Ep. 3: “The Meaning of Dreams” with Walton Goggins and Aimee Lou Wood

Speaker 1 In your stillness, be aware of your sensations.

Speaker 1 What do you feel?

Speaker 1 Look,

Speaker 2 you seem like a really nice lady, but this is not my thing.

Speaker 1 Underneath anger, there is always a sadness.

Speaker 1 Something we are grieving. What are you grieving?

Speaker 3 Hello, and welcome to the White Lotus Official Podcast Companion to Season 3. I'm Gia Talentino.

Speaker 1 And I'm Josh Biharman.

Speaker 3 And later on, we're going to be talking to our favorite couple, Rick and Chelsea, Walton Goggins, and Amy Lee Wood.

Speaker 3 Today, my question for you is, if you were a guest at the White Lotus,

Speaker 3 what would your sort of holistic goal be for the week? What kind of treatments would we be having?

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's an easy one.

Speaker 1 My wellness goal would be and is always

Speaker 1 to

Speaker 1 fight the monkey mind.

Speaker 1 Like the serenity aspect. Serenity is your goal.
So meditation, the stillness, I have a hard time. My mind's always racing.
So the monkey mind,

Speaker 1 although it seems like it would be hard at the White Lotus because the place is full of these like malevolent macaques wearing their fangs like off camera. But yeah, that would be my goal.

Speaker 3 So you would put your phone in the pouch?

Speaker 1 I'd put my phone in the pouch. Yeah.
Yes, I would. I'd take a deep breath and throw it right in the pouch.
Yeah. How about you?

Speaker 3 I mean, I need to quiet my mind. I would say that that is also a constant need in my own life.
No, but but I'm like, I'm coming here. I'm being like, my goals are external.

Speaker 3 I'm trying to do yoga twice a day.

Speaker 3 I'm trying to be on the beach and get a nice tan. Mostly, I would just try to be reading and talking to no one and quieting my monkey mind in that sense.

Speaker 3 But I don't think I'd really be able to embrace the spiritual journey. I'd be like, I'd be just like, oh, my child's not here.

Speaker 1 I'm going to read.

Speaker 1 Right, right. That's your own form of therapy, just having time to read a nice book.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 Okay, so episode three. The title is The Meaning of Dreams, as always, written and directed by Mike White.

Speaker 3 I loved the way this one started with the tsunami dream. Yeah, I thought it was gorgeous.

Speaker 1 I felt that too, where like it's an anxiety dream, but there's also something comforting about it. It's like, well, we're doomed, but we're together.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 1 That was like the atmospherics of the dream. And then when she wakes up, she relates it to the whole family as if she's not disturbed, right? It's up for the viewer.

Speaker 1 We know that this is a bad omen, you know, the tsunami, the coming tsunami, which is coming for them, but she doesn't realize it yet. So for her, it was actually maybe a dream of comfort.

Speaker 3 Well, she also, I liked how you saw how she's not entirely straightforward with either her family or herself. She was like, a really intense dream.

Speaker 1 And I was like, well, you walked into a tsunami.

Speaker 3 Is that all?

Speaker 1 You faced the wave.

Speaker 3 She was like, it was dark. Our house was there.

Speaker 1 And I was like, and what else happened?

Speaker 3 So the tsunami being, at this point, the FBI is fully at Timothy's office.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 1 Yeah, he's in trouble. He's in trouble.
And then Lachlan has planted this idea with his tsunami videos, which then

Speaker 1 we'd see him showing ones like, look at this guy just.

Speaker 1 He doesn't even move. He doesn't even try to run away.

Speaker 3 So after this, Timothy has an extreme reaction, which is to, after resisting Pam's entreaties to give me your phones, he's suddenly like, you know what? Phone's in the bag. Phone's in the bag.

Speaker 1 It's a rare thing that we're together like this.

Speaker 2 So let's make the most of it. Let's make this week special, right?

Speaker 3 Do you think that this is him standing there? Like,

Speaker 3 is this him standing there waiting to accept it and not fighting it? Or is it him running away from the tsunami?

Speaker 1 I was, I had that same thought too. I thought, oh, well, maybe he's accepting his fate, basically.
I was like, I can't do anything about it. I'm no longer in control.

Speaker 1 And a lot of the show in general is about what you can control and can't control. And depositing your electronics in the bag is the symbolic release of control.
Right. Right?

Speaker 1 Because we believe our control is now mediated through our devices and everything. And so, yeah, I kind of felt like he was

Speaker 1 watching the wave come for him.

Speaker 3 Yeah. But also trying to delay it because he doesn't even know.

Speaker 1 Maybe it could be simultaneous, like oscillating, instant of like vibrating back and forth in his mind. He has the monkey mind of like, maybe if I pretend it'll go away, it'll go away.

Speaker 1 And maybe it's just coming from me and there's nothing I can do.

Speaker 3 And he's dipping into those benzos.

Speaker 1 Exactly. And he's like, I don't take drugs.
By the end, now he winds up as like a drug addict. All of a sudden, he's like, he's like feeding.

