‘The White Lotus’ star reveals why her storyline can be triggering
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Walton Goggins’ stint in Thailand to film “White Lotus” brought up heartbreaking memories and a full circle moment.
The actor, whose wife Leanne Knight died by suicide in 2004, told Vulture in an interview published this week that he visited Thailand 18 years prior “after a trauma in my life.”
Goggins, who plays vengeance-seeking Rick Hatchett on the hit HBO series, said he took the trip “looking for peace, looking for some resolution that was not so dissimilar from what Rick was looking for.”
“White Lotus,” which wrapped Season 3 Sunday, follows wayward Rick, as he looks to avenge his father’s death. The parallel to his own life wasn’t lost on Goggins.
“I was a year into a relationship with my now-wife, and I was as lost as Rick is lost. I understood, intimately, Rick’s frame of mind. I read it on the page and I thought, ‘The universe brought this to me for a reason, because I understand him, and I love him, and I love people like him. I don’t think he’s alone in the world.’”
He called the loss of his first wife a “complicated story” in a GQ story first published in February. “I thought it was really unrecoverable for me,” he told the outlet. “Life on the other side of that.”
Goggins married the dog-walking business owner three years before her disappearance and death. Coping with her loss led Goggins to travel to Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia and India, but he said he would often put himself into troubling circumstances during this time.
“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 continued. “I really went all over the world.”
The actor said during filming for the series, he started to recognize many of the Thai locations as places he’d traveled to 20 years earlier.
“I realized, ‘I’ve definitely been on this beach before. I know this boardwalk.’ And all of the things kept coming back,” he told the magazine.
Then, on the last night of shooting in Bangkok, the crew pulled up to a dock and hotel that Goggins had stayed in two decades before.
“That’s where I was the very first day I came here, 20 years ago, and in so much … pain, man,” he said. “That’s where we were filming, man – all of the equipment was literally right in front of the hotel that I’d picked 20 years ago on the internet, on this little bitty road in this little bitty neighborhood.”
The “Fallout” star remarried in 2011, to writer and filmmaker Nadia Conners. The pair share a son, Augustus.
He added that he was still processing the gravity of the moment. “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,” he said. “And a wife and a kid and peace and all the rest of it.”
Goggins continued: “I thought, God, I wish I could hug that guy. I wish I could whisper in his ear, ‘You’re going to be OK. Life continues, and it continues for everybody 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.’”
If you or someone you know may be struggling with suicidal thoughts, you can call 988 any time day or night, or chat online. Crisis Text Line also provides free, 24/7, confidential support via text message to people in crisis when they dial 741741.
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