Walton Goggins has finally stepped fully into the spotlight – but fame, it turns out, casts long and complicated shadows.
Having starred in over 50 films and countless TV shows, Goggins used to be one of those actors audiences recognised but couldn’t quite place. ‘Wasn’t that guy in that thing I liked?’ they’d ask, trying to connect the dots between The Shield, Justified, Vice Principals, or one of a dozen other standout performances.
Now, thanks to his fatal turn in The White Lotus and his portrayal of Fallout’s villainous Bounty Hunter, The Ghoul, people aren’t just recognising Walton, they’re seeking him out. ‘I just never wanted to be known for one thing,’ he tells Metro from his Architectural Digest-famous US home, shrugging off his newfound notoriety. ‘I just keep moving.’
But on the back of this promotion to the A-list has come intense media scrutiny, most notably surrounding his supposed ‘falling out’ with co-star Aimee Lou Wood.
But tabloid headlines aside, it’s worth noting for the uninitiated that he didn’t only recently become a household name because he isn’t memorable – it’s that his characters are so memorable. At 53, Goggins’ oversized smile and haunted, poet’s eyes should make him instantly recognisable; yet, he’s the rare actor who completely disappears into the roles he takes on.
And when you meet Goggins, it feels evident that he prefers it that way, and one gets a sense that he’s not the kind of man who wants to be known intimately by millions of strangers.
(Picture: Matt Baron/Shutterstock)
Wearing an expensive-looking cardigan and statement glasses, a piece of striking modern art prominently in the background of our video call, Walton has an air of calculated nonchalance and LA refinement that’s miles away from the frenetic, Southern characters he often plays.
With barely a trace of the Georgia accent he says got him ‘pigeonholed’ in his early career, he takes pains to use my first name repeatedly, and his white-barricade of teeth is on full and frequent display. Still, his charm feels carefully crafted – the media-trained persona of someone more comfortable with a character to hide behind.
But, as it turns out, if you’re looking for hints about who Walton Goggins really is, his recent characters do contain some hints.
Reflecting on the spiritually troubled revenge-seeking spa guest he plays in The White Lotus, he says: ‘Rick Hatchett, the person that I’m playing right now, has always been a part of me. It’s probably closer to me than a lot of things in my life, certainly closer to certain aspects of my personality.’
When discussing the kinds of parts he gravitates towards, and how they’re becoming more personal as the years go by, he says: ‘I’ve never tried to dictate the flow of my river, I just take it kind of as it comes.’
He continues: ‘You know, every time I go to work, I feel the need to service whatever person I’m playing and wherever they’re from, in a sense.’
While this kind of cerebral, self-serious talk would seem pretentious coming from most celebrities, Goggins manages to come off not only as sincere but downright enlightened – for a heartbeat, I’m genuinely tempted to thank him for his service.
When asked if he considers himself a character actor, he insists that he truly sees no difference between playing an undead, radioactive gunslinger and one-half of an Evangelical Christian song-and-dance duo. At my raised eyebrow, he only doubles down harder.
‘They’re real people that exist in the world,’ he says of any role. ‘I feel like Lee Russell [his character on Vice Principals], lives in Charleston, South Carolina, for example…if a character is big, it was only because that was what the auteur was setting out to do, and that’s what the story was asking for. And the same thing with, you know.. I guess being a leading man or being small, at the end of the day, they’re the same.’
Eventually, after some prodding and more raised eyebrows, he is willing to admit he sees some difference between acting roles, generally.
‘The opportunities that I wanted in film, I wasn’t going to get. You’re not going to hire me to be 007, that’s never going to happen. You’re not going to hire me to be Bourne Identity. You’re going to hire Matt Damon. But all of those opportunities that I didn’t have in film, I’ve had in television,’ he explains. Still, he insists: ‘But I don’t look at my career or opportunities as leading man vs. characters.’
Walton Goggins stars in The Uninvited – directed by his wife Nadia Conners
But for a man known for disappearing into roles, his latest project marks his starkest departure yet – and could offer the clearest glimpse into the inner life of Walton Goggins: he’s playing himself.
His newest film, The Uninvited, is the directorial debut of his wife, Nadia Conners, and is loosely based on a surreal real-life encounter the couple had at a party at their house in LA. Goggins plays Sammy, who his wife based on him.
When an elderly woman experiencing lapses in her memory mistook Goggins’ and Conner’s home, which she had lived in years earlier, for her current residence on the night of what Goggins describes as ‘a very, very important party for me,’ the resulting conversation had a profound effect on Conners.
‘She just walked her through her memory of this space,’ Goggins recalls of the night in question. ‘It greatly affected my wife and her journey in this world, and she decided to weave this story out of that chance encounter.’
