With a look and range as versatile as his, it’s not a surprise that Walton Goggins has made it big on the Hollywood screen, but before he made a splash in series like Justified, The Righteous Gemstones and now, season 3 of The White Lotus, Goggins was a young actor scraping by running a valet service and working at an LA Fitness. If you’ve been lucky enough to catch one of the many series and films that line his resume, his Southern roots as an actor who grew up in Georgia often come through, whether it be through his accent or the part he’s bringing to life, and for Goggins, his origins had a great impact on his career.
Walton Goggins on his Southern roots
“I never appreciated my culture and my people until I moved out here away from it. All of a sudden, the things that I wanted to get away from became very important,” he told Garden & Gun. “My accent gave me an opportunity to sustain myself. At first, there were just roles playing dumb hicks. It’s no different than an Italian actor from New York who moves to Los Angeles— you’re going to play a mafioso. And if you’re from the South, you’re going to play a redneck. Those parts gave me enough free time to study.”
Though his roles that tie back to his Southern roots remain some of our absolute favorites, he’s proven his range goes far beyond his early typecast. His most recent gig has been on HBO’s The White Lotus as Rick Hatchett, a man traveling to Thailand with his girlfriend Chelsea (played by Aimee Lou Wood) whose motives have yet to be revealed. While we are anxiously anticipating what this season holds for him, this is certainly not his first small-screen rodeo.
Walton Goggins’s big break on ‘The Shield’
It was in 2002 when Goggins joined the cast of FX’s The Shield where he was a part of a division of the Los Angeles Police Department working to clean up a crime-ridden section of the city. “The very first episode they wanted to fire me—the higher-ups,” Goggins revealed to Business Insider. “Shawn Ryan, the creator of the show, said, ‘I just saw this kid in The Apostle,’ let me write an episode for him.’ And so episode number two was really kind of about my character. And [then] the brass saw it and were like, ‘He’s our guy.’” The series would pave the way for the countless roles that followed, one of his most significant being that of Boyd Crowder in Justified.
Walton Goggins goes Wild West in ‘Justified’
Goggins starred opposite Timothy Olyphant in this neo-western drama. Olyphant led the series as a deputy relocated to his hometown, where Goggins stars as his sometimes-friend, sometimes-enemy, expertly capturing the essence of a morally gray character.
Bringing to life Uncle Baby Billy
A partnership between Walton Goggins and Danny McBride first began when he brought to life the character of Lee Russell in McBride’s series Vice Principals, and the duo shared the screen once again when Goggins originated the role of Uncle Baby Billy on the HBO hit The Righteous Gemstones about a wealthy televangelist family. Alongside hotshots like John Goodman, Danny McBride, Edi Patterson and Adam DeVine, Goggins shines as the washed-up child star who is always chasing after his next payday, regardless of what he must do to achieve it.
“I looked at Baby Billy as a person who had just never had the opportunity to reach his full potential, and therefore he’s deeply insecure about his place in the world,” Goggins told GQ. “So he has a lot of bravado. I didn’t really think about him as a preacher, I didn’t think about him as anything other than a man who is supremely flawed. And, I just kind of came at it from that angle. And once you turn yourself over to an imaginary set of circumstances, and you put on a wig and makeup that makes you look 72 years old, it’s pretty easy to kind of slip into him. But that’s how I approach everything, really—from the inside out.”
Goggins heads to ‘The White Lotus’
With the new season of The White Lotus just recently kicking off, what’s in store for Goggins’ elusive character has yet to be revealed, but the actor is thrilled to be a part of such a gig.
“We’re guests checking into a hotel playing guests checking into a hotel. We spend all this time together, whether we like it or not, eating breakfast, lunch and dinner. We work where we stay. I went to a lot of the places where we’re filming now, the same streets and sandy beaches,” he told the LA Times. “I have come so far in my life and been healed on a number of levels. I am so grateful for this moment and the path I’ve been walking.”
See Goggins play Rick in the all-new season of The White Lotus, airing on HBO and releasing on Max on Sunday nights at 9 p.m. EST.