Speaker 3 I mean, frankly, I would be too if I were him. If I was that man and the FBI was at my office, he better believe I would be taking Xanax and hiding my phone.

Speaker 3 I thought the moment was interesting when Saxon is, you know, the phone moment of putting all the phones in the bag, it comes when someone from the office is calling Saxon.

Speaker 3 It's about to leak. And he has this one-on-one father-son chat with Saxon

Speaker 3 that is like full of pathos because you see how eager this

Speaker 3 overconfident, blustery son is to want to.

Speaker 1 He just wants his father's.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 And you kind of get a second of like, maybe you're actually not that good at your job either. You know what I mean? Like, oh, maybe you're a little, maybe you're slipping at work also, you know?

Speaker 1 I mean, I know I tell you this all the time, Dad, but

Speaker 1 I love working,

Speaker 1 you know? And I love working with you. I mean, I get to learn so much from you.

Speaker 1 I know.

Speaker 1 I thought that was very revealing, actually, that particular encounter, because, yes, he takes him outside, and it's actually meant for self-preservation to kind of distract Saxon and not let the cat out of the bag.

Speaker 1 And he says, Okay, instead, I'm going to distract him by giving him some validation and some fatherly advice.

Speaker 1 And I was like, Oh, only in this moment where everything, like, this is what it takes for you to say something nice. Right.

Speaker 3 And you can tell it had been about 18 months since the last time, right?

Speaker 1 Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 3 What else happens to the family? Lachlan goes for his posture corrective treatment where the perceptive posture man tells him, oh, yeah.

Speaker 3 You're very defensive and you're protecting with your feminine side, which I adored. And Saxon is trying to tell him that he's got to get laid.

Speaker 1 Don't you want the big dogs to respect you?

Speaker 1 What do you want to be neurotic your whole life and die fucking virgin?

Speaker 3 Saxon is, you know, one episode away from sleeping with Chloe, probably.

Speaker 3 I'm also getting a bit of fear that Saxon is going to try to make Lachlan have sex with Chloe in some way.

Speaker 3 He's like, Saxon is quite determined that his younger brother should return from this not a virgin.

Speaker 3 And there's not really

Speaker 3 no one else is giving

Speaker 3 possibility other than Chloe. I mean, that would be kind of iconic.
She's really hot.

Speaker 3 Piper also in this episode, she finally goes to the monastery to set up her meeting. And, you know, there was a part of me that was deeply relieved.

Speaker 3 I was like, girl, you got to be lining that shit up months in advance.

Speaker 1 You're going to travel all the way here. As journalists, everybody else probably has anxiety about various other things in this episode, but we were both like, is she going to get this interview?

Speaker 1 She's not going to set up the interview. She's not going to get the interview.

Speaker 1 I'm with Piper. But of course, it's happened to me before.
Yeah, you got to put that up. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Piper is the sort of designated aware one, right? She calls the White Lotus Malibu Disneyland for rich people. And she has styled herself as like, I'm aware of privilege.
I'm aware of existence.

Speaker 3 I'm aware of all of these things. But then she waltzes into the monastery and she's like, hi,

Speaker 3 I'm here to get everything I want.

Speaker 3 And you see her out of the context of her family that she's still in many ways. And I say this as like an American that did the Peace Corps, like who knows from

Speaker 3 a clueless foreigner walking in and being like, This actually belongs to me and my journey. She's not apart from that.
Right.

Speaker 1 Right. Her self-awareness within her family disappears in relation to the rest of the world.
Yeah. Yeah.
And they're like, well, maybe we can accommodate you, basically. We'll see.

Speaker 3 But Guy's a monk. And then they're all going to go party on Gary's boat.

Speaker 1 Oh, right. That was an interesting conversation because Victoria is like, well, but are they from a good family? Who did you meet with a boat?

Speaker 1 Are they decent people?

Speaker 1 Yeah, they own their own yacht. They're rich.
Just because people are rich doesn't mean they're not trashy.

Speaker 1 Whatever this external entity is, like, how does it relate to good values, good family, which really means how does it reflect our family? Right.

Speaker 1 You know, and that's her immediate response to the whole concept of even like basically fraternizing with anybody else in the resort. Right.

Speaker 1 Next we have Belinda.

Speaker 3 A slow burn with porn chai. Yeah.

Speaker 2 I hope you have good dreams of me and I will have good dreams of you.

Speaker 1 Is that a Thai expression?

Speaker 1 He's revealing his amorous intentions that is moving forward.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 then she also at the dinner spots Gary slash Greg. She goes over to the table and says, don't I I know you?

Speaker 3 Do you think that he recognized her?

Speaker 1 When she's walking up to the table, he definitely recognizes her. Yeah, but not before.
Right. Because you see it on his face.

Speaker 1 It kind of lingers on him. And then once she says Tanya's name, then he realizes he's like squirming in his chair.

Speaker 3 But I have a question for you about Belinda. Do you like,

Speaker 3 she's there for three months. I'm like, are you just going to be experiencing the spot for three months?

Speaker 1 Right. That's true.
That's a long time.

