Walton Goggins repeatedly refused to answer questions about the status of his friendship with Aimee Lou Wood in a recently published interview.
However, rather than putting to bed the rumors of the speculated rift between the “White Lotus” costars, Goggins’s terse responses have fueled curiosity about what actually occurred between the actors.
In the Thailand-set third season of the critically acclaimed HBO series, Goggins, 53, played Rick, the love interest of 31-year-old Wood’s character, Chelsea. The mismatched lovers died in the explosive season finale, which aired on April 7. Shortly after, rumors of a falling out between the two actors began circulating.
When asked during an interview with the Times of London about whether he and Wood had indeed fallen out, Goggins responded: “I’m not gonna have that conversation.”
Goggins was being interviewed to promote his latest film, “The Uninvited,” which was written and directed by his wife of 13 years, Nadia Conners. Throughout the conversation with Ed Potton, the journalist for the Times, Goggins sidestepped several questions about his British “White Lotus” costar.
The article said two publicists present intervened after Potton asked the first question related to Goggins’s professional and personal relationship with Wood.
The first told Potton: “We’re not going there, thank you.” The other said: “Next question.”
Later, the interviewer brought up Goggins’s forthcoming appearance on “Saturday Night Live” and the NBC show’s recent “White Potus” parody sketch, which poked fun at Trump and his inner circle, but also uncharitably mocked Wood’s appearance and accent.
The article said that Goggins wouldn’t discuss the topic and didn’t respond when asked whether audiences could see him and Wood reunite on the “SNL” sound stage when he hosts the show on May 10. (The interviewer referenced comments from CNN journalist Elizabeth Wagmeister, who said that “there is something professionally that they are doing in the coming weeks together.”)
At that point, one of the publicists interjected again to steer the conversation back to Goggins’s movie. When the interviewer faltered on a question, Goggins acknowledged that the movie was the thing he was “least interested in.”
The interviewer attempted to ask a question about Wood again. Without specifying the nature of the question, the article states that Goggins responded: “There is no conversation to be had about that. Sharing politics on social media — it’s in a vacuum.”
Before the interview concluded, the interviewer brought up Wood again — seemingly for the fourth time. “What the f***, Ed!” Goggins said. “Come on buddy. Wow.”
“We’re going to end it there,” one of the publicists said, wrapping up the interview.
Goggins did speak about Wood once during the interview while discussing his character arc on “The White Lotus.” He said his character was “incapable of seeing the love that he needed was right there in front of him,” while Wood, as Chelsea, “is just a beautiful light in the world and was capable of conveying that.”
Fans of the show began suspecting that the two stars had fallen out after noticing that they had stopped following each other on Instagram sometime between filming together in Thailand and the airdate of the season three finale.
Their costar, Jason Isaacs said there were “tensions and difficulties” on the set of the show in an interview with the Guardian. “There were alliances that formed and broke, romances that formed and broke, friendships that formed and broke,” he said in February.
In a March interview with The Guardian, Wood herself described working on the show as similar to “a social experiment.”
Representatives for Goggins and Wood did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider outside regular working hours.
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