The White Lotus stars Walton Goggins and Aimee Lou Wood have reunited in an aggressive attempt to finally put rumors of an ongoing “feud” between them to bed.
In a new interview for Variety released Wednesday from an interview conducted on May 3, Goggins and Wood were resolute that “there is no feud.”
Goggins unfollowing Wood on Instagram soon after filming the show’s third season sparked the initial feud rumors, but the actor is now attempting to explain why he did it. “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,” Goggins said.
“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,” he continued. He called the assumptions about the online move “ridiculous,” as he always cuts some ties with co-stars to “process” the experience after a project. “I let her know, this is what I’ve gotta do. And she was extremely supportive about that.”
The fictional couple had become so close off-screen during filming, as shown in their Instagram posts together at the time, that rumors of beef after the unfollow also accompanied rumors of an affair. Neither rumor has any founding, the two actors said, even as it pertains to Goggins and his other co-stars. He explained why he was absent from many of the post-season cast hangouts. “I haven’t spoken to anyone,” he said.
“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,” he said.
As for why she never addressed the rumors, which continued to grow louder and louder even after Goggins had an unpleasant encounter with a Times reporter, Wood said, “Eventually I just started to sit back and watch these people making something out of absolutely nothing.”
Something was certainly made. When Goggins insisted on not discussing the rumors with The New York Times, the actor was taken aback by the response he got from his interviewer, he told Variety. “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.” He didn’t want to get into it at the time because Wood wasn’t there, he said. “What am I gonna do, speak for both of us? Never.”
The rumor mill only churned harder after Goggins appeared to praise the Saturday Night Live sketch mocking Wood’s teeth and intelligence. Wood slammed the “misogynistic” sketch again in the interview. “I know for a fact a man wrote that,” she said.
For his part, Goggins told Variety he was half asleep and heading into makeup to become The Fallout‘s “Ghoul” when he complimented Jon Hamm’s impression of him in the taped sketch. He didn’t see Wood’s reaction online until hours later, after which he deleted the post.
“I’ve been posting for 14 f---ing years, and if I’m gonna say something, I’m gonna say it to your face,” he said Wednesday, adding he’d never “make a vicious swipe against my friend.”
To make his his affection for his former co-star as clear as possible, Goggins gushed, “I adore, I love this woman madly, and she is so important to me... 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.”
With that, he concluded, “Hopefully that answers everybody’s questions.”
