Over the years, Walton Goggins has portrayed numerous intense characters, but apparently, nothing compared to the nightmare fuel he encountered on the set of The White Lotus. While filming the show’s third season in Thailand, the actor had to face one of his biggest fears: snakes. Not fake, rubber snakes. Not CGI snakes. Very real, very slithery, living reptiles.
And because Hollywood loves making actors suffer for art, the scene wasn’t just a momentary brush against his skin, or him standing near a cage, sweating bullets. His character, Rick, gets high and starts freeing venomous snakes from their enclosure. On-screen, the chaos ends with Aimee Lou Wood’s character getting bitten. But off-screen, things got much messier because Goggins later revealed that he was the one who actually got bitten during filming.
During an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live, the actor shared his perspective on the incident. Most people would immediately reconsider their career choices after such an incident, but Goggins is a resilient individual. He confirmed that all the snakes used in the scene were real, which was already a massive problem for him. This wouldn’t be a huge deal if Goggins’s fear of them were on a whole other level. He described it as something primal, like his brain and body simply do not know how to function properly around these creatures.
The actor admitted that the first time he picked one up, he completely broke down. He was not trying to be dramatic, either. He said he began shaking and crying uncontrollably, which is horrifying. Most people like to imagine actors like they’re professionals who can calmly power through anything, but phobias are a different breed. You can’t just get over it.
Showrunner Mike White was watching the whole thing unfold and seemed to realize that they were asking a lot from him. Maybe even too much. At the same time, the shot was going to be so good (and it was). Before they even started filming, a snake handler gave Goggins all the pro tips and instructions about which snakes were safe to touch and which ones he absolutely needed to avoid. That should have been very helpful, but when you are terrified, surrounded by snakes, and trying to remember color-coded levels of danger while the crew waits for you to do your thing, it’s not.
Once the cameras started rolling, Goggins’s fear took over. He remembered the handler’s warnings, but everything became a blur of different snakes, colors, and insanely high stakes. One wrong move and he’d be bitten! When he reached for one of the serpents and pulled it out, the snake refused to cooperate.
And then it happened. The snake turned around and bit him.
Goggins said he wished he had reacted in a smooth, cool-guy way, as if getting bitten by a snake was just another casual Tuesday. But instead, he panicked hard. He basically went into full crisis mode, yelling that he had been bitten. The good news was that the snake was non-venomous.
Once things had settled down, the production team carried on with the shoot because, apparently, there were still many hours left in the day. Goggins said the on-set medics treated the bite pretty casually at first, putting a bit of ointment on it and moving along. Sounds about right for Hollywood. At first, Goggins was doing pretty well for someone who had just faced his biggest fear. But the next day, he got a call from a producer who had a brilliant thought that it might be a good idea to visit the hospital after all. This was likely a precautionary measure to avoid a potential lawsuit.
Goggins did not protest too much and implied that the situation rapidly became less about scary snake drama and more about doing mountains of paperwork. He also said someone came up to him while he was not feeling great and asked him to sign something, which was such a shady move. Was he signing an autograph or accidentally giving away all his rights to sue?
Thankfully, the Goggins did go to the hospital, and the whole situation became one of those wild behind-the-scenes stories that sounds funny, but only because everyone ended up okay.
