This interview includes spoilers for the season finale of “The White Lotus.”
A man with a name like Rick Hatchett was unlikely to die in his bed.
He didn’t. In the Season 3 finale of “The White Lotus,” Rick, played by Walton Goggins, gunned down Jim Hollinger (Scott Glenn), whom Rick had long believed to be his father’s killer. (A posthumous twist: He was actually Rick’s father.) Then Rick was shot, in the back, by the gentle but ambitious security guard Gaitok (Tayme Thapthimthong). Most tragic: Rick’s sunshiny girlfriend, Chelsea (Aimee Lou Wood), was mortally wounded in the crossfire. With her dying in his arms, Rick fell into the hotel’s lily pond. In that moment, Goggins believes, Rick finds peace.
“For me, it was being released from pain,” he said.
On the morning after the finale, Goggins, a celebrated character actor currently also starring in “The Righteous Gemstones” and “Fallout,” discussed fate, love and why the story would have turned out differently if he and Rick could have somehow had a few beers together. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.
Did you feel that this ending was inevitable? Was Rick always meant to die?
Yeah, I do believe that. I didn’t see it coming when I read the scripts. But after I read them and absorbed them, I realized that there was really no other conclusion. It couldn’t have ended any other way.
In the previous episode, he stopped himself from killing Jim. In the finale, he can’t resist. Why?
His life has been defined by this single event [Jim’s murder of his father, which turns out to be a false story his mother told]. He has allowed this event to become his life story. Who is he without this villain in his life? Because without it, he would have to take responsibility for the decisions that he’s made and for not moving past it. Being face-to-face with his tormentor allowed him to express this deep feeling — all he needed in that moment was for this person to bear witness to his pain. That surprised Rick as much as anyone else. Reading it the first time, I thought that he was going to pull the trigger. When he didn’t, I was in tears about that and overjoyed for this revelation and this moment of peace.
But in Episode 8, he became consumed by it again. That’s the tragedy of all of it, because in the depths of all of our pain, there’s always beauty around us. It’s up to us to see it. I have done a lot of traveling in my life. I’ve done a lot of searching. And the period of time that I spent in Southeast Asia, I was looking for something very similar. I read this book by Thich Nhat Hanh, “The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching,” a straightforward, no-nonsense interpretation of Buddhism. It explains the Four Noble Truths: Accept that life is suffering; look for the cause of that suffering; seek the cessation; and then commit your life to the Noble Eightfold Path. It’s those four things. Rick got a couple. But he failed!
Do you think on some level Rick knew that Jim was his father?
No, absolutely not. Rick is someone caught up in a story that was told to him when he was 10 years old. He’s incapable of seeing anything outside of this narrative. I think that’s true for a lot of us. This is a warning. This is a canary in a coal mine for all of us that have experienced trauma in our lives. We don’t have to be defined by it. Like my therapist says, you can write your own story. You can. You can get off the karmic wheel.
I wish Rick had been able to go to therapy! He tried!
Me too, man! Me too! I wish I’d have come across his path! We’d have had a beer and talked this [expletive] out!
Does Rick deserve Chelsea, that angel?
Do they deserve each other? Of course they do. They’re soul mates. Anyone [who disagrees], you’re in an arrested state of development, or you’re incapable of seeing the nuance in this story. Aimee Lou is a real sweetheart. I’ve been around a long time. I’ve had chemistry with a lot of different people in a lot of different genres. Right off the bat, the very first time that we met in Thailand, the chemistry was there. It was as if we had been friends and soul mates on some level for a very long time.
What was it like to play Rick in that final shot, face up in the lily pond?
The final image of Rick floating, that was a vision of peace and probably a recognition that the karmic cycle will continue. For me, it was being released from pain.
Rick was in many ways a man of mystery. Did you decide for yourself what his back story is — how he made his money, how he got so good with a gun?
All of it. Yeah, all of it. With everything that I do, I spend hundreds of hours just imagining this person’s life and the answers to those questions. Mike [White, the creator of “The White Lotus”] said, “I don’t know, but you will.” I found those things for myself.
Will you tell me what you found?
I keep it to myself, unfortunately.
Do you think Rick enjoys Thailand at all?
No, he’s not there to see Thailand. This is someone who’s been all over the world. He’s there for a very specific reason. Everybody else has their friends or their siblings or their parents, someone to talk to. Rick has Chelsea, but he’s incapable of opening up to her until he does. All of a sudden when he gets to Bangkok, he has a friend too. [Frank, played by Sam Rockwell.] His demeanor changes immediately. All of a sudden he’s an active listener and an active participant in a conversation, laughing and having a good time.
Were those scenes with Sam a relief?
It was such a relief to get to that point in the story and be in this very different space away from that hotel. In that world, surrounded by those vapid people, he’s an interloper. He wouldn’t speak to those people anyway.
You also went to Thailand for a specific purpose: to work. Were you able to enjoy it?
Yeah, there were moments where I really enjoyed it. I enjoyed some of the excursions and quality time with some of the people there. But aside from that, I was there to do a job. My job was to tell the story of Rick Hatchett. And it was relentless.
Alexis Soloski has written for The Times since 2006. As a culture reporter, she covers television, theater, movies, podcasts and new media. More about Alexis Soloski
The post ‘The White Lotus’: Walton Goggins Knows It Had to End This Way appeared first on New York Times.
