- Wood starred alongside Walton Goggins in season three
- Mancunian actor has received huge plaudits for her performance as Chelsea
- “It feels like in a weird way, Chelsea does get what she wants”
Aimee Lou Wood has spoken about the ending of White Lotus season three, how she came to land the role of Chelsea and what her co-stars were like to work with.
Wood, who played Chelsea in the latest season of Mike White’s millionaire murder drama, has drawn huge amounts of plaudits for her performance as Rick Hatchett’s (the sublime Walton Goggins) girlfriend and could very well see herself nominated for the likes of Emmys and Golden Globes in the near future as a result.
In the aftermath of the bullet riddled, blood soaked finale, which SPOILER ALERT left Chelsea and Rick together forever, albeit in a pond, full of bullet holes, Vanity Fair published an interview with the Mancunian actor in which she discussed how she felt about Chelsea’s demise and how a conflicted Mike White even thought about changing which characters die.
“Chelsea Does Get What She Wants”
Speaking about Chelsea’s fate, Wood revealed that she realised she had the part after White told her at the audition that the character does indeed die at the end of the season.
“My intuition kicked in, and I was so upset reading it. I didn’t have the rest of the scripts. I didn’t have context, but I knew. She loves him and she dies, and I just knew it. That’s why then at the end, I was like, ‘I feel like maybe I might have got that part because he just told me.’”
Chelsea is an astrology obsessed free spirit who wants nothing more than to enjoy a long, happy life with Rick. She warns Rick away from his vengeful mission to Bangkok, where he aims to kill the man he (wrongfully) believes killed his father. After being the victim of an armed robbery and a snake bite already in the season, Chelsea also tells Rick “bad things come in threes”, which turns out to be fatally true, as Chelsea is killed in the crossfire of Rick’s shootout with Jim Hollinger’s bodyguards, before Rick himself is killed as he attempts to carry Chelsea to receive medical attention.
“Words are Chelsea’s armor—she’s a chatterbox,” Wood continues, “And all of a sudden she cannot speak. And then he just sees her, and he loves her. He has to do the talking and he has to do the carrying. He has to literally carry her, and she’s been carrying them the whole time.
“It feels like in a weird way, Chelsea does get what she wants.”
But Chelsea and Rick being the guests who check out in a pair of body bags almost didn’t end up being the ending Mike White ran with.
Other Guests Almost Ended up Checking Out Permanently in White Lotus Season Three
“The journey of Rick and Chelsea was very profound for both of us and was a big moment,” Wood explains later on in the interview, “I’m sure that [Walton] feels very similar to how I feel today, which is this kind of release of something. I feel like I have permission to let go of anything, and what I loved about her, I can carry on with me. Mike a few times was saying, ‘Have I made the right choice? Are people gonna hate me too much? Maybe I should change who dies.’ But I was always so peaceful. I was always like, ‘You’ve done the right thing. Chelsea has to die.'”
Following the airing of the finale last night (April 6), Wood’s co-star and on-screen romantic interest Walton Goggins shared an emotional post about the journey of Rick and Chelsea.
Wood is set to star in Film Club, a series for BBC Three in the UK, which she co-wrote with Ralph Davis. Although, given the amount of success she has earned through her performances in The White Lotus, we should probably be expecting Hollywood to be calling pretty frequently in the near future.