Speaker 1 Apprenticeship. That's quite an

Speaker 1 internal training program that the White Lotus management has set up. You could just go to another installation at the hotel.
And receive treatments from hot guns for three months.

Speaker 3 And then we've got our three gossiping girlies. We've got Jacqueline, Laurie, and Kate.
Episode one ends with two of them making fun of Laurie, gossiping about her behind her back.

Speaker 3 Episode two ends with... two of them talking about Jaclyn.

Speaker 3 And then this one, it's Kate's turn in the ringer.

Speaker 1 We see the completion of the cycle of the gossip geometry.

Speaker 3 This was the part of the episode where I was like, I was cringing to the deepest core of my cells.

Speaker 1 I know. This is like the moment I dread.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I mean, we can show our guards here. I mean, I would truly not like to be on vacation with someone I considered a close friend that reveals that they voted for Trump.

Speaker 3 Like, that would frankly stress me the fuck out.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it would be a little bit more.

Speaker 3 That would really stress me. And you see exactly what the other two friends, and they're like, I can't wait for her to go to bed so we can talk about this for three hours.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Also, the way that conversation unfolds where Jacqueline starts actually by making this interesting observation, right, where they're talking about kind of religion as a salve.

Speaker 1 And then she says, I don't know, Christianity, basically the monotheistic religions are man fights the battle for good and evil.

Speaker 1 Yeah, because like Christianity and most religions, they're made for men, right?

Speaker 1 The father sacrifices the son, the son's a man, dies on the cross, the heroes are all men, and the women just cry on the sidelines.

Speaker 1 I was like, oh, this is going to be an interesting exploration of some spiritual notion they're in this buddhist country i thought that's where it's going and then me too and then kate says i'm a woman with that yeah i'm a woman and i love church and then like huh interesting they're all really good families you know like this recurring is like yes right she says that too i don't know if i was just around a bunch of texans who voted for trump i guess i'd just feel a little alienated they're nice people Really good families.

Speaker 3 And what people in the South mean when they say that is like they're rich and they keep their shit under wraps. Right.
Like they're rich and they successfully repress any outer sign of disorder.

Speaker 1 That's literally all people.

Speaker 3 There's something interesting about while I don't doubt that Jaclyn and Lori, you know, or whatever variously sincere, progressive, liberal, however they consider themselves, but it is something that I feel quite aware of in my everyday life where there are plenty of people in my orbit who think of liberal or progressive politics mostly as kind of a consumer identity, who who are really offended by Trump mostly as an aesthetic signal about like, like, this is just embarrassing.

Speaker 3 Like

Speaker 3 there's a way in which Kate having voted for Trump is on an equal plane in terms of moral and aesthetic importance as kind of not having a really good doctor for your Botox, right?

Speaker 3 Like they have the, they are appalled as if they are talking about a serious political topic, but there's a way in which it's sort of like, ooh, you know, you've made a lifestyle choice.

Speaker 3 You've made an aesthetic choice.

Speaker 1 Interesting. I

Speaker 1 obviously the aesthetics of politics are persuasive and powerful.

Speaker 1 I actually was kind of ruminating on whether there was an intention to sort of state how politics itself has now become a belief system since it's become itself so overpowering, right?

Speaker 1 And, you know, because you're in the setting where they're on this, there's spiritual seeking, they're in this kind of place where you have your serenity as a wellness goal, and explicitly, there's all this Buddhist statuary around everything.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 people are talking about their values, right? They're talking all the time, like they have good values, whatever. And now it's like politics has become its own religion, basically, right?

Speaker 1 I'm an independent.

Speaker 1 An independent.

Speaker 1 Since when?

Speaker 1 You didn't vote for Trump, though, did you?

Speaker 1 I took it almost like like, it's like she's an apostate, like a heretic. Right.
Right. Like, it's actually superseding whatever spiritualism is going on in this,

Speaker 1 like in the retreat, and it comes into the conversation through religion, right? And then, like, they could argue about religion probably all dinner, and that's fine.

Speaker 1 But the minute she says Trump, it's like, oh, no, you're a heretic.

Speaker 3 Right. And there was that part in the first episode where Lori's like, looking at you guys, it's like looking in a mirror.

Speaker 3 And there's something interesting about what this crew will not do, which is like, probably they are all living extremely similar similar lives with extremely similar consumer choices, you know, et cetera.

Speaker 3 But the exact same life,

Speaker 3 if the person voted for Trump, that life will then be viewed as sort of like immoral and false. You know, like these lifestyle choices will be viewed as like selfish.
Right, right.

Speaker 1 It changes the color stuff.

Speaker 3 But yet I'm sure those women are making quite similar choices about their children, their children's schooling, how much they fly on planes, whatever, you know, their degree of civic engagement.

Speaker 3 Like it's, and that, you know, I don't know, I doubt a lot of that will reach the surface, but I was like, ooh, I can feel it.

Speaker 1 Ooh, I can feel it. Right, right.
It would make the others basically question all of her motivations on making the same choices that they exactly make, yeah.

Speaker 3 So the themes really come out.

Speaker 3 The themes being the snake in the garden of paradise or whatever with Chelsea and Rick.

