that she struck up a conversation because Rick just wouldn't. And five minutes into it, there was a soul connection, you know?
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 3: “The Meaning of Dreams” with Walton Goggins and Aimee Lou Wood
She knew, and we'll see whether or not Rick comes to the same conclusion.
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 3: “The Meaning of Dreams” with Walton Goggins and Aimee Lou Wood
Thank you so much. I can't wait for you to see where it goes.
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 3: “The Meaning of Dreams” with Walton Goggins and Aimee Lou Wood
Yeah, wow.
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 3: “The Meaning of Dreams” with Walton Goggins and Aimee Lou Wood
Oh, my God. I need weed.
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 3: “The Meaning of Dreams” with Walton Goggins and Aimee Lou Wood
It doesn't concern you, okay?
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 3: “The Meaning of Dreams” with Walton Goggins and Aimee Lou Wood
Underneath anger, there's always a sadness. Something we are grieving. What are you grieving?
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 3: “The Meaning of Dreams” with Walton Goggins and Aimee Lou Wood
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 3: “The Meaning of Dreams” with Walton Goggins and Aimee Lou Wood
In your stillness, be aware of your sensations. What do you feel?