Walton Goggins’ ‘Heartthrob Status Grew’ While Filming The White Lotus, And His Co-Star Shared Her A+ Take On Watching The Fallout Highlight Happen

Walton Goggins and Aimee Lou Wood showing up to The White Lotus in Season 3 Episode 1
(Image credit: Fabio Lovino/HBO)

Remember last year when Fallout came out? Walton Goggins had the internet blowing up over a “homeless radioactive cowboy with no nose” for the video game adaptation. Not even a year later, the actor is in one of the biggest shows on the 2025 TV schedule as the mysterious Rick Hatchett in White Lotus Season 3. When his White Lotus girlfriend Aimee Lou Wood was asked about his "heartthrob status,” she had an interesting perspective on working with him as Fallout was rolling out.

Aimee Lou Wood is just as much of a standout as Walton Goggins is on The White Lotus, as Rick’s partner Chelsea. While she’s just trying to have a fun vacation in Thailand with her man, there’s clearly something dark and sinister ahead for Rick. Here’s what Wood told Decider about working with the actor last year at the same time Fallout became a global hit on Amazon Prime:

I actually feel like Walton's heartthrob status grew. I think he was already a heartthrob, of course he is, and I thought he was already. But when Fallout came out and The Ghoul did weird things to people it got bigger. So whilst we were filming the heartthrob thing became more and more of a thing.

The White Lotus cast were shooting Season 3 for seven months between February and August. (As the cast told CinemaBlend, they spent most of their time at the very fancy Four Seasons resort alongside each other where they filmed.) As you may recall, Fallout premiered for those with an Amazon Prime subscription on April 10 of last year.

Walton Goggins on Fallout

(Image credit: Prime Video)

This meant that the cast got to be around as Walton Goggins was becoming even more famous for his role as The Ghoul on the series – which included a lot of thirsty fans. Wood also said this:

But yeah, I was saying, he had to be Rick to me. He couldn't be Walton Goggins, because if he was Walton Goggins I'd be sat there going 'I'm acting with Walton Goggins, and I'm freaking out.' So he was just Rick.

Aimee Lou Wood is having her own moment of gaining viral popularity right now, after getting to share tons of scenes with Walton Goggins in The White Lotus. Knowing how popular and loved the actor is, the actress could have let intimidation get to her, but she decided she needed to treat him like his character rather than let herself “freak” out.

Though, we’d think she would have been a lot more intimidated if she was working alongside The Ghoul, requiring the actor in hours of prosthetics – which at first took five hours before the makeup team got the process down to two hours. When the actor shot the role, he had told Variety it was “fucking hot” and it’d be “exhausting” at the end every day. Of course, we’ve heard Thailand was also steamy. That, or Walton Goggins officially heats up any room he’s in.

You can catch the latest episode of The White Lotus on HBO and with a Max subscription this Sunday.

Sarah El-Mahmoud
Staff Writer

Sarah El-Mahmoud has been with CinemaBlend since 2018 after graduating from Cal State Fullerton with a degree in Journalism. In college, she was the Managing Editor of the award-winning college paper, The Daily Titan, where she specialized in writing/editing long-form features, profiles and arts & entertainment coverage, including her first run-in with movie reporting, with a phone interview with Guillermo del Toro for Best Picture winner, The Shape of Water. Now she's into covering YA television and movies, and plenty of horror. Word webslinger. All her writing should be read in Sarah Connor’s Terminator 2 voice over.

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