Speaker 1 They wind up in this snake show.

Speaker 3 The snake show. But the snake show is also prompted by another meditation session.

Speaker 1 And my father, he was a good man.

Speaker 1 He was a decent man.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 I never got to know him, you know, because he was murdered.

Speaker 2 And I can't get my life back.

Speaker 1 He shows up as the most mysterious character in some way, because there's some deep, dark past. And then

Speaker 1 his being revealed most easily.

Speaker 1 Everybody's masks are going to come down, right? As we think about the symbolic aspect of the performative mask in the actual dinner performance. And his mask is, we're getting it pretty quickly.

Speaker 3 His mask is the thing that it's masking. Like, he is, he's giving like broken mad.

Speaker 1 And he is, you know what I mean? Right, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 3 Like, he's the only one that's sullen on the boat, and as such, he's the only one telling the truth about existence.

Speaker 1 Right, that's right, that's right, right. He's the truth teller, he's the truth teller, right?

Speaker 3 So, he gets too high, or so he says, they're at the snake show, and he lets a bunch of snakes loose.

Speaker 1 Well, before that, they kind of go through the little snake pavilion before they get to the show, and you see him kind of communing with the snakes and having this like deep connection.

Speaker 1 He is stoned but I there's something else going on where he's having some kind of emotional attachment

Speaker 1 and then when they get into the snake show he has a freak out. He kind of turns and observes that there are other people just like watching this gleefully with popcorn.

Speaker 1 And I can't tell, what do you make of his motivation? What he says is, I just didn't want to see them be in pain, you know, like it's unfair to the snakes.

Speaker 1 And so, and I was like, well, if that's really the case, then that's like quite a noble motive.

Speaker 3 I think he, well, I didn't read it as a noble motive, but I do think, you know, he was, it seems the episode is trying to make it really clear.

Speaker 3 He was in his therapy session saying that he has been caged in by circumstance, more or less, and he feels misunderstood and he probably feels misperceived and so he's acting out yeah he can't free himself so it's like i may as well free these snakes they're in cages kind of yeah right like he's clearly sick of everyone else's sort of

Speaker 1 he seems like someone that wearies immediately of any stab at propriety and he's just he would prefer the truth of snake bites and chaos right so then later chelsea says so you released a bunch of venomous snakes earlier today what do you think that's about she's basically posing the the kind of like therapy question to him, like, why did you do this?

Speaker 1 Yeah. And then what he says is, I felt bad for him.
Snakes are evil. Read the Bible.

Speaker 2 Well, even evil things shouldn't be treated like shit. It's only going to make them more evil.

Speaker 1 Which I thought also that was like a very heavily freighted line, that that is going to mean something in relation to his whole storyline.

Speaker 1 with the murder and his father and wherever he's going with his pal Frank that he calls, by the way, he's like his old buddy Frank.

Speaker 1 If you've got an old buddy Frank in Bangkok who you need to help take care of some things,

Speaker 1 then what is your background?

Speaker 1 It is making me wonder what kind of weird shit has he been into.

Speaker 3 And unfortunately, my personal identification with the Chelsea ended in their final scene where she's like, I will follow you into the next life.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 3 And the next life and the next. And I was like,

Speaker 3 you will never catch me saying that to a man.

Speaker 1 But it is in keeping with the nature of the the show, exploring Buddhism and the reincarnation.

Speaker 3 Well, there's something really sweet earlier in the episode. She's like, you know, like, I'm your soulmate.
Like, I am your soulmate. And I really, I really believe it from her.
Like,

Speaker 3 she sees a hole in him that can be filled by her.

Speaker 1 She's sort of meant to be the healer of him, right? He believes he cannot be healed. She believes that she can basically heal anybody.
And then she shakes off this.

Speaker 1 deadly lethal snake bite instantaneously. You know, is she the antidote

Speaker 1 to the venom, whatever venom is coursing through him? I mean, this is the centerpiece of this episode in some way, right? Is the snakes being unleashed.

Speaker 3 Right.

Speaker 3 With the snakes in this episode, with the preponderance of snakes that is sort of amassing in this season, we had the choker, now we have the, you know, the pile of cobras that Rick unlocks out of their

Speaker 3 home. The Garden of Eden biblical stuff is getting more overt.
The first episode, you had Saxon pick up a fruit, and Pam, Australia,

Speaker 3 says, you know, this fruit can kill you.

Speaker 1 That is the fruit of the mighty pong-pong tree, and the seeds of the fruit are toxic. Yeah?

Speaker 1 Could it kill you? Yeah, it could actually. It's very poisonous.

Speaker 3 We have everyone in paradise, and then there's the snake figure. There is the presence of entropy and sin, and like the freedom to unleash, you know, the way that it figures into the biblical story.

Speaker 3 It's like the presence of him causes Eve to eat the apple and causes just the entire world to turn off of its axis from there.

Speaker 1 Right. Well, Mike grew up religious.
His father was a minister. He has all this biblical knowledge in the back of his mind.
And this is something we learned in the Look Back podcast.

