[This story contains major spoilers from The White Lotus season three, episode seven, “Killer Instincts.”]
It may have taken almost his entire vacation, but Rick Hatchett finally relaxed during Sunday’s episode of The White Lotus. For Walton Goggins, the wait was considerably longer. The apparent culmination of his antihero’s journey wasn’t filmed until almost the very end of the Thailand shoot, and the relief on his face at the end of the episode is as much his own as it is Rick’s.
“It took me six months and seven hours of this experience to smile, to really smile,” Goggins tells The Hollywood Reporter of the penultimate episode of season three. “It’s not joy, but there’s contentment or peace for a moment. Other actors would’ve arrived at that very different way and lived their life.”
Goggins has not been shy about how difficult the White Lotus shoot was for him. Rick’s reasons for being so surly weren’t revealed until the season was half-way done. “It takes until episode four for the audience to really understand the motivations for this guy, where everybody else’s motivations are pretty clear in episode one,” he says. “There were so many ways in which this guy could have been marginalized right out of the gate.”
His motivations were, of course, revenge. Rick revealed to girlfriend Chelsea (Aimee Lou Wood) in that fourth episode that his father, dead before he was even born, had been killed in Thailand by a developer — one who happened to own the Koh Samui White Lotus location with his magnetic wife played by Lek Patravadi.
But if Jim (played by new castmember Scott Glenn) ends up being part of the still-untallied body count in this third season, it doesn’t look like it will be by Rick’s hands. Their showdown ended not with a gunshot but a gingerly toppled desk chair, when Rick decided to, well, bury the hatchet.
“I read all the scripts and I knew what it would take in order to get to that moment, it was all building towards that,” says Goggins. “I didn’t know exactly how that conversation was going to play out with Scott. We didn’t talk about it a lot. But there was one take in particular that he did three or four times. I didn’t talk for a minute. I just thought about what it must be like to be obsessed with one person your whole life, not taking out the fact that you think that he’s ruined your life, and to finally have an audience with this person. That moment is used in the episode.”
He continues, “Rick’s Just a lost boy, isn’t he? He’s just looking for answers as much as he’s looking for revenge. And when he saw [Jim] for who he was, all of the pain and all of the power that this man had over him was gone. There was no boogeyman in the closet anymore.”
True to the indulgent spirit of The White Lotus, the abandoned revenge killing is followed by a Bangkok bender — with Sam Rockwell’s Frank falling off the wagon in spectacular fashion, just two episodes after delivering a candid monologue about his colorful journey to sobriety. And while Frank really lives it up, it’s Rick who looks happiest with the events of the day.
“As an actor, all of a sudden, 10,000 pounds lifted off of my shoulders,” says Goggins, whose been friends with Rockwell off camera for years. “That smile was so genuine. It was real. And getting to go through that experience with Sam was arguably one of the great times of my life.”
The White Lotus season three will release its season three finale Sunday at 9 p.m. on HBO and Max. Follow along with THR‘s season coverage and interviews.