'The White Lotus' stars Walton Goggins, Aimee Lou Wood speak up on feud rumors for the first time
The White Lotus stars Walton Goggins and Aimee Lou Wood have addressed rumors that they have an ongoing rift. The former also revealed why he unfollowed her on Instagram.
"There is no feud. I adore, I love this woman madly, and she is so important to me," Goggins said in their joint interview with Variety, describing her as someone who "can do anything, and she will."
"She's special. There's no feud," he reiterated. "She is love and I know that I am that to her. We care about each other very deeply."
Goggins also explained why he unfollowed Wood on Instagram.
"My catharsis in this experience was different than other people's, because of my history in this place. 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," the actor said, referring to their onscreen romance.
According to him, Wood knew and was even supportive of his decision to remove her from his following list on the social media platform.
"I needed to just back away from everyone. 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," she said.
"It's all so ridiculous—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," he continued.
Wood, for her part, questioned why people are "obsessing" over Instagram.
"That is irrelevant. We don’t give a sh*te about Instagram. Why not have conversations about the story and Rick and Chelsea and enjoy it?" she added. "Eventually I just started to sit back and watch these people making something out of absolutely nothing."
"If I may add, just to put this to bed? The following or unfollowing. I’m a grown-ass man," said Goggins.
Goggins and Wood, who played the couple Rick and Chelsea in the third season of the series, sparked feud rumors when eagle-eyed social media users noticed that they were not following each other on IG anymore after the airing of the series finale.
They also did not tag each other on their respective Instagram posts when they paid tribute to their White Lotus characters. Goggins, referring to Rick and Chelsea's journey as “a love story," thanked Wood for being his partner on the show. He described it as "a journey I will never forget."
Wood, meanwhile, posted a photo of them together as Rick and Chelsea and simply captioned the post, “The perfect storm."
In May, Walton refused to comment on the rift rumors between them in an interview, saying, “I’m not gonna have that conversation."
In a separate interview, he said, "There is no conversation to be had about that. Sharing politics on social media—it’s in a vacuum.”
A few days after the interview, they began following each other again on Instagram. There were also reports that they might star again in a new project.