Speaker 1 So you can listen to more about Mike's biblical and religious background in that show. But also,

Speaker 1 There is maybe just the idea of like there is the pent-up chaos in the cage. And to some degree, the show itself is always about like, what happens if you open the cage? Right.
Right.

Speaker 1 And what happens if the snakes come out and their fangs are bared? What is the energy that is unleashed?

Speaker 1 This would be like if there was like the Werner Herzog, you know, commentary would be like, it is the chaos of the jungle.

Speaker 1 And all of life's agonies are slithering through the grass. Like, that's, I think, what the energy of the snakes represents.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 There's something interesting, too, as a fellow person that grew up, you know, like heavy within evangelical Christian indoctrination, where in the myth of the Garden of Eden, the snake tells Eve to eat from the fruit of the tree of knowledge.

Speaker 3 And it's knowledge of the world that destroys paradise, right? And, you know, there are like very clear echoes here about Timothy would prefer oblivion. Like the knowledge is poisonous to him.

Speaker 3 There's a way in which plenty of people here are trying to enter the zone of the lotus eaters and to lose the knowledge of the world and to exist in that as its own sort of constructed paradise.

Speaker 3 But, you know, the knowledge.

Speaker 1 Right. The knowledge is the agony, right? That is, it's like you can't put the apple back on the tree.
Yeah. And it's what causes Monkey Mind.

Speaker 1 It is what keeps you up at night and you have to take your resipam. It's what makes you question your choices in the past and which way did you wind up relative to your high school girlfriends.

Speaker 1 And I hadn't thought of it, but the lotus eaters,

Speaker 1 they are eating their magic lotus petals or flowers or whatever. That's like numbing them to the world and they don't have to worry about the knowledge of what is going on out there.

Speaker 3 And now we're so excited to talk to Walton Goggins, also known as Rick.

Speaker 2 Hey, y'all. Welcome to the Walton Goggins White Lotus Experience.

Speaker 3 Thank you so much for having us on your show.

Speaker 1 Yes, absolutely.

Speaker 2 Yeah, so I want to ask you.

Speaker 1 No, go ahead.

Speaker 3 Okay, so

Speaker 3 we are loving your arc. And I wanted to ask you, episode one, you seem like,

Speaker 3 Rick seems like one of the most closed characters on the boat, coming in, chip on the shoulder, you know, chain smoking, opening the beer angrily.

Speaker 2 Extremely antisocial behavior.

Speaker 3 But it's revealed like you're, you are actually coming to Thailand in this profoundly vulnerable place more so than almost anyone else in the cast. I agree.
And can you talk about that?

Speaker 1 You know what?

Speaker 2 Can I say this, you know, right out of the gate? I've been around a long time. I've done a lot of comedies over the course of my career.
I've done a lot of dramas over the course of my career.

Speaker 2 What was the hardest part about this experience for me early on was being, excuse my language, you know, but the fucking downer in the room. You know, I've been,

Speaker 2 my process is no different.

Speaker 2 It's evolved. I find more pleasure in the experience of telling stories.
But

Speaker 2 showing up to work every day with 18 people in a green room that's full of chairs. of 18 people that are in a much different place emotionally than I am at the beginning of the story

Speaker 2 was very difficult. You know,

Speaker 2 I can be the one cracking jokes. I can be the one having a good time.
More often than not, my chair is separate. I sit on my own.
I do my own thing.

Speaker 2 I have played countless figures that move through the world as an island.

Speaker 2 But this one was particularly hard because usually that's just with like two or three people. And this was with 18 people that, you know, have, you know, comedic chops chops and drama chops.

Speaker 2 But I just couldn't be around them. They didn't understand why I was there.
This guy is isolated. He has moved through his life isolated.

Speaker 2 And that wasn't any fun

Speaker 2 to separate yourself. from a group in that way.
That was really, really challenging. And I guess to speak to what you said, yeah, Rick is a person who has been

Speaker 2 running

Speaker 2 from his past for a very long time, who exists

Speaker 2 in the spaces in between,

Speaker 2 you know, and society, on the fringes of society. And he is angry and he is bitter about the hand that was dealt him by life.
He's incapable of taking any responsibility for himself.

Speaker 2 And over the course of this experience, coming into it,

Speaker 2 where everyone else's motivations are revealed right out of the gate, you know, pretty much.

Speaker 2 And with such elegance and such precision, these actors kind of interpreted it from Jason Isaacs getting that information and Patrick and, you know, where he's coming from, the relationship with his dad, and this funny kind of very narrow view of the world and privileged view of the world.

Speaker 2 And all three of the ladies and

Speaker 2 here I come in, you know, with Chelsea played by Amy Lee Wood, and she doesn't even know. So it was more isolating than I anticipated, and it reverberated throughout the whole experience for me.

Speaker 1 It's interesting that your character comes in, and it's like, as you say, sort of like the Debbie Downer, but also immediately very open and vulnerable.

Speaker 1 Like at first, in the first episode, you're like, why are these two together? I don't get it.

Speaker 1 But by the time of the therapy sessions, where you see there's something like right beneath the surface that's available and vulnerable, I was just sort of like

Speaker 1 really struck by that.

