Walton Goggins Thought Sam Rockwell’s Wild ‘White Lotus’ Moment Was “Beautiful”

Warning: Spoilers ahead for season three, episode five of The White Lotus

In 2023, Walton Goggins learned that Mike White was interested in him playing a character on the third season of The White Lotus. Goggins devoured the new season’s scripts on a plane ride from Los Angeles to New York, and was struck by how much he had in common with the character of Rick Hatchett. “I felt as if these people had somehow been listening through my iPhone, combing through the pictures of my life and the journey that I’ve been on personally,” he says. “I understood where this guy was in his life, and what he had encountered and what he’s bringing to this experience, and what he ultimately has to say about the human condition. It was going to be very profound.”

Like Rick, Goggins also took a journey to Southeast Asia many years ago, at a point in his life where he needed to figure a few things out. While shooting scenes for the fifth episode of the season, which aired on Sunday, March 16, he realized that they were filming in some of the exact places he’d gone on his own sojourn. “It is very, very, very visceral, cerebral—so close to the bone, this journey for me,” he says.

In episode four, Rick finally told his girlfriend, Chelsea (Aimee Lou Wood), the real reason he’d come to the White Lotus hotel in Thailand: The owner of the hotel is allegedly the man who killed his father. In episode five, Rick heads to Bangkok, where the alleged killer now lives, and seems determined to meet him. But first, he meets up with his old friend Frank—played in a surprise casting by Sam Rockwell.

Because Rockwell’s longtime partner is White Lotus star Leslie Bibb, viewers might assume that’s how the Oscar winner ended up in the show. But it turns out that Rockwell has also been best friends with Goggins for 15 years. That friendship seeps into the scene in which Rick and Frank, two longtime friends, catch up over a drink in the hotel lobby—and Frank reveals the insane journey of discovery he’s been on, in one of the most memorable monologues we’ve seen on TV in a long time.

Goggins himself has countless memorable characters on TV, from Boyd Crowder on Justified to Baby Billy Freeman on The Righteous Gemstones and the Ghoul on Fallout. But filming The White Lotus opposite his real-life friend is now one of the highlights of his career. He spoke to Vanity Fair about Rick’s reaction to his friend’s incredible reveal, how he crafted Rick’s backstory, and where the story goes from here.

Vanity Fair: Rick has a vaguely shady backstory, though we don’t know all the details. How much of his past did you need to fill in for yourself in order to play the character?

Walton Goggins: All of it, really. I’ve met people like Rick Hatchett over the course of my life, and hung out with them in various ways in various countries all over the world. So I know this guy. I know why he needs to move on, and when he needs to move on. I don’t want to go too much into the specifics, because all of that is very, very personal to me. It’s a mystery for people until it’s not a mystery for people.

What made this role especially personal to you?

He’s looking for peace. He’s looking to kind of reconcile his past, and whether he’s able to find those answers and live with the answers to those questions. I myself went on a very similar journey after a trauma in my life. My journey lasted for about three and a half years. It took me all over the world, but a chapter of it was in Southeast Asia, and the beginning of that Southeast Asian portion of it started in Bangkok, believe it or not.

The last day of filming for me on The White Lotus after a seven month odyssey was a scene in episode five, in Bangkok, where he’s in the cab and you see the city float by. And I had the same experience. And there’s a day where I am shooting on a river and we pulled up to this dock and I looked to the person that I was with in this boat and I said, “I recognize this place. Oh my God, that’s the room that I stayed in 18 years ago. That’s the balcony that I chainsmoked and read books about Buddhism and all of the other great religions trying to find some fucking questions, let alone the answers.”

Rick seems like sort of a loner, but he also has this deep connection with his girlfriend, Chelsea. How would you describe that relationship?

I think that their connection is cosmic. It has nothing to do with their age. It has to do with their spirit and how they see the world, and the company and pleasure and joy that they give each other. I knew going into this experience that a lot of these things were going to be kind of hard to overcome, or hard to navigate. My motivations are very clear from the beginning of this experience, but not even the love of my life knows what those are. And it takes four episodes to really find out what that is. In order to get to that place, Amy and I needed to navigate it for ourselves. There was a deep understanding and a deep trust between the two of us from the very beginning of this process.

When did you find out that Sam Rockwell would be playing Rick’s friend?

I think initially there was someone else that was going to play this, and so when that didn’t work out for whatever reason, it was really only one person—and that was Sam Rockwell. We did a movie together like 14, 15 years ago [Cowboys & Aliens], and he has been one of my best and dearest friends over the last 15 years of my life. So that is both a positive and a negative in the sense that we haven’t worked together since then. Further complicating this collaboration is that Sam is my hero. He’s really one of the guys in my generation that I look up to, and he knows that. So coming into this experience, there was a certain amount of anxiety, meaning I didn’t want to let my friend down.

We talked a lot right before he got there about what that relationship symbolizes, where they fit into each other’s lives. And the very first day on the set, there was a comfort and a level of listening and respect and genuine love and affection for each other that permeates their entire friendship.

How did you approach Rick’s state of mind in that moment in Bangkok?

When Rick gets to The White Lotus, this is a vapid environment for him. These aren’t his people. He is a taciturn guy, certainly here going through a deep emotional reckoning. And all of a sudden you see him in Bangkok, swimming with a similar fish and waters where he’s comfortable. He’s quite loquacious. He’s got a great friend. He’s a very different person. He’s relaxed and calm, and there’s this banter between the two of them because they had this shared history and they moved through the world in similar ways.

How did you decide how he would react when Frank shares this wild sexual journey and reckoning he’s been on?

We did it a number of times, like seven or eight times, and everything was different every single time. The only thing that I can say is that I had no judgment. It took me a moment to wrap my head around this particular life experience, so it was like, “wow, wow, okay.” But without judgment – I think that’s so beautiful about it.

Sounds like this was a special experience.

I just can’t highlight enough what this particular episode meant to me, not only as an artist, but as a friend. To see these two people play these two characters that are friends in life, and for it to be about what it’s about and what is being said. Here’s a person who you think judges fucking everyone at The White Lotus, but when he connects, there is no judgment and there’s just listening. It was really one of the greatest opportunities and privileges to get to go through this experience with Sammy Rock.

What can you say about where Rick’s story goes from here?

And all of these stories are an extension of Mike [White], and things that he has in him and observations that he’s made of the world. But Rick’s journey, it’s different. It hasn’t been in The White Lotus cannon up until this point. What I can say is that once that water starts boiling, it won’t stop. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.