Walton Goggins reacted to some of the unkind headlines directed at his newfound sex symbol status while hosting tonight’s Saturday Night Live.
The 53-year-old star of The White Lotus and The Righteous Gemstones was hosting the sketch show for the first time.
During his monologue Goggins referred to the popularity of his White Lotus role as Rick Hatchett, noting that the character “is pretty brooding, which the internet seemed to find attractive.”
He said friends had asked him what it was like becoming a sex symbol at 53 years old, to which he responded: “Fantastic…until I Googled myself and read some of the headlines.”
He then read out a series of real headlines about himself, starting with Cosmopolitan asking: “Are We All Horny for Walton Goggins’s Receding Hairline?”
Goggins responded: “I’ve had the same hairline since I was seven. It’s not receding. It’s holding its ground!”
Another headline, from Slate, read: “His Hair Is Greasy. His Eyes Are Bulging. I Think I’m in Love.”
Goggins called that one: “Beautiful journalism.”
Finally the actor pointed out a headline from Yahoo News that read: “Hollywood’s Newest Heartthrob Is a Greasy, Depressing Little Man Whom No One Saw Coming.”
Goggins joked: “For some reason, the part of that headline that offends me the most is the word ‘whom’. It just sounds pretentious.”
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Later in the show, Goggins reunited with his White Lotus co-star Sam Rockwell. Despite online rumours, he was not joined by his onscreen partner from that show, Aimee Lou Wood.
Speaking at the Met Gala earlier this week Wood denied reports she would guest on the show, saying: “I couldn’t say, but also I’m not doing that!”
When asked if she would want to, she responded: “Yeah, why not! Why not, yeah! It’d be fun! I loved working with Walton; it was the best thing ever.”
“He’s going to be incredible doing SNL. It’s the perfect thing for him to do. It’s going to be hilarious. I’m so excited to see it,” she added.
She also addressed the recent controversy that ensued after she called out SNL for its “mean and unfunny” skit mocking her appearance.
Admitting that it “all got very out of control,” she explained her reason for speaking out, saying: “I could either say something — because I saw it and people were angry about it — and I could say something and just have it be said and then I wouldn’t spiral inwardly and feel terrible about myself.”
“And [I thought I’d] just say something really simple and balanced, and then next minute the whole world,” she continued, “and then it was like ‘Aimee Lou Wood crying on the street over the SNL skit’” Wood added in reference to tabloid pictures of her shedding tears in public.
“I wasn’t crying about the SNL skit; I was crying about something completely unrelated,” she clarified. “But it all got quite out of control.”
During an April episode of NBC’s long-running sketch comedy series, SNL cast members reimagined The White Lotus as “The White Potus.” At one point in the sketch, they attempted to recreate the dynamic between Goggins and Wood’s White Lotus characters, Rick and Chelsea, with RFK Jr., played by Jon Hamm, rambling about fluoride in water to Chelsea, played by Sarah Sherman, who darts off to kill and eat a monkey.
Sherman’s parody of Chelsea included faking a bizarre British accent and wearing protruding prosthetic teeth in an attempt to mimic Wood’s appearance.
Wood later criticized the skit, insisting that there must have been a “cleverer, more nuanced, less cheap way” to spoof her looks. Goggins, however, hailed the “amazing” and “smashing” sketch in a since-deleted Instagram comment.
