Walton Goggins has experienced a whole new level of stardom since his appearance in the third season of The White Lotus. Now he’s shared that he cried when he first learned he had the role.
Goggins played broken Rick Hatchett in the show that saw him on a mission to avenge his father’s death, accompanied by his much younger partner Chelsea, played by Aimee Lou Wood.
Goggins told the Daily Mail newspaper that he’s an inveterate crier, but sobbed heavily even by his own standards when he phoned his wife Nadia Connors after he’d learned he’d been cast by White Lotus creator Mike White.
Goggins explained: “It’s a golden ticket, but more than that, it was just the opportunity to go on a journey that comes from that man’s [White’s] imagination. Things that are interesting to him are interesting to me.”
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The actor, with the rest of the cast, spent months holed up in The Four Seasons resort in Ko Samui, Thailand, while filming the dark satire. He told the Daily Mail:
“I’m so relieved it’s out in the world,’ he says of that final episode. ‘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.”
Twice Emmy nominated, Goggins was previously best known for his role in US crime drama Justified and Amazon Prime’s post-apocalyptic sci-fi Fallout. But his success in The White Lotus has taken him to a whole other level. His other HBO series The Righteous Gemstones benefited from his rising star by airing immediately afterwards, with a reported one million viewers every episode.