The White Lotus’ Walton Goggins and Aimee Lou Wood address their alleged Instagram-fuelled feud

We want onscreen friends to be real-life friends.

Whether it’s Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan, Michael Sheen and David Tennant, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler or Michelle Williams and Busy Philipps, we love the idea that their chemistry transcends movie magic.

It helps to buy into the elaborate fantasy worlds we emotionally invest in.

Which is why the potential feud between The White Lotus stars Walton Goggins and Aimee Lou Wood has been such a subject of fascination for the past few months.

They can’t be mad at each other! They’re Chelsea and Rick. They’re Rick and Chelsea.

Say what you will about the third season of The White Lotus – and, oh, boy, people have had plenty to say, ranging from the revamped theme song to the divisive season finale – if there’s one thing we all agreed on, it’s that the standouts were Goggins and Wood’s unusual pairing.

Goggins’ Rick and Wood’s Chelsea weren’t supposed to work. He was an emotionally unavailable middle-aged man with serious daddy issues and she was sunshine and light, an eternal optimist who had searing insights into other people.

But she described them as yin and yang, and although she kind of got wrong how yin and yang actually work (no, one side does eventually not win out over the other), the delight of their pairing was only compounded by the tragedy of their ending.

At first, Goggins and Wood seemed to be the best of buddies, when in August 2024 he posted to her Instagram page, “You are the brightest light in every room. A human’s human. Miss you.”

The series premiered in February and when it wrapped in April, Goggins and Wood both posted tributes to their characters and each other, either in text or in their choices of photos.

But within days, rumours of a feud were spreading all over the internet after it was noticed that the pair had unfollowed each other on Instagram. The Insta unfollow is now the first sign of any celebrity bust-up – the supposed bad blood between Victoria Beckham and daughter-in-law Nicola Peltz has all been built around Instagram activities and alleged snubs.

Actor Jason Isaacs had suggested that all was not copacetic on set. Earlier, he told The Guardian, “There were alliances that formed and broke, romances that formed and broke, friendships that formed and broke. It’s a long period of time for people to be away from their family with an open bar and all the wilderness being in Thailand allows.”

He also told Vulture that in real life, “there’s an off-screen White Lotus as well, with fewer deaths but just as much drama”.

He never named who he was referring to, but Wood’s revelation that Goggins didn’t watch the finale with the rest of the cast, reflecting his onscreen alter ego’s loner preferences, added fuel.

He also reposted, and later deleted, a clip from a Saturday Night Live sketch that Wood objected to.

After two months of tongue wagging, Goggins and Wood – or their management and publicists – clearly thought enough was enough.

Enter: the staged joint media opportunity.

The two actors did an interview and photo shoot with Variety to put the whole thing to bed: there is no feud, they love each other (platonically).

The Variety piece described how upon seeing each other for the first in months, they embraced for 30 full seconds, and immediately started to laugh together and had an impromptu dance party.

They held hands during the interview and Goggins apparently choked up when he said, “There is no feud. I adore, I love this woman madly, and she is so important to me.

“This is Goldie Hawn. This is Meg Ryan. She can do anything, and she will. You watch what the next 20 years of her experience will be.

“There is no feud. She is love and I know that I am that to her. We care about each other very deeply.”

For her part, Wood decried the Instagram sleuthing, and argued you can’t glean anything from it. She said, “I think it’s such a comment on where we’re at culturally. Why is everyone obsessing over Instagram. This is irrelevant. We don’t give a shite about Instagram.”

As for the unfollowing, Goggins explained that it was part of his process to cut himself off from any project once it was done, and cited that he didn’t talk to Timothy Olyphant for two years after their long run together on Justified.

By the end of interview, Goggins had re-followed Wood on Instagram.

Was it much ado about nothing or damage control? It really could go either way.