Walton Goggins and Danny McBride on Nervous Breakdowns and Spiritual Awakenings

Walton Goggins is a searcher. On-screen or in life, he’s always chasing something—truth, connection, the perfect story. From Boyd Crowder’s ruthless charisma in Justified to Venus Van Dam’s raw vulnerability in Sons of Anarchy, Goggins has built a career on exploring the uncharted depths of his characters. Recently, the 53-year-old Alabama native has found a creative home alongside Danny McBride, delivering outrageous performances in the HBO comedies Vice Principals as the conniving Lee Russell and The Righteous Gemstones as the wild-eyed grifter Baby Billy Freeman. Now, Goggins is bringing his offbeat charm to Mike White’s sun-soaked, morally tangled universe in season three of The White Lotus—an experience, he tells McBride, that defied all expectations.

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THURSDAY 2 PM JAN. 9, 2025 LA

WALTON GOGGINS: Oh my god. You showed, man!

DANNY McBRIDE: Are you talking shit about me in here? Should I put a different voice on or something?

GOGGINS: Preferably a British accent, so it sounds like you know what the fuck you’re talking about.

McBRIDE: I can do it. I’ve never had to pre-plan talking to you before, but I did a little bit of research. First question, how much is that watch? That’s that Fallout money, isn’t it?

GOGGINS: [Laughs] It’s all that Righteous Gemstones money, man!

McBRIDE: That’s it. Well, Walton, I’m excited for people to see what you’ve been working on. This is a broad question, but we’re getting older. What have you not done that you really hope you get a chance to do before this is all said and done?

GOGGINS: Wow, I’ve been thinking about that question a lot lately. The answer would’ve been different in my twenties and thirties and forties, and we’ve talked about it outside of this conversation a little bit. I’ve got four more years, if we’re lucky, with our child getting out of high school and going—

McBRIDE: Oh, shit! I thought you were saying you had four more years to live. I was like, “What is this?”

GOGGINS: [Laughs] I just got the diagnosis this morning, man. I didn’t want to break it to you this way. But yeah buddy, it’s not looking good.

McBRIDE: [Laughs]

GOGGINS: I don’t know, man. I think there’s another chapter to my life and it involves storytelling on some level, but in a diminished capacity. I want to streamline my life after my son goes to college, and set up someplace for a few months out of the year—in Europe, or rent a cheap apartment on Hydra or insert little island here—and I want to spend even more quality time with my friends, my son, my wife, and with myself. I want to drink coffee in the morning, go for a big swim, start drinking at 3 in the afternoon, be done by 8, read a book and go to bed. Maybe learn another language. I don’t know.

McBRIDE: Enjoy your life, dude. Don’t worry about learning another language. You’ll never be able to do it. I know your mental capacity.

GOGGINS: [Laughs] Thank you for letting me off that hook.

McBRIDE: I get that though, Walton. Me and you often talk about how fast all this is moving, and how quickly our kids are growing up, and how it makes us feel. So as that time becomes more precious, what do you feel like it would take to get you out? Do you think it’s a character at this point? Is it a director? Is it a script? What would motivate you to leave your home and go somewhere and bring a character to life?

GOGGINS: Do you work for 60 Minutes? What the fuck?

McBRIDE: I’m auditioning to do a podcast. I hear those things are popular. [Laughs]

GOGGINS: Okay, lovely. You said what would it take to get me out? Honestly, I could do it now, but I have commitments and I’m really enjoying what I’m doing. I’ve worked with a lot of my heroes, you being one of them. I’ve had the opportunity to tell stories that are very personal to me and I’m fulfilled on that level. I know there are stories that I’m going to come across where it’s like, “Well, I got to tell that,” but outside of fiduciary, monetary responsibilities and raising our child, I could do that for an undefined amount of time or maybe for the rest of my life, man.

McBRIDE: What I’m always curious about with you is, we barely knew each other. We met briefly multiple times, and when I sent you the script of Vice Principals to play Lee Russell, you got back to me pretty quick, and I still remember that phone call. You were already talking like him. You had already formulated that character. And I was just curious, with these characters, what jumps out for you?

