‘White Lotus’ Star Walton Goggins Was Bitten by Snake While Filming

Last week’s episode of The White Lotus featured a hilarious scene with Walton Goggins‘ character getting high and freeing several snakes from their cages. In the episode, his on-screen girlfriend (played by Aimee Lou Wood) gets bitten by a snake.

What viewers didn’t see was that the opposite actually happened in real life. Goggins shared on an episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live that he was bitten by a snake during the scene’s filming.

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“All of them were real snakes, and I don’t just have a phobia, it’s like a missing link when it comes to snakes,” he said. “I’m really, really terrified, and there’s something genetically wrong with me when it comes to snakes.”

“When I picked up the snake for the very first time, I started crying uncontrollably,” he said. “[White Lotus writer/director] Mike White is looking at me like, ‘Oh my God. I don’t want to torture this poor guy, but we need to get a close-up.’”

Later on, the series’ snake handler on set told Goggins which snakes not to touch, and he became fearful of grabbing the wrong creature.

“They yell ‘action,’ and it’s like, ‘Okay, don’t open the first one, because they’ll kill you,’” he said of the snake cages. “The next one — was it green, or was it brown? Which one has a big bite? And so I started pulling the green one, and as I was pulling the snake out, he didn’t want to come, and so the snake turns around, and he bit me!”

He then said he began to panic all over the set.

“I wish I could have been cool. I fancy myself a pretty cool guy. Like, ‘Hey, yeah, I got a snake bite.’ This was my reaction, I swear to God, it was like,” he screamed, and then said “Oh my God, I’ve been bit by a snake! Oh, my God!”

Goggins later discovered the snake was non-venomous. The next day, the producers sent him to the hospital out of an abundance of caution.

“That day, somebody just kind of came up [and said], ‘I’m so sorry you’re not feeling too good. Listen, could you just sign this?,” he said. “I thought, ‘Do you want my autograph or is this like, I’ve just lost all of my rights?’”

The White Lotus airs Sundays at 9 PM on HBO.