In a surprising new interview, Walton Goggins and Aimee Lou Wood addressed burning questions about their relationship — and what fans didn’t see on The White Lotus season 3.
Goggins, 53, and Wood, 31, presented a united front during a joint interview with Variety on Wednesday, June 4.“There is no feud. I adore, I love this woman madly, and she is so important to me,” Goggins declared.
The outlet noted that the actor got “choked up” about Wood, adding, “This is Goldie Hawn. This is Meg Ryan. She can do anything, and she will. You watch what the next 20 years of her experience will be. I’ll be on an island, I think Greece. But she’s special. There is no feud. She is love and I know that I am that to her. We care about each other very deeply.”
Goggins and Wood won Us over playing a fictional couple on season 3 of The White Lotus. But despite their onscreen love story, speculation soon spread that they might be at odds off screens after their costar Jason Isaacs’ hinted at tension on set between unnamed costars.
Around the same time, eagle-eyed social media users noticed that Goggins and Wood were no longer following each other on social media. The rumors got worse after Goggins shut down a question during a May interview where he was asked about his friendship with Wood.
“What am I gonna do, speak for both of us? Never,” Goggins told Variety about his curt response to The London Times. He also claimed the reporter asked three different times about Wood and had a “divisive nature.”
Goggins specifically didn’t like when the reporter allegedly compared his teeth to Wood’s, saying, “What he was insinuating, it was so disgusting. It was so appalling. I was flabbergasted. And I said, ‘F**** mate, wow. I think we’re done here.’”
As for that Instagram unfollow?
“I think it’s such a comment on where we’re at culturally. Why is everyone obsessing over Instagram? That is irrelevant. We don’t give a s****about Instagram,” Wood noted. “Why not have conversations about the story and Rick and Chelsea and enjoy it?”
Elsewhere in the interview, the outlet noted that Goggins began to cry while discussing his character Rick’s journey with Chelsea, played by Wood.
“My catharsis in this experience was different than other people’s, because of my history in this place. I knew what we had gone through, and I knew how close that we had gotten, and I needed to begin to process saying goodbye to Rick and Chelsea,” he recalled. “And I knew that that was going to take a while for me, so I let her know, this is what I’ve gotta do. And she was extremely supportive about that.”
Goggins admitted he “needed to just back away from everyone” after filming wrapping, adding, “I haven’t spoken to anyone. I couldn’t handle it. Judge me or don’t. I don’t give a f*** what you think. This is my process. Rick means everything to me, and Chelsea means everything to me. And so that’s what I needed to do for me to process all of this.”
After answering the question, Goggins followed wood during the joint interview. “It’s all so ridiculous,” he replied. “It’s just a part of me just saying goodbye to this character so that now Aimee and I will be friends for f***ing ever.”
Goggins and Wood wrapped up the conversation by revealing a love scene they filmed — that was ultimately cut.
“We designed the whole journey, even down to the fact that Chelsea gets on Rick in the first [love] scene. Then in the last episode, it was Rick picking Chelsea up. It was so, so delicate,” Wood detailed. “The last one [sex scenes] was two people who were free. It was this very long, suspended moment of these two people looking at each other. It was so powerful.”
Goggins jokingly yelled a message for creator Mike White, saying, “F*** you, Mike! We want a director’s cut!”
