Note: This story contains spoilers from “The White Lotus” Season 3, Episode 4.
After a thorough amount of poking and prodding from Aimee Lou Wood’s Chelsea in “The White Lotus” Season 3, Walton Goggin’s Rick finally peeled back his layers, revealing the real reasons for their vacation in Thailand.
In Episode 4, Rick tells Chelsea the real reason he chose this hotel as their destination: the owner of the White Lotus Thailand murdered his father. The owner was supposed to be in town during their stay, though a last minute change brought him to Bangkok, forcing Rick to shift his plans to travel to the city.
“[He’s] motivated by the need to sit in front of this guy and have him bear witness to the pain that he had caused [him],” Goggins told TheWrap. “To be able to say that to them, see them hear it — God, what an unbelievable opportunity, what an unbelievable drive.”
That drive is what first stood out to Goggins when he read the scripts for the season, which creator Mike White asked him to read in full before committing to the role. Goggins recalled “deeply empathiz[ing]” with “this person at this age who has lived this life for so long, [who] had an opportunity to have a much greater journey on this earth, and that was taken by this person that his mother told him about.”
His father’s murder is the reason why Rick has become someone in “so much pain, somebody who’s been running from his life for so long and somebody who is so angry and so bitter and wants to understand why he is where he is,” according to Goggins.
Moreover, Goggins notes that Rick’s “moral code” translates into there being “consequences for that decision,” though Goggins remained tight-lipped on what those consequences could be, and if Rick has the intention of killing his father’s murderer.
Goggins also pointed out how Rick has something to learn from Buddhist teachings, noting “the first tenet of Buddhism is life is suffering.”
“It’s a part of your life that is suffering — identifying what that part is, the rest of the world around you is still beautiful, but we can’t see that,” Goggins said. “The lessons that this guy learns, and that hopefully the audience learns, is something that resonated very deeply with me and something that I’m very proud to have been a part of.”
After playing a handful of “loquacious” characters with charisma, Goggins was attracted to Rick’s quiet nature, saying “I have played roles like this, but never quite like this.”
“If you understand the world from their point of view and his perspective, it’s very quiet and it is very reserved because of his state of mind, and who he is as a person, and understand the way that he has moved through the world on the fringes of society,” Goggins said. “He’s a mystery to himself.”
As Goggins balanced production on “Fallout,” where he plays The Ghoul, a bounty hunter who survived nuclear holocaust, and HBO’s “The Righteous Gemstones,” where he stars as a 70s-something hustler and former child star, he said his time shooting “The White Lotus” was replenishing.
“My heart needed it, my soul needed and I hope that it speaks to people,” Goggins said.
“The White Lotus” airs Sundays on HBO and Max.
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