5 Walton Goggins Movies & TV Shows The White Lotus Fans Need To Watch

Like every season of the hit HBO Mike White series "The White Lotus," the Thailand-set third season featured some terrific character actors giving scene-stealing turns as some of the show's most over-the-top characters yet. One of season 3's biggest standouts was Walton Goggins as Rick Hatchett, a visitor to The White Lotus on a quest for vengeance, and the fact that he was a standout should come as no real surprise to fans of the charismatic actor. Over his career thus far, Goggins has made a name for himself by completely disappearing into his roles and giving them his all, no matter how big or small the part. One has to look no further than his guest spot on the NBC sitcom "Community" to understand his incredible talent for committing to the bit. Heck, he even pushed past his own severe phobia of snakes to shoot a terrifying scene in "The White Lotus," only to end up having his own nightmare come true when he was bitten by a snake while filming, so the guy clearly knows the meaning of dedication. 

Goggins has a pretty extensive resume as an actor and it would take someone quite a while to work through all of his performances, but there are some real standouts that even the most casual fan should probably check out. Here are five great TV shows and movies (in no specific order) starring Walton Goggins, one of Hollywood's most unique talents. 

While many TV viewers were introduced to Goggins as Detective Shane Vandrell on the long-running FX crime drama "The Shield," it was on his follow-up series, the FX series "Justified," where fans really got a chance to see how wild and extreme Goggins can take his characterizations, to positive effect. As former Kentucky coal miner and current crafty criminal Boyd Crowder, Goggins helped develop the character into something deeper than what was just on the page. Both Goggins and the show's star, Timothy Olyphant (who played U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens), cared passionately about the world created by author Elmore Leonard, to the point where they would butt heads near the end of the show's run, mirroring their onscreen relationship as former fellow coal miners-turned-criminal and lawman. 

Though Goggins has no problem committing to a role completely, he did struggle with Crowder's racism, on display in not only his language but even some of his tattoos. He even helped shape the character over time, making him less prejudiced and more morally complex with each season. Over the show's six seasons and its spin-off "Justified: City Primeval," Goggins made Boyd Crowder a charismatic and complicated devil of a man who was the perfect foil for Raylan's modern old west sheriff with a heart of gold. 

It's interesting that Goggins struggled with Boyd's racism on "Justified," because his most impressive movie role is as Chris Mannix, who claims to be the new sheriff of Red Rock and son of a Confederate Lost-Causer in Quentin Tarantino's "The Hateful Eight." It's a terrific movie for actors because not only are there quite a few top-level performers operating at the peak of their powers, but the single setting makes the whole thing more like a stage play and the performances mimic the intensity of stage-bound work. As the characters (and actors) all freeze together during a blizzard at a haberdashery in the Rocky Mountains, they must discover who among them is a spy secretly working for the captured criminal Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh), and what little trust they might have in each other quickly dissolves when their personal allegiances are laid bare and Domergue's bounty comes into play. 

"The Hateful Eight" is an awful lot like John Carpenter's "The Thing" sans alien, and the interactions between the characters as they grow increasingly paranoid is what makes it sing. Mannix is an interesting character because he is definitely coming from a deeply bigoted past, but he has several moments where he shows that he is much more than just his father's son, and a particularly poignant finale where (spoiler!) he's the only survivor alongside Samuel L. Jackson's character, Major Marquis Warren. Hey ... doesn't "The Thing" end the same way?

There are things about the FX motorcycle drama "Sons of Anarchy" that have not aged particularly well, and Goggins being cast as a trans woman is something that series creator Kurt Sutter has said he would not do today, instead opting for a trans actor to take on the role. In "Sons of Anarchy," Goggins plays professional escort Venus Van Damme, a transgender sex worker who ends up having a love affair with biker Tig (Kim Coates). Venus is the result of Goggins and Sutter joking that Sutter would only ever cast Goggins if it was in a role where he was unrecognizable and Goggins suggested a trans woman who "felt like a real person and someone you'd want to hang out with" to Sutter, who took on the challenge. 

Venus is a truly compelling, complex character that transcends traditional stereotypes about transgender women in media, and she very much feels like a real person with both admirable qualities and understandable flaws. While we need to stop giving transgender character roles to cisgender actors entirely, Goggins and his dedication to Venus at least make it a nuanced portrayal that does more good than harm. Just like with a cisgender actor playing transgender character Carmen on "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia," sometimes people's hearts being in the right place is more than half the battle. 

One thing Goggins always manages to do is bring a layer of humanity to his roles, even when he's playing characters who are utterly inhuman. On the Prime Video series "Fallout," based on the popular post-apocalyptic video game series of the same name, Goggins plays the Ghoul, a mutated remnant of a man who survived the nuclear fallout and wanders the wasteland. With sunken eyes, no nose, and skin the color and texture of a burnt hot dog, Goggins as the Ghoul is somehow both hideous and handsome, dripping with charisma despite being a pretty amoral antihero. He stars opposite Ella Purnell as Lucy, a perpetually optimistic survivor of one of Vault-Tec's fallout shelters who makes her way up to the surface only to discover that nothing is quite as she was taught, and the two are perfect opposites. 

"Fallout" features a mini "Justified" reunion, too, organized by Goggins, making the Ghoul have more in common with Boyd than just cowboy-esque attire. We also get to see him in some flashbacks as his pre-ghoulified self too, making the character a bit more tragic and a little more likable. The end of the first season of "Fallout" was absolutely bonkers, so fans are eagerly awaiting season 2 and can't wait to see what madness the Ghoul gets up to next.

Speaking of bonkers, that reminds us of Baby Billy's Bible Bonkers, the fictional game show inside of the HBO comedy series "The Righteous Gemstones," where Goggins plays televangelist preacher Baby Billy. Goggins previously worked with series creator Danny McBride on the dark comedy series "Vice Principals," co-created by McBride and Jody Hill, but on "The Righteous Gemstones," he's truly allowed to let his freak flag fly in every sense of the word. Baby Billy (or Uncle Baby Billy, if you're one of the Gemstone kids) is a fast-talking, wise-cracking former child Christian musician turned megachurch preacher, and he's much more interested in making a buck than he is in the good Lord. He's always scheming and coming up with new moneymaking ideas, like a game-show called "Bible Bonkers" and a Christian drama called "Teenjus" about teenaged Jesus, and he commits to them with the same intensity that Goggins commits to his roles. 

Goggins really isn't afraid to let it all hang out as Baby Billy, both literally and metaphorically as his amazing season 4 nude scene revealed, and as the character grows exponentially more self-indulgent with each episode, it's always great entertainment.

Whether Goggins is playing a sassy sex worker, a wasteland wanderer, or television's most fashionable televangelist, he's going to do it with style and passion. From his first role in the 1989 "In the Heat of the Night" TV series (based on the Sidney Poitier movie) to "The White Lotus" and beyond, Goggins is guaranteed to make it great.