GOGGINS: It’s a number of things. I’ll take Vice Principals for instance, because as people know, I did read for you for Eastbound & Down, and that was the first time I said your words in front of you. But I knew you well enough to know that, okay, you’ve offered me this opportunity, but I need for you to at least feel good on the other side of this phone call, like, “Okay, I can work with what he’s going to do, but I know he is going to do more than what he just gave me over this 15-minute phone call.” But with everything that I’ve done over the course of my career, it was apparent to me on the page. It was effortless in the sense that it’s like, I understand exactly who this person is. I don’t labor over, “Does he talk this way? Does he move this way?” Those are all character choices and I don’t subscribe to that method of acting. I don’t even believe in acting, I believe in storytelling. I’ve been consumed with story for the better part of my life, so I know how to read a story. I read it the very first time, and then it’s just a matter of reading it again and again, and becoming more and more specific.

McBRIDE: I play that phone call back to this day, because I was so apprehensive about what we were following Eastbound up with, and I just knew I needed an ally, and there was something about that moment when you were on the phone and we were talking that I knew I had met a partner. You’re my favorite sort of actor: You understand how to make people laugh, but it’s never at the expense of making the character human or relatable.

GOGGINS: Man, thank you so much for saying that.

McBRIDE: Now, The White Lotus was filmed in Thailand. I’ve traveled with you before. We spent some time in Italy and you had a vibe there. You looked like you were walking off of a Fellini film. You rocked [Ennio] Morricone as you cruised your rental car through the dusty roads of Sicily. What was your vibe in Thailand?

GOGGINS: I dressed like an Italian and I listened to Morricone.

McBRIDE: [Laughs] You didn’t change it up?

GOGGINS: No, man. When we began having these conversations, the first thing that Mike [White] said was, “I don’t know who your character is, so I leave it to you to figure it out.” Same thing with Alex [Bovaird], our costume designer. I just started thinking about it, and it’s a version of Hunter S. Thompson crossed with Jimmy Woods in Salvador.

McBRIDE: Of course.

GOGGINS: Yeah. It was kind of a cross between those two guys. I can’t go into it too much, but he’s an interloper in this world, a person who spent a fair amount of his life on the road. He’s got a passport that is well used and his clothes should reflect that, and the watch that he wears, the lighter that he uses, should represent affluence on one level, but he could never afford to replace them if he lost them. It’s this kind of effortlessly elegant traveler, and while I’m incapable of pulling that off, I’ve seen other people move through countries in that way.

McBRIDE: You’re across the world, you’re staying in a hotel that you’re filming the show in. Do the lines get blurred? What was that experience of you all living where you shot and everyone being there together?

GOGGINS: That’s a great question. I think everybody experienced their own version of Apocalypse Now.

McBRIDE: [Laughs]

GOGGINS: It was surreal. I didn’t anticipate how unenjoyable it would be to live where you worked. I understood the convenience of it all, and I thought, “We’re staying and filming in a five-star hotel. Wow. How cool is it just to roll out of bed?” But when you’re not working, somebody else is working, and you can see those lights on in various villas around the property. And for me, that’s not a good thing. There was no separation between your civilian life and your work life. When I’m working, I like to be in the thick of it, and because of the way they have to film this experience, so much of it, you’re not, yet you can’t really leave and go anywhere. I don’t think any of us totally anticipated the social aspect of this experience, which is a part of being sequestered in a hotel together for a very long period of time. It was fucking crazy. And this is me—I’m my own guy. I am a social loner, and I’m trying to think how to say this, but it would vacillate between “I want to be around everyone” and “I want to be around no one,” then all of a sudden, because we had breakfast, lunch, and dinner together, you would ask yourself, “Why isn’t anyone inviting me to anything?”

McBRIDE: [Laughs] It’s because you were dressed like an Italian gangster, rocking Morricone. They didn’t understand where you were in your head.

