62: Why is Walton Goggins A Thing Now?
as well as the weekly recommendations
In this week’s edition, I’ve got the weekly recommendations as well as an essay about why Walton Goggins is a thing now, BUT FIRST…
🎧 Listen Up 🎧
In episode 186, Jason and I discussed the news that Nick Saban and a guy named Cody are going to be shaping NIL legislation, we speculated what’s going to happen with ESPN’s new streamer, and dropped in on some NBA Playoff developments.
We also recapped the most recent episode of Survivor as well as discussed Disney’s plans to reboot Holes, and Tom Segura’s upcoming Netflix show.
🎉 The Recommendations 🎉
📚 James by Percival Everett
WHERE: Amazon / Audible
In this reimagining of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Percival Everett takes the character of Jim and gives him, not so much a reimagining as much as a reclamation. No longer a footnote in Huck’s coming-of-age story, Jim/James is given a fully realized perspective with which he has to navigate survival in a world that sees him as property.
Come to this book for James’ voice and narrative authority, but stay for the way Everett plays with the form, shifts tone, and uses dream sequences and other subversions to give the story a richer punch.
📺 Warfare
WHERE: The Movie Theater
There’s a distinct likelihood that if you see this movie and don’t have any idea what it’s about, you may leave disappointed or confused. That’s because this one isn’t about special effects or banter or a meditation on the warrior mentality; it’s more a warning or visual lamentation about modern war.
Based on real events, we spend most of the movie stuck with a single platoon inside a two-story home. It becomes claustrophobic, and at every turn throughout the story, there’s a conscious choice not to cut past or skip over the mundane or tragic.
It becomes a dynamic part of the movie where you can FEEL how a typical movie would treat any given sequence, and how Warfare zigs instead of zagging; not to be different or unique as a story, but to emphasize just how much pop culture and society misunderstands about war and combat and the affect on those who are asked to engage in it.
✍️ Essay: Why Is Walton Goggins A Thing?
If you walked into a Hollywood pitch meeting ten years ago and said, “I’ve got your next leading man: gaunt face, intense eyes, south Georgia accent, and the soul of a haunted banjo,” you’d have been gently asked to leave. Possibly sedated. AND YET, here we are.
Walton Goggins, long relegated to the sidelines of prestige TV and morally questionable roles, is suddenly everywhere. Fresh off his turn as Rick Hatchett in The White Lotus, he just hosted SNL to add to an already exploding character dossier that includes his work in Fallout, where he stars both noseless and charmingly chewing scenery as a Southern-fried ghoul. He’s also been the heretical heart at the center of The Righteous Gemstones.
Altogether, he’s a meme, a mood, and a maximalist vibe and it’s tempting to call this a breakout moment. But that would be wrong. This isn’t a breakout. It’s more like that Hemingway line about how people go bankrupt: “Gradually, then all at once.”
Except in this case, we’re not being bankrupted; we’re being enriched with the character stylings of Walton Goggins precisely because of how gradual it’s been.
+ How To Account for His Rise To The Top +
Reason One: Singular, Supporting, Specific, and Southern
There’s a flavor of actor who becomes famous not by standing in the spotlight, but by stealing light from whatever scene he’s in. Walton Goggins is one of those guys. He began as a perpetual supporting character in shows like The Shield and Justified, often cast as someone with too many secrets, not enough shirts, and probably most definitely with some bad tweets.
While on Justified, Goggins’ Boyd Crowder was one of those TV villains who starts out as loathsome1 and then slowly transforms into a pretty-alright guy who we wish our protagonist could be friends with and this was because he was Southern Gothic in human form, as if Flannery O’Connor met a rat snake and said, “But what if you were human and GREAT at monologues?”
The most optimistic observation would be that Goggins wasn’t chasing stardom; he was building PRESENCE. Obviously, that ignores the fact that he might not have had the ability to chase stardom given his supporting actor stature and look, but there’s no denying his sketchy magnetism that makes you want to pay attention.
Reason Two: Meme-tastic
It turns out, the internet is very good at identifying strange charisma and giving it a memeable utility. This ability turned out to be serendipitous for Goggins and specifically when he entered into Danny McBride’s orbit and became a recurring player in McBride’s oeuvre of masculine animosity and discontent within the South.
Goggins first played Lee Russell in Vice Principals, which he then parlayed into the role he was born to play, Uncle Baby Billy Freeman on The Righteous Gemstones, a former Gospel Music child star turned televangelist with big white teeth, a large helmet of hair-sprayed hair, an affinity for jetskiing in the nude, and a small drug habit.
To this point, I still think this scene might be one of the greatest musical performances and metaphors I’ve ever seen on TV, which is Goggins in a nutshell: fully committed to the bit, even if the bit is beyond absurd.
All of it led to this season of The White Lotus where Goggins put on a master class on how to be a good scene partner without saying anything during Sam Rockwell’s buckwild monologue about sexxing himself up in Thailand.
Again, the characters, the memes, the quotes didn’t cause anything to explode as much as he helped Goggins ACCRUE.
Reason Three: The Age of Vibe-Based Casting
We’ve entered an era where charisma beats symmetry. Where chaos is more trustworthy than confidence. Where casting directors no longer ask “Is he hot?” but instead whisper, “Does he have, like, a vibe?”
Which, this is definitely not the essay to litigate how the idea of a “vibe” is rapidly transmogrifying into nothingness due to overuse. BUT, for now, when someone references a vibe or vibes, what they are really considering is someone or something’s essence.
And Goggins has essence in abundance (abund-essence??). He’s one of the rare character actors who don’t JUST seem like they exist in the world to be a character actor, like a Philip Seymour Hoffman or Steve Buscemi. I can easily see Goggins as the guy scalping tickets at Bama games or helping you modify your Tacoma in ways that are definitely not street legal.
It’s how he doesn’t look like a superhero which makes him so compelling. We’re in a moment where we don’t want a strong but charisma-less jawline; we want a guy who looks like he’s been banned from all the Waffle Houses in the tri-state area.
IN CONCLUSION…
There’s something deeply satisfying about Walton Goggins getting all the shine now. Because again, it’s not just that he’s gotten good, it’s that he’s always been good.
He’s the actor version of an underground band that suddenly hits No. 1 on the charts, not because they changed, but because the culture and the moment did.
In an industry obsessed with viral moments and youthful breakthroughs, Goggins is a reminder of the slow magic of the long game and how steady and strange can actually win the race sometimes.
“loathsome“ here meaning “white supremacist”
Nothing rolls off the tongue quite like Walton Goggins Goggles Glasses. https://gogginsgoggles.com/
He has rizz 🤷🏼♀️