Spoilers for The White Lotus.
Generally, I avoid writing too much about Severance and The White Lotus because most discussions involve so many spoilers, and I want people to be able to genuinely enjoy the experience of watching these shows in their own time. I’m really enjoying this season of TWL – I’m rooting for two characters to make it, Aimee Lou Woods’ character Chelsea and Natasha Rothwell’s character Belinda. Almost everyone else can choke! No, I actually like some of them, including Walton Goggins’ man of mystery, who is apparently hunting down the guy who killed his father. Goggins’ character, Rick, has flown to Bangkok to hunt down this guy, and Rick ended up calling an old friend for some help.
In the most recent episode, we finally got to meet Rick’s friend, who was played by Oscar-winner Sam Rockwell. Rockwell’s guest role – it’s more than a cameo, he’s in next week’s episode too – has quickly become one of the most bonkers moments in TWL’s history. Rockwell delivered a truly insane monologue which I will not even describe, you just have to watch it. So many people thought Rockwell’s partner Leslie Bibb somehow got Rockwell the role, or that Rockwell might have been hanging out on set with Bibb, because she’s one of the major characters this season. As it turns out, not so much. Bibb spoke to Entertainment Weekly about how Sam dropped into Thailand for eight days and did his thing.
Leslie Bibb tells Entertainment Weekly that she actually had nothing to do with Sam Rockwell’s casting.
“No, they came to me and they were like, ‘We’re going to offer this to Sam,’” Bibb tells EW. “I was on the treadmill and [producer] Dave Bernad came to me. But I was like, ‘Sam is wild as a buck. Listen, I don’t know what he’s going to do. He’s doing a movie in South Africa, he likes time to prep.’ And he was very nervous about that prep time.”
“That was a big arc to do that quickly,” Bibb says of [Rockwell’s] character’s debut. “And [Rockwell] literally went from one [project] to the next, so I said [to producers], ‘You can’t get mad at me if he says no. What if he says no?’ I was so scared! Then [creator] Mike [White] was like, ‘No, no, no, we won’t get mad at you.’”
Bibb laughed as she remembered telling the showrunner, “I was like, ‘That jet plane’s going to fly, I can’t ground him.’ But then it was really sweet — I think Walton really, because they’re very good friends, wanted to have that experience with him.”
And getting her real-life partner to come join her on the set of The White Lotus was a treat, even if Rockwell got a truncated experience. “It was really fun,” she says. “We don’t have any scenes together, and he did all of his stuff in eight days. We were there for six months, Sam was there for eight days — Sam did not [have] the same experience in eight days. He got The White Lotus light. But it’s nice to be able to have a context to share, and I think he’s a great actor, and we’re lucky to have him, and I think he chewed up that character. Mike was really happy to have him too.”
Bibb did get a bit jealous when she first saw some of Rockwell’s scenes, however. “I saw some stills from them on the boat in Bangkok, and I was like, ‘We’re sweating our faces off, and they were like, hair blowing in the wind,’” she added with a laugh. “Look how cool they look. This is like To Live and Die in L.A., but it was like To Live and Die in Bangkok. It was so cool.”
What’s even wilder about this is that Sam still hasn’t said anything? He just dropped into TWL, delivered the craziest monologue in the history of the show, dipped after a few days and he’s done absolutely nothing to promote it or talk about it. An actor’s life is so wild though, I bet Sam enjoyed the hell out of the guest role and being able to work with his friend Walton Goggins. What I also liked was that Rockwell’s appearance felt completely organic within the show. It wasn’t like “oh, look, a movie star just showed up!” You actually felt like those two guys had some history and once you see the scene, you realize that Sam didn’t do this for the glamour.
Photos courtesy of Cover Images.
