Since the end of The White Lotus’s third season, and the subsequent Great Unfollowing between co-stars Walton Goggins and Aimee Lou Wood, the internet has been wondering if the pair, who play doomed lovers Rick and Chelsea, had a falling out in real life. Social media lit up, Jason Isaacs turned out to be a messy bitch who lives for drama, and Walton Goggins ended up on the wrong side of a contentious interview with a journalist wouldn’t stop asking about the supposed feud.
Now, though, Walton Goggins and Aimee Lou Wood are telling their story in their own words. And those words are: there is no feud.
The pair cover Variety, and I’m just going to assume the internet is making conspiracy boards about the fact that Goggins’ hand isn’t gripping Wood’s hip in the cover photo, but instead his arm is resting along her lower back, hand closed. It means he hates her! You know who else poses like that all the damn time? Keanu Reeves. And he’s hailed as a respectful king for not clutching at his female co-stars on red carpets. Somehow, I doubt that Walton’s getting the same benefit of the doubt.
While it is my nature to be suspicious of celebrity PR and to question a cover profile of two stars from a hit prestige drama involved in a very public spiral right before Emmy season—nominations open next week—in this case, I actually believe there is no feud. I have never believed there was a feud. I have always KNOWN Walton Goggins peaces out on his co-stars the second he walks off set, often not speaking to them for years afterward. As I texted Lainey when news of the supposed feud broke:
“You mean Walton Goggins who’s infamous for not really getting along with his coworkers, that Walton Goggins? I think Jody Hill and Danny McBride might be the only people he has a consistent working relationship with.”
And this interview backs that up. Goggins confesses to not speaking to Timothy Olyphant for two years after Justified ended. Interestingly, here with Variety Goggins said when Justified ended he told Olyphant “‘I love you, and I hope I see you in rooms for the rest of my life’,” but in another interview he admitted that by the end of Justified, he and Olyphant “weren’t talking”. Now THERE is the feud we should be talking about! But to be fair to Goggins, he fully admits his tendency to dip on co-stars after projects wrap, saying he’s “done that with every single thing that I’ve done”. He is at least aware of this tendency and that it can make him look like an asshole to the outside world.
Between Wood and Goggins there does seem to be understanding and respect. They talk about how their relationship sort of echoed Rick and Chelsea’s, as Wood would pull Goggins out of his own head, dragging him back from the “sad, parallel world” of their characters. Goggins is open that his acting process is very intense and internal, and he tends to withdraw into himself while working and then needs time to decompress afterward. He credits Wood with being a stabilizing force during production of The White Lotus, keeping him from being too much alone.
He also acknowledges the production was harder on him because of his personal connection to Thailand, where he ended up after his first wife died by suicide in 2004, saying, “My catharsis in this experience was different than other people’s, because of my history in this place.” He says this meant his decompression process was even more intense than normal, and that Wood understood his need to pull back and that she supported him.
Will the internet buy this? Probably not. Because however much I think this is pretty much what happened—he was intense during film and intensely withdrew afterward—there is no denying this interview IS damage control. The people behind The White Lotus do not want the feud to be the story during Emmy season, they do not want Emmy voters thinking about it when filling out their nominations or, ultimately, casting their ballots (Goggins is currently a leading contender for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series, Wood is a contender in the supporting actress category, too).
But two things can be true: Walton Goggins and Aimee Lou Wood don’t want rumors about a feud distracting from their Emmy chances, AND they didn’t actually have a feud. What IS true is that Walton Goggins often has spiky relationships with his co-stars and if he’d gotten top-tier famous before now, everyone would know that. But The White Lotus is a lot of people’s first exposure to Goggins, so this is the first time they’ve experienced the Walton Goggins Post Series French Exit. Now that they have, we’ll all know better what to expect when Fallout ends and there are stories about Walton Goggins blanking Ella Purnell.
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