After weeks of intense speculation, Aimee Lou Wood and Walton Goggins have unequivocally put the feud rumours to bed.
The White Lotus co-stars who played doomed lovers Chelsea and Rick in season three of the hit HBO series saw the high-stakes drama of the fictional Thailand resort bleed into real life after fans started wondering if there was a rift between the pair.
After castmate Jason Isaacs alluded to ‘drama’ on the set, people started fuelling the fire by pointing out Walton had unfollowed Aimee on Instagram and praised the very SNL sketch which the Sex Education star had called out as ‘mean’ and ‘unfunny’ for mocking the appearance of her teeth (he later deleted his comments).
As rumours whirled, just this week, The Fallout star shut down an interview with The Times when asked to address the feud multiple times. ‘There is no conversation to be had about that. Sharing politics on social media — it’s in a vacuum,’ he said.
After being asked a final time, the 53-year-old added: ‘What the f**k, Ed [Potton]! Come on, buddy. Wow.’
Now, in their first joint interview with Variety since the falling out rumours reached their pinnacle, they have cleared the record once and for all.
Walton, who has spent many of the past weeks working intensive hours on the Fallout set, shared: ‘There is no feud. I adore, I love this woman madly, and she is so important to me.’
Then looking at Aimee, added: ‘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.’
And explained that he would ‘never’ speak for both of them, hence he didn’t discuss the issue with The Times.
Specifically, Walton claimed that The Times interviewer had tried to compare his and Aimee’s teeth and asked if they had bonded over them on set, which left him ‘disgusted and flabbergasted’.
Aimee echoed the shock, saying: ‘How horrible!’
The 31-year-old star then said Instagram was ‘irrelevant’ and neither of them ‘gave a s***e’, encouraging people to discuss the show’s storyline and characters instead.
‘Eventually I just started to sit back and watch these people making something out of absolutely nothing,’ Aimee added while Walton called himself a ‘grown-a** man’.
Then, he explained that he has always found the end of intense projects of this nature difficult (especially considering his personal ties to this one) and had let Aimee know he was ‘processing saying goodbye’.
By the end of their chat, Walton had followed Aimee on Instagram once more.
He concluded by calling the whole situation ‘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 said.
As for what’s next for Goggins, in a recent interview with Metro, he discussed his ethos with allowing himself to embrace ‘the unknown’.
‘I didn’t know where my life was going before Fallout. I didn’t know before White Lotus. And I suppose, at my age, that’s the best place to be: comfortable in the unknown,’ he said.
As for the Bafta winner, she has plenty of projects in the pipeline, including a new series with Adolescence’s breakout star Owen Cooper called Film Club and a second season of her hit show, Daddy Issues.
The White Lotus is available to stream on Sky and Now TV.
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