Between The White Lotus, Invincible, and the very-soon return of The Righteous Gemstones, Walton Goggins fans are eating well at the moment—as, apparently, was one of Goggins’ animal co-stars on one of those aforementioned shows. You know that scene from this week’s White Lotus, where Goggins’ character has a deep spiritual connection with a bunch of snakes in Thailand, releasing them from captivity? Yeah, one of them bit him.
Goggins told this anecdote in a very charming appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live! on Wednesday night, revealing that he’d already been “hysterically crying” on set due to a deep-seated fear of snakes, even before the incident occurred. Among other things, that meant he was hyper-focused on one particular bit of animal handling advice he got before the scene in question—i.e., the part about which of the snakes would kill him if he opened its cage—but not subsequent notes on which ones might be merely grouchy at being manhandled by a well-respected television actor. And so, after he went in to pick up a particular reptile who wasn’t up for scene work: “He turns around and he bit me.” Given his ophidiophobia, Goggins did not react to this sudden attack with the collected cool or sangfroid we might associate with some of his performances: “I swear to God, it was like, ‘Oh my God, I’ve been bit by a snake! Oh my God!'”
Sadly, the life of a working actor means you still have to keep filming a scene even if a (non-venomous) snake bites you, and so Goggins continued to film that day, eventually adjusting to his new snake-bit reality. At which point, producers let him know, hey, maybe he should go to the hospital, just in case, for a tetanus shot. “I said, ‘For what? You said the snake was nonvenomous, right? Am I dying a slow death? Is there something you know I don’t know?'” Anyway, just a reminder: Sometimes, when an actor is acting with an animal, you’re seeing a professional in their element, following the advice of other professionals to ensure everything goes smoothly. And sometimes you’re watching Walton Goggins damn near shit himself because a snake he’s very scared of just took a chunk out of his hand.
