Walton Goggins experienced a full-circle moment while starring as Rick in “The White Lotus.”
Warning: spoilers about the Season 3 finale are below.
The actor appears as the troubled character, looking to avenge his murdered father; however, after a series of bad decisions, he ends up killing the man he believed robbed him of his dad — but he turns out to be the one who gave Rick life.
Goggins got personal about his own time in Thailand two decades before he began shooting “The White Lotus” Season 3 — and after he went through a trauma almost as disturbing as his character’s fate.
The star traveled to the Southeast Asian country “looking for peace, looking for some resolution that was not so dissimilar from what Rick was looking for” after his wife, Leanne Knight, took her own life in 2004, he told Vulture in an interview published on Monday.
Goggins explained that while “the circumstances … dramatically different,” he was “as lost as Rick is lost” after Knight’s shocking death.
His character tricks his girlfriend, Chelsea (Aimee Lou Wood), into thinking they’re in Thailand for a couple’s vacation; however, as the season progresses, he confides in her his murderous plot.
In the end, Rick’s tunnel vision to take down who he thought was his father’s killer gets him and Chelsea killed.
Goggins shared that his personal experience helped him channel Rick.
“I understood, intimately, Rick’s frame of mind,” he noted, adding he and his character needed to discover that “in the depths of our despair, there is always beauty around us.”
The “Django Unchained” married his current wife, writer/director Nadia Conners, in 2011. The couple share one child, son Augustus Goggins, 14.
This isn’t the first time that Goggins opened up about his first wife’s suicide.
“I spent the next three years looking for an excuse — not to end it, but certainly putting myself in situations that were questionable, not with drugs or anything like that, just life experiences and traveling,” he told GQ in February. “And I really went all over the world.”
He also recalled how memories of that time came flooding back once he got to Thailand.
“The first island we were staying on, I realized, ‘I’ve been on this road before.’ And then the next island we went to, I realized, ‘I’ve definitely been on this beach before. I know this boardwalk.’ And all of the things kept coming back,” Goggins said.
“The Righteous Gemstones” star reflected on the last scene he shot for “The White Lotus” in Bangkok, sharing he was at the exact spot “20 years ago in so much f–king pain.”
Goggins noted the painful irony.
“I think I haven’t had the time to fully unpack the symmetry between those two people showing up at the same place, separated by 20 years. And a wife and a kid and peace and all the rest of it,” he stated.
“I wish I could hug that guy. I wish I could whisper in his ear, ‘You’re going to be OK. Life continues … if you can just hold on and lean into it and keep walking the walk that you’re walking, and keep looking for the answers,’” he continued.
Goggins opened up to GQ about the “very complicated story” of his first wife’s suicide. The pair married in 2001, and she took her life just three years later.
“Ultimately it was revealed the decision that she’d made. And yeah — I thought it was really unrecoverable for me. Life on the other side of that,” he stated.
If you or someone you know is affected by any of the issues raised in this story, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-TALK (8255) or text Crisis Text Line at 741741.
