With Rick Hatchett,The White Lotusactor retraced a journey taken two decades prior.
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Spoilers follow forThe White Lotusseason-three finale Amor Fati.
Rick Hatchett got everything he ever wanted.
He found someone who loves and accepts him and makes a vow to value her.
He faced the man who killed his father and walked away a better man.
But the respite is short-lived.
In another world, Rick would be fetching Chelsea doughnuts off hotel breakfast buffets forever.
Tell me how Mike presented Ricks arc to you.I read in black-and-white what you just saw.
I texted Mike and I said, You dont know how close this is to me as a person.
It will fit in yourWhite Lotuslanguage, I promise, but then it will expand.
And they said, Absolutely.
The circumstances were dramatically different.
I had nothing for my partner.
I understood, intimately, Ricks frame of mind.
I dont think hes alone in the world.
Genuinely, I think that is the path of all spirituality.
Did you apply that ethos to Rick?Its something I applied to Rick.
Some people are never able to transcend in that way and love themselves.
It was like,This is it.
Forgive the people that fucking were doing their best, and just be okay with it.
You dont have to be anything other than what you are, and youre enough, man.
If you could love you, then you could love anybody.
Those were lessons I learned 15 years before this experience, and they were hard-won.
Reading the scripts, I felt like this guy will realize it too late.
But youre looking at the presentation of a story over an eight-hour period.
We all are familiar with this format of storytelling.
Thats not Rick Hatchett.
Rick Hatchett doesnt have that foresight.
His story is predicated on the story that was told to him.
Rick Hatchett is not a fictional character to me.
Hes a real person consumed by something that happened to him that he had no control over.
From an actors perspective, no, it never entered my mind that this guy might be my father.
How could you abandon a child?
I am a father and I could never conceive of something like that.
Its up to us to see it.
That was my journey, and thats Ricks journey.
Were not the only people in the fucking world that has experienced that.
It is all of our journeys.
We all have them.
We are all so much more similar than we think.
You dont know what theyve gone through.
I think thats what Mike was trying to say.
Did Rick believe Jim was his father?I do think he believed it.
I dont think he was given the time to process it.
He takes that information in, and as soon as it registers, hes being shot at.
And he is a killer; hes killed people before and in his business.
It was just instinct.
Its not like he doesnt know how to use a gun, or hasnt used a gun before.
Mike made a very conscious decision to withhold information and withhold emotion.
It was painful at the time to see things I thought would be there cut out.
But he was absolutely right to withhold Ricks vulnerability and parse it out in really small parts.
The filming of this whole sequence was really, really personal.
Every actor who has to go through something like this will tell you that.
You know its on the schedule.
You dont want those days to come.
I was alone for a lot of it.
I asked that no other actors come and watch.
I think it got to a point where everyone was sad, because itwasso sad.
It was hot and it was lonely.
It was like, 12, 36, 40 hours of sustained anxiety.
We talked at length about this walk.
I said, Rick is going to walk with her until he dies.
Hes going to walk with her across the fucking Earth.
He wont stop walking with Chelsea in his arms.
The very thing that he had been looking for his whole life was staring him in the face.
Thats the irony, and thats the fucking tragedy.
Hepassed the first test.
This is what you want in life.
And then the story turned and he was incapable of turning it off.
At the end of those three days, after it was done, Mike said, Its over.
We can be light.
And I said, Well, I still got the confrontation in Bangkok.
But well be light for a little while.
All of these characters come from Mikes heart.
Knowing him the way that I know him now, he cares so deeply about all of them.
We were filming in front of this room.
I cant be there to see you off.
I got to go.
Ive worked with a few directors that have said something very similar.
I said, I love you, buddy.
I got this, and thank you.
I know Ill see you for the rest of my life.
Sometimes when you cant say good-bye, you dont want to say good-bye.
I think it was him saying good-bye to Rick.
I said good-bye to Rick just now, when the credits rolled.
I havent been able to let him go for a fucking year and a half.
That was Mike beginning his process for letting him go.
This isnt the end of their journey, but its the end of their journey now.
The way Rick treated Chelsea, thats not the totality of their relationship.
It wont turn into a tsunami once it gets to shore.
That just wasnt where Rick was.
Thats not what you saw, right?
Those are just words on a page.
We never talked about it.
Mike just left it to me, to whatever that means to me.
Its just too personal, really, to tell you.
I wish that I could.
You had the surprise appearance inJustified: City Primevalin 2023.
Im curious if theres any update on that.I would be surprised if that happens.
Im just so grateful that I got to say words in Boyds voice, and use his delivery again.
That was my contribution.
Is that your normal go-to karaoke song?I love Elvis Costello as much as anybody.
Ill go all over the map.Even the Baby Billy songs.
Ill sing just about anything.