GOGGINS: And then you would get invited to the party and then you were at the party and then all of a sudden you just got up and fucking left with no explanation. So it was really strange. And then the subject matter itself—look, it’s all an existential crisis with Mike White. He does it as well, if not better, than anyone, and this particular journey that I was on wasn’t easy for me mentally, so I didn’t know how to interface with the people that I was working with in a social conversation that doesn’t have consequences. I’m not good at just banter.

McBRIDE: Yeah, you’ve never been good at bantering, I’ve noticed that. I wanted to say that to you before, but I’ve never wanted you to get in your own head. [Laughs]

GOGGINS: [Laughs] And now it’s on record!

McBRIDE: The White Lotus is obviously one of my favorite shows out there. Everyone loves that show. Is there something that’s extra difficult about stepping into something that’s in its third season, that you haven’t been a part of, but you know that the audience is hungry for?

GOGGINS: Yeah, that was a big underlying factor for everybody. It’s like, this is the first time, and yet this is the junior year of this show, and you don’t want to be the person that fucks it up. So all of a sudden you have this pressure because people are going to watch it. I’ve never really had that experience before where the audience was taken into consideration, because I too am a really big fan of it. Look, man. Showing up for season four of The Righteous Gemstones, I want to vomit the night before we get there. And you know about my first day back, what happened this particular season. We don’t need to say that for this interview, but I mean, I had a fucking nervous breakdown.

McBRIDE: I cut it out of the show. [Laughs]

GOGGINS: [Laughs] But no, for The White Lotus, I think we were all suffering from an inordinate amount of insecurity because we didn’t want to let the people that we were working with down, and we didn’t want to let Mike down, and we didn’t want to be crucified in the press.

McBRIDE: [Laughs]

GOGGINS: No one really said it because they didn’t want to come off that way, but whenever we were in our rooms, that was something, at least for a moment, that was being felt by everybody. And then that kind of wears off and you realize, “No man, I’m just there to experience this story with truth and authenticity.” Once that kind of set in, I think everybody just calmed down and went to work.

McBRIDE: That’s what you have to do. This was one that HBO marketing had given me, so if you don’t want to answer it, you don’t have to. Did you learn how to shoot a ping-pong ball out of your pussy in Thailand?

GOGGINS: [Laughs] No, I didn’t, but my son did, and I watched him.

McBRIDE: [Laughs] He is so talented.

GOGGINS: It was very strange, but I said, “Okay. Sure, man.” [Laughs] You know what? It’s so strange on so many levels going there. There was one particular day when I was alone in Bangkok, and I found a super cool place to have dinner that became a regular spot for us, and I had a couple of whiskey sours, and then I just thought, “Fuck it, man. I’m going to go to the debaucherous road. I’m going to see that, I’m going to play with that.” It isn’t my first time doing shit like that. I’ve been traveling in other countries by myself for years. But when I was in Thailand 18 years ago, I didn’t give myself permission to do this because I was in a much different place. So I thought, “Fuck it. I’m going to see it all.” And with a nice buzz, as I got out of the taxi, ready for whatever comes my way, I got a phone call from my manager saying, “Congratulations.” And I said, “For what?” And she said, “You just got nominated for an Emmy,” which was an extraordinary experience, and it probably kept me out of jail. [Laughs]

McBRIDE: You’re like, “You know what? I’m good. I’ve seen enough. I’m going to go home and celebrate.” I love it. You talked a little bit earlier about how it’s not your first time in Thailand. I don’t know how much people know about your journey or what might’ve brought you to Thailand back in the day, but how was it for you to go back? How do we frame this conversation?

GOGGINS: I went to Thailand 18 years ago in the midst of a personal trauma that sent me on a three-year odyssey of finding meaning in my life. I’ve been seeking, if you will, enlightenment or spirituality. I’ve been on that path for a very long time. My mom’s been on that path for a long time. She had me reading these esoteric books from the time I was like 13, 14 years old, and introduced me to a number of faiths early in my life, both traditional and extremely alternative. And then over the course of a 10-year run, I’ve found what it is that I’m looking for. And it’s interesting because this magazine posed the question, “Do you believe in spirituality as it ties into The White Lotus?” And I was thinking about that question, not knowing if you would ask it, but I thought it heavily depends on what you consider to be spirituality. Is it finding god? Happiness? What does happiness even fucking mean? And for me, at the end of, and I’m not at the end—

McBRIDE: Well, you said four years, so I don’t know, maybe this is the last act.

