Walton Goggins says The White Lotus was a 'lonely, lonely experience'

American actor speaks to The National about hit HBO series and his decades-long climb to stardom

Walton Goggins stars as Rick Hatchett in The White Lotus. Photo: HBO

If you spot Walton Goggins in a Dubai airport lounge in the middle of the night, by all means, strike up a conversation. Seriously – he’ll be glad you did.

“I love that kind of thing, you know what I mean?” Goggins tells The National. “I’ve flown through Dubai probably five times and sat in the lounge with a cappuccino at three o’clock in the morning and had so many wonderful conversations in that room. I just love getting to know people.”

The only problem you may face is getting Goggins to talk about himself. For an actor, he’s rather egoless. “I try not to be the centre of my own world,” says Goggins. “It’s all cyclical – we’re all narcissists to some degree, lead characters of the story we’re telling ourselves – but whenever you can step out of that and realise that the world does not revolve around you, that’s the greatest source of joy and evolution as a human being.”

That’s why he can disappear so convincingly into an array of distinct characters. That's also why it’s taken decades for the world to recognise just how good he really is. But after decades of hiding in plain sight on acclaimed series and films, the actor, 53, has entered his moment.

His breakthrough came in the 2024 series Fallout, in which he played a post-apocalyptic bounty hunter known as the Ghoul. It was a performance so magnetic that Goggins couldn’t be ignored any longer, earning him his first lead actor Emmy nomination.

But 2025 has taken him to another stratosphere. His turn as Baby Billy in the final season of The Righteous Gemstones is strikingly good. But as Rick Hatchett in HBO’s The White Lotus, airing weekly on OSN+ in the Middle East, he’s become water cooler fodder. The character, a tortured stoic in search of the man who killed his father, is singular but eminently relatable – layered, heartbreaking and funny – like all the best Goggins creations.

“I saw him as an interloper in this world,” Goggins says. “All of these wonderful characters are an extension of [creator] Mike White’s imagination and heart. I think he has all these people inside of him, except for maybe Rick. Rick is special to him.

“I understood his isolation, his inability to be understood based on his own trauma. Right from the words on the page, I knew this was going to be a lonely, lonely experience.”

Season three of White Lotus is airing now on OSN+. Photo: Warner Bros. Discovery

It wasn’t just being away from his family and home for six months to film in Thailand that caused Goggins to feel so lonely – it was the journey he had to take to discover his character.

“There’s the difference between being good and understanding something from the inside out,” Goggins explains. “It’s one thing to read the words on the page, but it’s another thing to understand the joys, sorrows and pain that they carry with them. I care about characters deeply. It’s cathartic for me to unearth who they really are.”

Goggins approaches acting how he approaches life, with one pursuit feeding the other. “It’s the path I’ve been walking my whole life,” he reflects. “My mother set me on a road at a young age of questioning the world a little deeper – to look for meaning and connection beyond the surface and I’ve endeavoured to live a life like that. I’m attracted to people who are also seeking that.”

That search has been spiritual and intellectual. He’s a big fan of Herman Hesse’s book Siddhartha – he keeps a copy on his bedside table even though he hasn’t read it for years – and he reads a lot of spiritual texts from authors like Thich Nhat Hanh, Paramahansa Yogananda and Joel Goldsmith.

One saying sticks in his mind. He can’t remember what book it’s from, but it is this: “Better not begin. But once begun, better finish.”

Goggins explains: “There’s no middle ground. Don’t just begin a journey. Once you begin, you’ve got to finish. And maybe there is no finishing some things, but you’ve still got to be in that river, trying to find the end. You may jump out of that river, and towel off for a minute, but the water is always flowing, and eventually you’ll jump back in.

“That’s been my journey as a human being, and that’s one of the reasons why I so desperately wanted to be on this journey with Mike White and this cast on White Lotus.”

Acting wasn’t always this rewarding for Goggins. He remembers the moment that changed things. He was on the set of a movie, watching another actress find something in the process he never had.

“She was so good and, more than good, she was enjoying herself,” he recalls. “I said, ‘why are you having so much fun? This is killing me.’ And she just looked at me, gave me the number of a teacher she worked with, and said: ‘Call this man. He’ll change your life.’

“And he did change my life. He taught me that we over complicate things. This is a child’s game and you have to let go of your ego to hold a mirror up to nature. I think about that every time I go to work. I feel that my job is to reach the essence of these people.”

Time and time again, he has done just that. On shows such as The Shield, Sons of Anarchy, Justified and Vice Principals; in movies such as Django Unchained, The Hateful Eight, and Lincoln – he’s disappeared into his roles so convincingly that the praise was usually reserved for his more showy scene partners. Each one felt three-dimensional: hard to love, but impossible to hate.

Walton Goggins stars as Baby Billy in season four of Righteous Gemstones. Photo: HBO

“Something I think is true – something that was pointed out by journalists that I didn’t notice myself – is that so many of the characters I've played are lonely people looking for connection,” Goggins continues.

“But to me, they’re just real people. I see them in my mind, but I see them in the world. They’re people who look like me; that talk like me. I just don’t know how that’s going to manifest itself until I have the clothes or the hair. But I understand them – from birth to death; to a life well-lived. I see it. I feel it. There was a kinship with each of them.”

But The White Lotus has been an especially surprising experience. People are reaching out on social media. Friends and acquaintances are calling him up, saying how much they relate to Rick Hatchett.

“So many of us carry pain,” says Goggins. “We’re all found to be lost and lost to be found. At this part in his life, Rick is caustic and unreachable, but that’s what makes him relatable. We’re all isolated and misunderstood at times. We all carry our own traumas, and the by-products of that trauma are universal.”

Goggins is aware that his talents have caught the eye in a different way. But at this point in his life, decades into his career, he believes the door is opening at the right time.

“Opportunities have presented themselves when I was ready, psychologically and spiritually,” he says. “That’s certainly what’s happening now, but my process will never change. The joy I derive from it will never change. I hope to continue on this path through every new chapter in my life – and hopefully I have many more to go.”

The White Lotus is now streaming on OSN+ in the Middle East, with new episodes airing weekly