The White Lotus‘ Aimee Lou Wood is still processing her character Chelsea’s fate after that shocking season 3 finale.
During the Sunday, April 6, finale of the hit HBO series, Chelsea and Rick (Walton Goggins) died as a result of his decisions in Thailand. “It’s weird,” Wood, 31, admitted at a post-finale panel. “Because for about two weeks before we shot it, I felt super weird. It was, like, this odd, ominous thing that was just hanging over us.”
Knowing where Chelsea would end up clouded Wood’s performance.
“I didn’t expect it to feel like that for such a long time before. Chelsea doesn’t know what’s gonna happen to her, but I know. So it’s this odd thing,” she continued. “[The finale] looked exactly how it felt, which was really strange. Like that whole bit, I was like, ‘Yeah, that’s exactly what it felt like.’”
Elsewhere in the finale, Belinda (Natasha Rothwell) walked away with $5 million after agreeing to remain silent about Gary a.k.a Greg’s (Jon Gries) true identity and connection to wife Tanya’s (Jennifer Coolidge) death.
“There’s a lot in that episode that made me f***ing sob a lot from the beginning,” Wood noted. “It’s so clever, because at the end, you want to hold the joy of triumph. But it’s still there like, so it might just make you sit in that really achy place. So I feel achy.”
Wood previously admitted she had “complicated” thoughts on how Rick and Chelsea’s arc ended.
“I felt very at peace with it while I was doing it and then as time’s gone on and I’ve processed it, I don’t,” she admitted to Decider earlier this month. “I think because I had Chelsea goggles on, everything was actually simpler because I just had to fully invest in her frame of mind, which is incredibly tunnel vision.”
She continued. “Since having separation from her, I’m like, ‘Oh, well, wait a sec. Wait a sec.’ I’m seeing things more clearly and I feel conflicted now and I think that everyone’s gonna feel — it’s quite controversial.”
After the finale aired, Wood’s costar Goggins, 53, shared a tribute honoring their onscreen love story. “With the heaviest of hearts … To me, ours was a love story. It was only ever a love story, hindered by unresolved, childhood trauma,” he wrote alongside Instagram photos of him and Wood. “We all have them … but can we move past them.”
The actor opened up about how he related to Rick and Chelsea‘s story, adding, “In the depths of our despair there is always beauty around us. If we can sit with our pain, just sit with it … not react … not be defined by it … It’s there … the love the world is constantly giving in any given moment is there. Always waiting for us to see it… Trust me I know.”
Goggins concluded the post with an Aeschylus quote. “’Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God,’” he added.
The White Lotus is currently streaming on Max.
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