Goggins recalled how emotionally overwhelmed he was reading the first draft, written initially as a play, on a flight. ‘I remember weeping almost uncontrollably,’ he said. ‘I texted her: “Oh my God, baby, you did it.”’
He was so moved, in fact, he initially resisted starring in the project. ‘I said, “No, I can’t. Absolutely not. You don’t want me to play Sammy.”’
But Conners insisted: ‘“It’s your energy that I really, really want.”’ What followed was a collaboration that pushed the couple to confront their marriage – and transcend it, creatively.
They worked alongside ‘friends of the family,’ co-stars Elizabeth Reaser, Rufus Sewell, and Pedro Pascal, which eased some of the burden, but Goggins admits: ‘There was a lot of anxiety. I just didn’t want to let my wife down.’
He describes the experience with the kind of careful articulation one can tell is habitual for the actor: ‘It was letting go of my ego and, you know, taking direction from my wife and talking back to her as the actor that I am, the artist that I am. So we needed to take our marriage and put it over here and just speak to each other as professionals and agree, and then agree to disagree sometimes.’
The film, while deeply personal, also touches on a broader and often underexplored theme in Hollywood: aging, especially how it’s experienced differently by men and women.
Goggins doesn’t claim to understand the female experience directly, but he’s spent a lifetime observing it, first in his hometown of Lithia Springs, Georgia. ‘I was raised by women. I saw what all of the women in my life went through at different stages of their lives.’
Reiterating that while he can never know what it feels like to be a woman in Hollywood, Goggins, can relate to what it feels like to be limited by the industry: ‘When I started I was a stereotyped. I was put in a box and expected to play these characters that were from my part of the country, from the South, and these characters were relegated to these very kind of narrow world views.’
He continues, reflecting on how having the time to grow into his career allowed him to escape that box: ‘It was on the other side of that – just continuing to go to work and enjoy the process and do the best work that I can – that eventually I was able get out of that. So I do believe that men age into their careers over time, and I think that is much harder for women. The roles really aren’t there.
‘And I think that’s why I was so blown away by what my wife did. She really wrote these three unbelievable female roles for these women to play. Ava is the young ingenue, and Elizabeth as this actress who got too old and was put on the shelf. And then Lois Smith, you know, this wise sage.’
Indeed, it’s the powerhouse performances by the women in The Uninvited that allow for one of the film’s most memorable moments: An intimate exchange between Goggins’ character and co-star Elizabeth Reaser’s character on a quiet street. It’s a subtle gut-punch of a scene punctuated by the line, ‘I was lonely,’ delivered by Goggins with such impact a viewer can’t help but feel the full weight of the film all at once.
Quick to brush off praise for his own performance, Goggins says Reaser was a revelation to work with. ‘It was as if we had been married for 10 or 12 years,’ he says. ‘There was just ease.’
It seems the whole cast was handpicked out of the couple’s family friends, who the actor describes as: ‘Deep feeling, deep thinking people. And Pedro Pascal, obviously, is a dear friend of ours, and it was just all effortless. There was no one in this cast that it wasn’t easy to work with.’
He then laughingly recalls pitching the film to Rufus Sewell: ‘You know, worst case scenario, we’ll just have fun pretending like we’re doing cocaine.’
Goggins is referencing a party sequence in which his and Sewell’s characters do drugs.
Asked about the secret to acting like you’re on cocaine, he jokes, ‘Yes, you do cocaine and film yourself doing cocaine!’ before once again returning to what – by this point in the interview – has become a familiar theme: ‘You just turn yourself over to the imaginary circumstances and don’t play the idea of something.’
With The Uninvited sure to make waves soon, Goggins has a massive year still in front of him after coming off a year of success. He teases that the final season of The Righteous Gemstones may include ‘the summer song of 2025’ from Baby Billy, and Fallout season two is already pushing boundaries.
(Picture: Prime Video)
‘I’ll just say that Fallout, you know, we’re deep in it right now. And I thought season one was exceptional. I’m not talking about my work, I’m talking about all of the people involved, but this year is something like I’ve never seen, really. How subversive it is, and what it has to say about the world in which we’re living right now, with humour. I’m really proud of it. I just have to get to the end of it.’
For someone whose work feels more like a religion than a job, the future is something to be met with zen-like acceptance. Goggins isn’t too concerned about maintaining the momentum 2025 has brought: ‘I didn’t know where my life was going before Fallout. I didn’t know before White Lotus. And I suppose, at my age, that’s the best place to be: comfortable in the unknown.’”
Walton Goggins may remain something of a mystery, but fans can catch glimpses of the man behind all the masks – one character at a time.
The Uninvited is in cinemas on May 9, click here for more information.
Instagram: @theuninvitedfilm
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