Speaker 2 Amy and I talked ad nauseum about

Speaker 2 the beginning of each day is kind of the worst part for them, right? But by the end of it,

Speaker 2 you know, they come together and they see each other.

Speaker 2 Regardless of the difference between their ages, that's irrelevant. It means nothing

Speaker 2 when you have a soulmate that sees you. and your potential, you know, in a way that you can't see it for yourself.

Speaker 2 Unfortunately, in this case, it's really one-sided, you know, and his grief descends into a level of narcissism, really, because he's occupied with it and can't kind of see past it.

Speaker 2 And there was one day that we were working, and I just don't know how to not stay in it. You know, it's not fun.
It's not fun for my wife. It's not fun for me.
But we were all on this boat.

Speaker 2 And I just had such anxiety about getting on this boat because there's nowhere for me to hide. I'm a claustrophobic person by nature.
And and Rick is a claustrophobic person.

Speaker 2 And I knew there was no place for me to be alone right on this boat before I could take my chair and go out into the little jungle if I wanted to, you know. But

Speaker 2 on this particular day, it was really tough. And so I just camped out on the front of this boat.
The view was incredible. And I just filled it full of negative energy

Speaker 2 so that no one wanted to be around me. Right.

Speaker 2 And there was a moment, like for real, it's like just like buckets of fucking negativity here you go like no one will come up here one person did john greice uh who's a buddy of mine and uh and so we were able to talk but at one point amy uh not being mean or anything she said you know leaned over and and just said you know you're no fun i i want to be with them you know meaning the you know Patrick and the other characters, you know.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 I was like, thank you, God. Thank you for saying that, you know, because that's exactly how I want you to feel.
You know?

Speaker 1 In episode three, the snakes, you decide that the evil things need to be free and release the snakes. What do you think was going through Rick's head to release the snakes?

Speaker 1 I have a thought, but I'm curious.

Speaker 2 Well, you know,

Speaker 2 I felt that really early on. The first time I read it, I understood it.
It was crystal clear for me. And

Speaker 2 I felt that in that moment, what he saw were these animals

Speaker 2 that were vilified

Speaker 2 by myths, by experiences. They were misunderstood.
They were marginalized as being the worst among us.

Speaker 2 And he saw the way that the gross homogenized culture wasn't seeing these animals for their true beauty. They couldn't see them for what they have to offer.

Speaker 2 And they are so unbelievably disrespectful, drinking their drinks and eating their chips and manhandling them in a way as if they don't have a soul. And I think he sees himself in them, you know?

Speaker 2 And I think he sees them as his spirit animal. And he sees that the way that he's been treated.
Whether it's self-inflicted or not, he sees himself in these animals and he just can't take it anymore.

Speaker 2 And so he goes out and releases all of these snakes in these cages because he himself wants to be released. And it's like, if I can help them, maybe somebody can help me.

Speaker 2 It's metaphorical, but it's deep. It wasn't without intention.

Speaker 3 It wasn't just the weed.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it wasn't the weed.

Speaker 2 It wasn't just the weed, but

Speaker 2 a gateway drug to

Speaker 2 transcendent thinking.

Speaker 1 Yes. Do you think there was a little death wish, subconscious, in there under it? It was also like, oh, I can't live this way anymore.

Speaker 2 I think this person is

Speaker 2 floated on the edge of questioning how long he has on this planet for years.

Speaker 1 Rick. Yeah, I know.

Speaker 2 He's a dark dude. You know what? I hopefully, you know, if I did my job and the way Mike architected it, hopefully

Speaker 2 your empathy will continue and

Speaker 2 you will fall in love with him and Chelsea. I certainly did.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 There are favorites.

Speaker 1 There are favorites.

Speaker 3 Can I ask you a burning question that that Josh and I have had?

Speaker 3 Where in your mind did Rick and Chelsea meet?

Speaker 2 I've been to a lot of countries in my life, me personally, I've traveled a lot of different places. And

Speaker 2 I think that they met in a bar

Speaker 2 because she's a free spirit.

Speaker 2 I don't want to speak for Amy, but she was running from her own things, you know, whether she was traveling alone or whether she was with a group of people, I think she came up to the bar to order a drink and Rick was sitting there alone.

Speaker 2 I think that she struck up a conversation because Rick just wouldn't. And five minutes into it, there was a soul connection.

Speaker 3 She knew.

Speaker 2 She knew. And we'll see whether or not Rick comes to the same conclusion.

Speaker 3 Well, we're rooting for Raymond Chelsea quite hard.

Speaker 1 Thank you so much.

Speaker 2 I can't wait for you to see where it goes.

Speaker 3 Goggins was locked in.

Speaker 1 Wow. He's still feeling it.
I know. We're flushed.

Speaker 3 We have to kind of paint a picture for the listener about just simply how much gold jewelry he was wearing and how

Speaker 1 jacked the man is. And he's wearing these beautiful, oversized, like wide pleats.
Pleated pants. Yeah, he looked great.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Some little chest exposed. Yeah, he looked really good.

Speaker 3 We could talk about this for 10 minutes, but now we're going to talk to Amy Lou.