GOGGINS: [Laughs] But what has brought me an extraordinary amount of peace in my life is when I finally fell in love with myself. Genuinely, I think that is the path of all spirituality. You can say it’s about finding god, but when you find your god you’re still going to have to face yourself. And either you’re going to cross that Rubicon or you’re not, but that in and of itself is a theology. The moment where I finally loved myself in a way that I could actually forgive myself and forgive the people in my life that may have caused me trauma and have that currency going forward to forgive and have compassion and empathy for other people—that is, I think, spirituality in a nutshell.

McBRIDE: That’s beautiful, Walton, good lord. Now I feel guilty about asking you the ping-pong in the pussy question.

GOGGINS: [Laughs] HBO wanted you to ask that question, and I appreciate it.

McBRIDE: You’re 53. When you go onto a set now and you look around and your castmates are in their early twenties, is that hard? Does it take you by surprise when you start doing the math of how long you’ve been doing this?

GOGGINS: I think there was delineation numerically speaking, for sure. When you’re the young buck, you think, “Well, going forward, I’m only going to do movies with all the heroes that are much older than me.” But yeah, there’s some isolation there. There’s some irrelevance for sure. But I did have other con-temporaries on this experience that made it sweeter. The glasses of wine and the long, rambling, intimate conversations about our own existential crises. But yeah, it is weird being older and working. But you know what? There is a calm that comes over me when I start, and once I get into a story, as painful as it might be for me, I’m having a really good time between “action” and “cut.”

McBRIDE: That’s why I was curious about the age stuff. I know for me, I’ve met a lot more people who tell me, “I grew up watching you.” I remember the first time that happened, my brain was like… I don’t have any illusions about how old I am, but I think when you’re trying to get into this industry, your mindset is so much of, “I got to make it work, I got to make my mark, I got to do my thing,” and you spend so much time in that mindset, that sometimes years go by and then all of a sudden a light goes off and you’re like, “Oh, I’ve done it. I’ve been here, and now there’s new people doing it.” I find it exciting.

GOGGINS: It is exciting. I never thought about being in the limelight or being out of the limelight. I thought about finding good material or just being excited about reading good material, and then wanting to participate in that story and be on a journey with people that I didn’t know would become friends for a lifetime. So it is kind of nice to be on the other side of that. And we’re not old, by the way.

McBRIDE: I know we’re not. I’m old in spirit. You think the film industry is going to collapse in our lifetime?

GOGGINS: Oh, god. I don’t think so. You would know more about it than I do because you have dedicated your life to creating material. I just say fucking lines. I think that story has been with us from the very beginning, and maybe this format changes; maybe there’s a different way of delivering this information, doing a show about a post-apoca-lyptic world and living in that mindset genuinely; maybe it just goes back to small groups of people making each other laugh and cry after a fucking hunt, if there’s nothing left.

McBRIDE: I wouldn’t mind that. Can I be in your group?

GOGGINS: You’d be the first person I’d pick to be on my team. You’re the funniest person I know. Well, thank you for spending this time, buddy. I know that life is very busy and we’ve been friends for a long time now. I still can’t believe that I can say Danny McBride is my buddy. So thank you very much for showing up here and asking these questions. I know you really have no interest in what I’m doing at all. So for you, this is a lot of work.

McBRIDE: I’ve learned a lot. I didn’t even know you did stuff outside of Gemstones.

GOGGINS: [Laughs] Alright, brother, I love you.

McBRIDE: Love you too, Walton. Good luck, bud.

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Grooming: Sebastian Scolarici at Tracey Mattingly Agency

Fashion Assistant: Nicholson Baird

Location: Parkside Lounge