The White Lotus: How Walton Goggins almost missed out on his career-defining role 

The season 3 finale of The White Lotus wrapped on April 6, 2025 and portrayed Rick Hatchett, played by Walton Goggins, tragically killed while walking away with his girlfriend's body after an intense shootout in Thailand. In the final shot, Rick's body, along with his girlfriend's, was seen floating over the water's surface.

Goggin recalled in a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter how he was so attached to the character that he didn't want to end it there.

“It’s going to sound so fucking weird. But I didn’t want it to end there. I’m thinking, I won’t have him as my villain anymore after this conversation is over, because I’m going to kill this motherf*cker," said Goggins.

That is when the actor's long-time friend, Sam Rockwell, told him to let it explode for once and let the character go.

"You’ve been living with this for seven months now. It’s not good. So let it go. And then just let it happen how it happens. Just let it explode how it’s going to fuck*ng explode.”

But you know what? Though Goggins played the role with utmost honesty, which also impacted him personally, he almost missed out on his career-defining role as he wasn't the first choice for the role of Rick Hatchett in The White Lotus.

---

A career defining lunch

Walton Goggins, a veteran of television and film whose career had been built on magnetic supporting turns, was meeting with his agents when they first mentioned The White Lotus. He learnt about the role of Rick Hatchett, a brooding man who is meant to suffer a tragic death in Thailand in the show's finale. Goggins recalled that he wasn't the first choice; it was Woody Harrelson. But Harrelson has passed on the role, and that is how it came to Goggins.

“This is second-hand, so certainly not gospel,” Goggins laughs. “But I’m pretty sure he thought it was too much of a fucking drag. Rick is sad. I don’t think he wanted to play with him. I think that’s how the story goes.”

Goggins received the script of The White Lotus for the 5 episodes on his computer, in just PDF format without password protection.

Goggins boarded a flight from Los Angeles to New York City. According to him, he started to read the script somewhere in the middle of America with a Negroni in hand. He completed the script in his hotel room, staying up past 2 AM.

“It was like bingeing the show,” he says. “I was alone. And I was so deeply moved by it, by what Mike was saying with this character and the ways it mirrored some of my own journeys in life, and so many other people’s journeys.”

He was convinced by Rick's character, who had grown believing that Jim Hollinger murdered his father. He discovers years later that Hollinger is a wealthy hotel businessman living in Thailand. Rick immediately decides to go there to avenge his father's death. Meanwhile, his journey in Thailand transforms him, as he discovers dark truths about his life.

"Everyone’s got some measure of low-grade trauma. It just so happens for this character, it crescendos in this moment that’s spectacularly horrific,” said Goggins.

Goggins recalled how he called the producer, David Bernard, in the middle of the night and was almost ready to give up the part, as it was excruciating for him.

"This has touched me in a very profound way, but what I’m going to have to do to get to this ending I just read… It’s going to be very, very painful."

---

The overlapping schedule connundrum

HBO’s The Righteous Gemstones, in which Goggins plays the unhinged Baby Billy, overlapped with The White Lotus. His other gig, Amazon’s Fallout, presented some conflicts with its press schedule, but Goggins wrestled all his way to the iconic role as Rick Hatchett was his.

Months later, he arrived in Thailand and on set immediately bonded with co-star Aimee Lou Wood, who plays his girlfriend Chelsea. Rick's dark story ends with losing his girlfriend in crossfire while realising that the man he just killed isn't his father's killer but his father himself. The actor had to carry the enormous weight for three days straight.

“We shot it over three days,” he says. “It’s the Rubicon. You know you have to cross it. I knew it eight months earlier when I read it. And you can’t escape it for those 72 hours.”

This is when his friend and co-actor Rockwell offered him advice. Goggins, in his final shot in The White Lotus, didn't say a word.

"It was that moment you want as an actor. Actors, we want that moment of sublime, where you see between the spaces, and you access the silence in between, which is Nirvana; that’s heaven, that’s spirituality, that’s God."

---

Did you enjoy the finale? Sound off in the comments section.

Stay tuned to Soap Central for more such curated pieces.