Speaker 1 Scorpio, so secretive.

Speaker 4 It's not easy for me, Rick. I'm an Aries.
I need everything out in the open.

Speaker 2 Oh my God, I need weed.

Speaker 1 Tell me what's going on.

Speaker 2 It doesn't concern you, okay?

Speaker 1 Of course it concerns me. Everything you do concerns me.

Speaker 4 I'm your life partner, Rick.

Speaker 3 Amy Lou, thank you for coming on the HBO Companion podcast. Josh and I are big Chelsea and Ricks fans.

Speaker 1 I'm so glad.

Speaker 3 Okay, so first, though, I wanted to ask you, we heard that you yourself are quite into astrology. And I wanted to ask, you know, how much of Chelsea is in you? How much of you is in Chelsea?

Speaker 4 I, you know, I was a huge fan of the show, and I watched the first two seasons being like, I want to be in this, but where do I fit? How would I be in the white lotus?

Speaker 4 I don't see it, I don't get it, but I just know I want to work with Mike.

Speaker 4 And then it did feel a bit like when I saw those audition sides and Chelsea was talking about astrology and Rick being such a Scorpio. And I was like, oh my God, oh my God, this could be it.

Speaker 4 This could actually actually be it, because there was just instant

Speaker 4 resonance, you know. And she is, I think,

Speaker 4 astrologically, you know, she's an Aries and I'm an Aquarius, so I'm a lot more kind of thought-led. I can be quite cerebral because I'm air.

Speaker 4 Chelsea's fire, so she's way more about feeling and passion and impulse and experience. And she doesn't really use her brain that much, she uses her heart way more than her brain.

Speaker 4 So we're very different in like that way. But then I do think that she does have a Scorpio moon like me.
So my most private self is actually intensely emotional, very romantic, and very loyal.

Speaker 4 And it's that deep, kind of dark shadow side, the stuff with the Scorpio, which is, I think, why.

Speaker 4 Rick Scorpio's son is so actually, as much as she kind of berates him for it, there's something tying them together, which might be the sun-moon thing.

Speaker 4 And I think that you know, he's she says all the time, you're so secretive, Rick, but she's actually, we learn more about his life than hers.

Speaker 4 So, she's really good at one finger pointing, three pointing back. Like, she's always like, You're mysterious, I don't know anything about you, but actually, she does have so much mystery to her.

Speaker 4 But her kind of fiery openness in that Aries kind of distracts people from the fact that she's actually deeply, deeply mysterious and doesn't reveal much about her past or where she's from at all.

Speaker 4 You know, she's all about be in the present, be in the present. Let's not even go there.
All she says is bad things have happened to me.

Speaker 4 So, yeah, there's a lot of us that's similar and there's bits of her that I also aspire to be.

Speaker 4 I really love her assertiveness. She's actually very assertive.
Like, with Saxon, she just tells it how it is.

Speaker 4 It's just, and she does in everything, but she just loves Rick so much and it's driving her crazy.

Speaker 3 How do you know she's a Scorpio moon? Was that written in?

Speaker 4 No, I've just decided that.

Speaker 3 You just knew. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You triangulated the last time.

Speaker 1 Yeah. I like that.
It's a technical answer. We need to have a separate episode where you do charts for all the characters and work out all the relationships that way.

Speaker 1 We have been having a debate over here about how we think Chelsea and Rick actually met. Do you have a sense of where they met? We asked Goggins as well.
Okay.

Speaker 4 There was more in the script originally about

Speaker 4 Rick and Chelsea,

Speaker 4 how they met, and it was very much like a drug-fueled night while they were traveling. But I think that, why, what did he say?

Speaker 1 He said

Speaker 1 he had a whole scenario in his head.

Speaker 1 They're in a bar somewhere, kind of like traveling, and then Chelsea comes up and sees like, aha, here's something that I can apply my open heart to, and he's resistant, and then she's persistent.

Speaker 4 That is definitely what happened. I mean, it's definitely like, there's definitely, and then I think it probably turned into that drug-fueled night that Mike wrote about.

Speaker 4 But I think, you know, I think she just, I think she, yeah, she will have seen him and thought, bingo, here is a place that I can pour the entirety of myself into.

Speaker 4 And he's kind of like, I don't want that. But also,

Speaker 4 I do. Question mark.

Speaker 1 Correct.

Speaker 1 That sounds like a lot of work. Yeah.

Speaker 1 But okay, I'm relenting. Yeah.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Well, it is something we've been talking also as we're watching the episodes. At the beginning, you're sort of like, why are these two together? What's their deal?

Speaker 1 He's such a sour puss and she's, you know, like a ray of sunshine. And then, but it quickly materializes into this very genuine, tender, heartfelt relationship.
Yeah.

Speaker 4 But I keep saying this about Mike.

Speaker 4 Like, I think people would assume that he's quite cynical maybe because the show, what we love about it is that it really does like razor sharp, acerbic, like nails nails all the worst parts of people and greed and ego and all of that but he's actually a massive optimist and like has loads of hope and loads of enthusiasm and i loved that this it's like people are gonna think people are gonna think like she's using him or you know what there's something going on and i just love the way he's like no the surprise is like it's like a total double bluff it's like right oh no she does just actually bloody love him she profoundly thinks they are soulmates and is bringing all of that.

