At this point in season 3 of “The White Lotus,” Mike White’s globe-hopping anthology series that takes place in Thailand this time around (after previous entries set in Hawai’i and Italy), it’s hard to imagine anybody but Walton Goggins playing the irascible Rick Hatchett. Goggins, who’s currently pulling double duty on HBO with his role in “The Righteous Gemstones” (a performance that actually is even more daring and audacious than what he’s doing on “The White Lotus”), is perfect as Rick, a man who comes to Thailand with his much-younger girlfriend Chelsea (a spectacular Aimee Lou Wood, who you might know from “Sex Education”) and happens to be hellbent on avenging his father. It’s all very Inigo Montoya-coded, and Goggins pulls it off beautifully, so you might be surprised to learn that Woody Harrelson was actually supposed to play Rick — and even signed onto the project before dropping out.
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In a massive cover story for The Hollywood Reporter about the third season of White’s award-winning show, producers David Bernad and casting director Meredith Tucker said Harrelson was originally the pick for Rick, but they did so indirectly by saying that the entire project operates under a specific financial model. “Everyone is treated the same on ‘The White Lotus,'” Bernad said. “They get paid the same, and we do alphabetical billing, so you’re getting people who want to do the project for the right reasons […] it’s a system we developed in the first season because there was no money to make the show.”
“It makes it so much easier,” Tucker added. “You tell people this is what it is. And some won’t do it — and honestly, you can’t hold it against people who need to make a living. Our series regulars are pretty much doing this for scale.” So where does Harrelson come in? Apparently, he wanted to negotiate the salary to play Rick and was told no; he eventually did agree to take the part anyway, but ended up dropping out due to a scheduling conflict.
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Enter Goggins, and the rest is history.
Walton Goggins ended up playing Rick because Woody Harrelson dropped out
Walton Goggins clearly ended up playing Rick, but as Goggins told THR, he almost approached White to appear in the second season … but demurred after an ask from his agent that he didn’t much like. “When Mike [White] was casting season 2, my agents asked me if I’d write a letter to him, and I said no. I’m not that kind of person,” Goggins recalled before saying that, based on how the casting did shake out for the season set in Sicily, he’s glad he didn’t make the ask. “If the time is right to collaborate with any filmmaker, it won’t be because I reached out to them. So, I didn’t write that letter for season 2, luckily for me, because the answer absolutely would have been no, it was definitely going to be Michael Imperioli and not me in Sicily.”
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Goggins is particularly outstanding as Rick, a guy whose gruff and often sort of mean exterior houses both deep insecurities and a surprisingly strong attachment to Chelsea, despite his frequent exasperation with her. But according to him, he had sort of a rough go during filming due to his intense character work. “At times, I felt misunderstood, like I was a f***ing downer for everyone else,” Goggins admitted. “I was just consumed by the story. It got to a place where they would just put my chair somewhere different on set or I’d sit on a rock away from everybody and wait for the weekends to hang out with people.”
Thankfully, Aimee Lou Wood was able to break down Goggins’ barriers. “But Aimee and I became very close, very quickly, and a part of that was because when everyone else was like, ‘Oh, just leave that guy alone,’ Aimee constantly came and poked me,” he said.
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Two White Lotus co-stars helped Walton Goggins feel comfortable on set
Much like her character, Aimee Lou Wood simply used her natural charm to win over Walton Goggins, and as he said in the THR profile, she got right to the heart of the matter. “She’d be like, ‘Oh, you’re not some scary guy. You’re a f***ing teddy bear is what you are,'” Goggins said. “And she was right. But it was part and parcel of the experience that I needed.” (Wood followed up, saying Goggins would thank her for calling his bluff: “Because he’d be off as a lone wolf, but he didn’t really want that, in the same way that Rick doesn’t really want that.”)
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It wasn’t just Wood that got Goggins to emerge from his protective cocoon, though; surprise guest star Sam Rockwell arrives in the show’s fifth episode, “Full-Moon Party,” as Frank, an old friend of Rick’s who agrees to meet him in Bangkok. “You do eventually see Rick in his environment, with his friend, who’s [played by] Sam Rockwell, who’s also one of my best friends,” Goggins said of his real decades-long friendship with Rockwell. “And this very taciturn guy in all of this pain is suddenly enjoying himself, and I waited a long time to have that. I waited a long time to be around people that I could connect with in this experience because that was Rick’s experience. I had that as soon as Sam walked through the door.”
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Rockwell’s surprise involvement in “The White Lotus” was due in part to his real-life partner of 18 years, Leslie Bibb, who stars on the show as Kate. Apparently, even she knew Rockwell’s mere presence would help Goggins. “I knew with Walton how all-consuming it had been — and painful,” she said. “I also knew Sammy would be an oxygen mask for him.”
The fact that both Wood and Rockwell helped Goggins feel more comfortable on the set of “The White Lotus” is strangely beautiful … and hopefully, all of their characters survive the season 3 finale. The last episode of “The White Lotus” season 3 airs on April 6 on HBO and Max at 9 P.M. EST.
