Walton Goggins as Rick and Aimee Lou Wood as Chelsea in ‘The White Lotus’ season 3. Photo:
Fabio Lovino/HBO
Warning: This post contains spoilers for the season 3 finale of The White Lotus.
Aimee Lou Wood is not okay after that heartbreaking ending to Rick and Chelsea’s story.
The actress, along with costars including Leslie Bibb, Jason Isaacs, Patrick Schwarzenegger, Sarah Catherine Hook and Sam Nivola, debriefed the season 3 finale of The White Lotus on Sunday, April 6 in a panel moderated by Queer Eye‘s Tan France, and she admitted that the whole thing still feels “super weird.”
“For about two weeks before we shot it, I felt super weird. It was like this odd, ominous thing that was just hanging over us,” Wood, 31, said of the finale episode, which saw her character Chelsea and her boyfriend Rick (Walton Goggins) both die in a shootout that Rick started.
“It was so weird. But I didn’t expect it to feel like that for such a long time before,” she said of filming, considering she’d had read the script ahead of time. “And also, Chelsea doesn’t know what’s going to happen to her, but I know. So it’s this odd thing.”
Walton Goggins as Rick and Aimee Lou Wood as Chelsea in ‘The White Lotus’ season 3. Fabio Lovino/HBO
The Sex Education star said she and Goggins, 53, filmed the death scene on “the hottest day ever” and he “had to carry me so many times and it was so hard,” so how it looked onscreen was “exactly how it felt” for the actors, “which was really strange.”
“I think it’s not sunk in. There’s a lot in that episode that made me f—— sob. A lot.”
Wood admitted that she still feels “achy” from how her story — and the episode itself — ended. “I think, it’s a lot. And he’s so clever because at the end you want to hold the joy of the triumph and the sunglasses on and all that, but you’re still there like, ‘Eh…’ And so Mike [White] just makes you sit in that really achy place.”
After the episode aired, Goggins, who was not at Sunday’s cast panel in L.A., reflected on his and Wood’s journey in a lengthy Instagram post as he said he believes their characters’ had a “love story” despite what some viewers thought.
“It was only ever a love story, hindered by unresolved, childhood trauma. We all have them… but can we move past them. In the depths of our despair there is always beauty around us. If we can sit with our pain, just sit with it… not react… not be defined by it…It’s there… the love the world is constantly giving in any given moment is there. Always waiting for us to see it… Trust me I know,” he wrote.
Aimee Lou Wood as Chelsea and Walton Goggins as Rick in ‘The White Lotus’ season 3. Fabio Lovino/HBO
Goggins then thanked the show’s creator for his “imagination” and “tender heart” and thanked Wood “for being my partner” on what he called “a journey I will never forget.”
He also called out his friend Sam Rockwell, who surprised fans as he appeared in the season’s fifth episode as a friend of Rick’s, calling him “the best wingman a fella could ask for.”
“And every stellar f—— actor in this cast…. You’re just incredible to watch. Bernad, John, Ben, Kamine… and this whole crew. I love you. We’ll always have Thailand. And to all of you…thank you for going on this journey with us.”
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The season 3 finale of The White Lotus is now streaming on Max.