Speaker 1 That's her duty, her destiny.

Speaker 4 It's her mission. It's her mission.
And it's great to have a mission. Like, you know, she's just going to stick to it.

Speaker 4 And it makes her quite fearless because as long as she has that tunnel vision, she can deal with anything because that is her, she's got her life's purpose and it's him.

Speaker 4 And he's like, oh my God, why does it have to be me? But also, wow.

Speaker 1 Wow.

Speaker 4 And he's got so much tenderness for her, really. He just can't express it.

Speaker 3 Right. I mean,

Speaker 3 it's really beautiful but i you know i was wondering about your experience you know you are the repository for that optimism in this show in many ways right like you yeah chelsea is the character that um is carrying this sincerity and optimism that's such a necessary sort of tonal counterpart to the value systems and things that other characters are bringing and i yeah i mean was that was that fun to just get to be this

Speaker 3 the the ray of sunshine?

Speaker 4 It was so fun and it felt like a real privilege because I feel like I'm expressing that part of Mike.

Speaker 4 Like that, it felt really intimate.

Speaker 4 Because I, yeah, it felt like he was expressing that through Chelsea, and so it just felt like a lovely bond and also gave me that energy because he's got boundless energy, and I was just kind of mirroring that.

Speaker 4 But also, sometimes when it was the end of a filming day, I was like, I just need to be sad and shy. I need to be sad and shy because she's really,

Speaker 4 you know, she's so fizzy, and Rick needs to step up and let her have some of the pain and let him have some of the hope.

Speaker 4 And they need to kind of meet each other in the middle, but they can't do that right now.

Speaker 4 He's taking up all the quota for sadness and pain, so she's taking up all the quota for the hope and the joy, and that is a lot. And Walton's so carpe DM, his tempo is so different to Rick's.

Speaker 4 Like, Walton's like, Yeah, man, hey, man, let's get like cocktails and let's dance.

Speaker 4 So, it would sometimes be like a switch of energies it would be like that's a wrap and then i would go into like the moon energy and he'd be the sun

Speaker 3 so it was quite nice to to swap around in real life that's beautiful yeah well the other thing that happens in the episode is the snakes how do you think chelsea understood what rick did

Speaker 4 i think that she

Speaker 4 I just keep going back to that song, The Snake, by Al Wilson. You know that song?

Speaker 4 And it's about a woman who finds a snake that's dying on the side of the road and she takes him in and she's like, like, You're so cute, and I'm gonna make you better.

Speaker 4 And then she does, and when she does make him better, he bites her, and she's so shocked. And he's like, You knew I was a snake before you brought me in.

Speaker 4 Like, you know, and I think that the snake motif for Chelsea is really about that. It's about the fact that she can't see that maybe she's could be in danger, she doesn't really

Speaker 4 see it, and so I think that she is

Speaker 4 probably quite in denial and confused about why he would release those snakes. But there's something in her tummy and her gut that understands it.

Speaker 4 And she says to him, If you're trying to kill me, you're not going to get rid of me that easy. I'm just going to keep following you.

Speaker 4 So there is obviously a part of her that is flirting with the idea that he might be a snake and that he might be dangerous. And maybe she gets some thrill out of that.

Speaker 1 Right. She has her own caged cobra in Rick.
Yes. Like that's what she has done.

Speaker 4 Exactly. She's literally got a snake and gone, mine.
And she's hugging it and being like, you're so cute.

Speaker 1 And everyone else is like,

Speaker 4 no, he's not.

Speaker 1 He's cute.

Speaker 4 And she's like, no, he is. He's like my child.

Speaker 3 He's my baby.

Speaker 1 I'm like, no, his hood is up.

Speaker 4 Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 3 Thank you so much for talking to us.

Speaker 3 Thank you so much for talking to us. It's been lovely.
Bye.

Speaker 1 Bye.

Speaker 1 Well, that was delightful.

Speaker 3 I think we do have to get a spin-off podcast where she reads everyone's charts. Yeah.
Everyone's charts in the cast.

Speaker 1 I like how she went deep with this technical astrological read. And then you said, well, where did that come from? She said, well,

Speaker 1 I supplied that information

Speaker 1 so I could get an accurate read.

Speaker 1 Yeah, totally. Totally.
All right. Well, thanks for listening.
And we will see you next time.

Speaker 3 The White Lotus Podcast is a production of HBO and Campside Media. This episode was hosted by Gia Tolentino and Josh Baerman.
Natalia Winkleman is the managing producer.

Speaker 3 Our associate producers are Allison Haney, Anthony Pachillo, and Aaliyah Papes. Sound design and mix by Ewen Lai Tremuen.
At Campside Media, our executive producer is Josh Dean.

Speaker 3 For the HBO podcast team, our executive producers Michael Gluckstadt, senior producer Allison Cohen-Sorokach, and producer Kenya Reyes. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time.