In the wake of The White Lotus’s season 3 finale, fans are revisiting a moving interview that Walton Goggins, who played Rick Hatchett, gave GQ about his relationship with Thailand. While the actor filmed the HBO series there for seven months, he also had a deeper, emotional history with the country after losing a loved one decades ago.
“I had someone in my life that committed suicide,” Goggins told GQ for its February issue, referring to his wife Leanne Knight, whom the actor was married to from 2001 until her death in 2004. Knight had gone missing, but “ultimately it was revealed the decision that she’d made,” Goggins explained.
“I thought it was really unrecoverable for me. Life on the other side of that,” he said. “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. And I really went all over the world.”
His quest for peace, like Rick’s, led him to Thailand. “The first island we were staying on [while filming The White Lotus], I realized, I’ve been on this road before,” he said. “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.”
The eerie sense of déjà vu continued when Goggins and The White Lotus crew arrived to film along the Chao Phraya River in Bangkok. “We pulled up to this dock, and I was like, ‘I know this dock,’” the Emmy nominee said. “Oh my God. That’s the room I stayed in 20 years ago. That’s my balcony. That’s where I was the very first day I came here, 20 years ago, and in so much fucking pain, man.”
“We got out of the boat, and 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.”
Reflecting on his experience, Goggins added: “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.”
