Walton Goggins Shares How 'The White Lotus' Brought Back Memories of His First Wife's Death

Content warning: This article mentions suicide.

In 2001, well-known actor Walton Goggins married his first wife, Leanne Goggins (née Knight), a kind-hearted Canadian who ran a dog-walking business in Laurel Canyon, Calif.

Their relationship eventually began to unravel, and they grew distant over time. Despite their separation, the two remained legally married until Leanne's heartbreaking death by suicide on Nov. 12, 2004.

Walton has rarely addressed this painful chapter of his life, but in early 2025, he revealed how filming Season 3 of The White Lotus stirred up some deeply painful memories of that time and reminded him of the grief he had carried for so long.

For several months in 2024, Walton Goggins relocated to Thailand to film Season 3 of The White Lotus. While it likely was a first for many of his castmates, Walton had been there before — 20 years earlier, during a time of profound grief after the tragic death of his wife.

"I had someone in my life that committed suicide," Walton shared in an interview with GQ, published on February 4, "and she was my wife."

He explained to the outlet, "It's a very complicated story. Ultimately it was revealed the decision that she'd made. And yeah — I thought it was really unrecoverable for me. Life on the other side of that."

For the Righteous Gemstones star, the aftermath of Leanne's passing was a dark and endless search for meaning, a search that took him across the world.

"I spent the next three years looking for an excuse — not to end it, but certainly putting myself in situations that were questionable, not with drugs or anything like that, just life experiences and traveling. And I really went all over the world."

Thailand was the first stop on that journey, followed by Vietnam, Cambodia, and India.

But as Walton returned to Thailand to film The White Lotus two decades later, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was retracing old steps. Many of the locations on set were the places he'd visited in his grief, and they stirred memories of a man he once was — a man lost and desperate for peace.

"The first island we were staying on," the Fallout actor stated, "I realized, 'I've been on this road before.' And then the next island we went to, I realized, 'I've definitely been on this beach before. I know this boardwalk.' And all of the things kept coming back."

It all came to a head on Walton's last night of shooting, when the show filmed in Bangkok, on the banks of the Chao Phraya River: "We pulled up to this dock," he said, "and I was like, 'I know this dock. What? Okay. Yeah. No. I know this. Oh my God. That's the room I stayed in 20 years ago. That's my balcony.'"

The full weight of the moment hit him — that dock, that room, the painful memories of the first time he had arrived there, alone and shattered by the loss of Leanne. He candidly told GQ, "That's where I was the very first day I came here, 20 years ago, and in so much f--king pain, man."

It was an intensely emotional full-circle moment, one that made the Shield alum reflect on how far he has come since that dark time in his life. He confessed, "I think I haven't had the time to fully unpack the symmetry between those two people showing up at the same place, separated by 20 years. And a wife and a kid and peace and all the rest of it."

Looking back at the man he once was, Walton felt a deep compassion for him.

On set that day, he remembered thinking, "God, I wish I could hug that guy. I wish I could whisper in his ear, 'You're going to be okay. Life continues, and it continues for everybody if you can just hold on and lean into it and keep walking the walk that you're walking, and keep looking for the answers.'"