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“There Is No Version of Those Familiar Sexual Tropes That Were Applicable to This Particular Coupling”: ‘The White Lotus’ Walton Goggins on Rick and Chelsea’s Deep Connection

February 26, 2025

[Editor’s note: The following contains some spoilers for The White Lotus.]

Summary

In Season 3 of the HBO series ‘The White Lotus,’ the deep connection between Rick and Chelsea transcends age and trivial concerns, and is instead focused on their timeless love.
Walton Goggins and Aimee Lou Wood wanted the intimacy in their sex scene to transcend cliches.
Chelsea urges Rick to communicate, which seems to be something he has great difficulty with.

From writer/director Mike White, the eight-episode third season of the HBO series The White Lotus is set at an exclusive Thai resort, where rest, relaxation and pampering are plentiful. Two of the guests include Rick Hatchett (Walton Goggins) and his free-spirited much younger girlfriend Chelsea (Aimee Lou Wood), who is much more excited to be on their current trip than her boyfriend. While the deep connection they share has gotten them to this moment, the fact that Rick has been distracted since they arrived has frustrated Chelsea and made her wonder what’s really going on with him.

During this one-on-one interview with Collider, Goggins talked about what has led Rick to this moment with his girlfriend, the fact that he’s keeping his true intentions from Chelsea, their timeless love for each other, working out the sex scene with White and their intimacy coordinator, wanting to transcend their connection, and the difference we’ll see in Rick, as he continues to evolve this season.

‘The White Lotus’ Walton Goggins Believes the Love Between Rick and Chelsea is Timeless

“They connect on a very deep level, in a place where there are no words.”

Collider: I want to talk about the relationship between Rick and Chelsea, just because I feel like there’s a lot to take in there. Your season is really split into your time with Chelsea, and then when Rick is apart from her. What was it like to figure out where to start with that?

WALTON GOGGINS: You’re meeting Rick and Chelsea at a point in Rick’s life where he has read this article about a person who greatly altered his life. He’s the only person that comes into this story whose motivations for being there you don’t understand. He’s not there on vacation. His intentions are very specific, but it’s not revealed until episode four. Not even Chelsea really knows why he’s there or what he’s going through. But it’s not like they haven’t had incredible times. They’ve been traveling together for a few years now. They’ve been hanging out, the way that people that travel the world hang out with each other. I believe that, as gruff as he is, that may be how the mornings start because he’s so deeply entrenched in his own trauma and what it is that he has to do. But by the end of each day, there is this deep level of intimacy and love and kindness. The time that Aimee [Lou Wood] and I had to really show that side of him, that was our intention and that’s what we tried to do. Their love is timeless and they connect on a very deep level, in a place where there are no words.

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When Rick and Chelsea are together at the resort, we keep hearing about their age difference and his hairline.

GOGGINS: That’s bullshit. That’s just a silly distraction, honestly. It’s funny, but age has nothing to do with it when there’s a deep, soulful connection. These are two people that are extremely attracted to each other, and whether the audience sees it or not, they are deeply connected to each other, even if people don’t fully understand it.

Walton Goggins and Aimee Lou Wood Wanted To Transcend Tropes With Their ‘White Lotus’ Sex Scene

“It was so tender, with love and understanding.”

Walton Goggins as Rick in bad with Aimee Lou Wood as Chelsea sitting on his lap in The White Lotus Season 3 — Image via HBO

The sex scene is an important moment between them because we get to see their connection. Were there a lot of conversation about that, between the two of you?

GOGGINS: There were conversations between the two of us. There are moments when this happens, not in the act of making love, but intimacy and deep connection. We wanted that progression of the story to be told physically, in the way that they kiss and the way that they touch each other. So, we talked at length about that. We’ve seen sex scenes on The White Lotus for two seasons now. There is no version of those familiar sexual tropes that were applicable to this particular coupling. It was like, “Okay, how do we transcend that? How do we transcend sex in a normal way? How do we make it about looking so deep into the other person that I have you, and we can convey that to the audience?” It was so tender, with love and understanding. That’s what we wanted to accomplish, and that’s what we talked to Mike [White] and our intimacy coordinator about. You’ll see it as it progresses. It’s a deep, very present intimate connection.

Aimee Lou Wood as Chelsea in The White Lotus Season 3

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Chelsea has been begging Rick to communicate with her, and that seems like the first time that they’re actually really connected. There’s a real storytelling to that scene.

GOGGINS: That’s just the way that they end their days. Hopefully, by the end of it, the audience will come to really like Rick and understand and empathize with his pain. That, certainly, is part and parcel of a number of characters that I’ve played over the course of my career. These people that have lived this life, that have been on the fringes of society, are incapable of connecting the way that you and I are connecting right here. Hopefully, once Rick is in a world that he is familiar with, when he meets his buddy Frank in Bangkok, this taciturn, quiet guy becomes verbose and becomes a regular guy because he gets to have what everybody else in the story has had and he’s been denied because he’s incapable of doing it with them. But when he’s with a fish that swims in the same pond, he understands him and they talk the way that everybody else talks in the show. This guy doesn’t say anything to anybody, but all of a sudden, he’s with a dear friend of his and he’s a different guy, just talking about the world differently. He’s just open.