The White Lotus Stars Walton Goggins And Aimee Lou Wood Break Silence On Feud Rumors

Hey, remember how the third season of "The White Lotus" ended and everybody decided that on-screen lovers and apparent real-life friends Aimee Lou Wood and Walton Goggins were feuding? That's not true at all, according to a profile of the pair in Variety.

Wood, who played the lighthearted but shrewd Chelsea, and Goggins, who played the vengeful but loving Rick, talked to interviewer Emily Longeretta for the outlet and revealed that there's absolutely no bad blood between them after filming on Mike White's "anthology" series wrapped. (Also, it's important to note that Rick and Chelsea are the two major characters to die in the season 3 finale.) After the pair discussed their on-set bond (more on that shortly), Goggins put all of the rumors to rest.

"There is no feud. I adore, I love this woman madly, and she is so important to me," Goggins said (and, according to Longeretta, this is one of the many times that he got "choked up"). "This is Goldie Hawn. This is Meg Ryan. She can do anything, and she will. You watch what the next 20 years of her experience will be. I'll be on an island, I think Greece. But she's special. There is no feud. She is love, and I know that I am that to her. We care about each other very deeply."

Wood, as Longeretta and Goggins acknowledged, didn't get to respond to Goggins' interview with The Times of London where he refused to answer questions about her, so the two made it a point to let her be heard here. For her part, she addressed the fact that Goggins unfollowed her on Instagram, which a frankly alarming number of people took as some sort of smoking gun.

"I think it's such a comment on where we're at culturally. Why is everyone obsessing over Instagram? That is irrelevant. We don't give a sh*te about Instagram," Wood said. "Why not have conversations about the story and Rick and Chelsea and enjoy it?" As far as Wood was concerned, there was nothing she could do about the rumor mill: "Eventually, I just started to sit back and watch these people making something out of absolutely nothing."

After Aimee Lou Wood basically laughed about all of the silly rumors about who follows who on Instagram, Walton Goggins chimed in: "If I may add, just to put this to bed? The following or unfollowing. I'm a grown-ass man."

The way he "put this to bed," so to speak, is that Goggins simply admitted he hates saying goodbye and high-key sucks at it. "When I left 'Justified,' I went up to Tim [Olyphant], and I hugged him and I said, 'I love you, and I hope I see you in rooms for the rest of my life,'" Goggins said of the neo-Western drama that helped put him on the map. "I didn't talk to him for almost two years. I've done that with every single thing that I've done."

Goggins' wife died under tragic circumstances in 2004, as Emily Longeretta noted. So, in the aftermath, Goggins did a lot of traveling to try and find some peace and closure. Those travels brought him to Bangkok, which was one of the filming locations for season 3 of "The White Lotus," and he noted that really struck him during shooting ... and hit him even harder when the process ended.

"My catharsis in this experience was different than other people's, because of my history in this place," Goggins said, beginning to cry (per Longeretta). "I knew what we had gone through, and I knew how close that we had gotten, and I needed to begin to process saying goodbye to Rick and Chelsea. And I knew that that was going to take a while for me, so I let her know, this is what I've gotta do. And she was extremely supportive about that."

"I needed to just back away from everyone," Goggins continued. "I haven't spoken to anyone. I couldn't handle it. Judge me or don't. I don't give a f**k what you think. This is my process. Rick means everything to me, and Chelsea means everything to me. And so that's what I needed to do for me to process all of this." (During the interview, Goggins got his phone and re-followed Wood on Instagram, if that makes anyone feel better or anything.)

The truth is that, while Walton Goggins and Aimee Lou Wood were filming "The White Lotus," they were basically never apart. After texting before traveling to Thailand, Goggins says that he extended an invite to Wood for lunch: "I think we were there for a day or two without meeting because I was so f**king in my head alone." Wood, for her part, was intimidated; as she recalls, "I didn't know what to order. I was like, 'Can you pick for me?' I was so nervous."

"The minute she walked around the corner, I felt, 'This is gonna work,'" Goggins said of their first meeting. "Two minutes into the conversation, it felt like I've known this person for 100 years." This apparently resulted into the two frequently finding their own space while the rest of the cast, including Parker Posey, Carrie Coon, Michelle Monaghan, Leslie Bibb, and Jason Isaacs, just to name a few, mingled during meals. "I don't mean to sound like an a**hole, it's not method or anything, I just felt like I needed to stay in the space," Goggins explained. "Both of us would get overwhelmed," Wood added.

At the end of the day, Wood was a touchstone for Goggins. "I was alone purposely in this experience — not selfishly, not narcissistically," he told Emily Longeretta. "Everyone has their process. Mine is being alone. But Aimee as Chelsea wouldn't let me do that." (Apparently, Wood would say to Goggins on set, "You're going into the sad, parallel world. Stay in the real one.")

I mentioned that Goggins refollowed Wood on Instagram, but he also made a comment about that very action. "It's all so ridiculous," he remarked. "It's just a part of me just saying goodbye to this character so that now Aimee and I will be friends for f**king ever." The two actors exchanged affectionate words before the interview and photoshoot ended and, according to Longeretta's reporting, there was a lot of crying throughout. So, can we all accept that Goggins and Wood are just emotional, grown-up theater kids? There's no drama. That's just who they are!

"The White Lotus" season 3 is streaming on HBO Max now.