bitchy | Aimee Lou Wood: Rick & Chelsea are not a ‘love story,’ they’re both just crazy

Spoilers for The White Lotus Season 3.

In the sixth and seventh episodes of The White Lotus, I worked out a theory about how Rick and Chelsea – played by Walton Goggins and Aimee Lou Wood – would die together, or that their fates would be irreversibly tied. It was especially obvious with the decisions Rick made when he went to Bangkok to confront Jim Hollinger (Scott Glenn) that things were not going to work out for Rick and Chelsea long-term. That’s exactly what happened – Chelsea died in the crossfire between Rick and Jim’s bodyguards, and Rick was shot by Gaitok. While I feel for Chelsea, I also appreciated the fact that Rick and Chelsea were both dumbasses who refused to make smart decisions, and that was ultimately why they both died. Well, Aimee sees it the same way – she doesn’t think Rick and Chelsea had some kind of grand love story, she thinks they were just both equally crazy. From her Variety interview:

Chelsea’s silence in her last moments: “She was going to say something about “bad things happening in threes” originally, and then Mike got rid of that. I was so glad that he did, because the silence is really heartbreaking. She speaks so much, and words are her armor. Sometimes she speaks so that she doesn’t have to be vulnerable — the words and aphorisms and astrology and mottos. Then, in that moment, she can’t speak. And there is nothing Rick would want more in that moment than for her to be a machine gun asking him loads of questions — for her to be talking about astrology. He wants to get a headache from her. He wants to hear her say, “You’re so pretty! You’re so pretty!” He wants it back, and it’s gone. She’s never gonna speak again. The thing that he was so irritated by, he would give anything for it now. I think that was perfect that she doesn’t talk, because for once, he’s doing the f–king talking. And that’s how it should have been. If they could have met somewhere in the middle, it would have been beautiful.

Whether Chelsea was angry with Rick in her last moments: “I don’t think she was angry with him. I wish she was, because I think if she’d been angry with him, she wouldn’t have followed him into the danger. It’s amor fati. Because she’s like, “This is my fate, and I embrace it, good or bad. If a bad thing happens to you, Rick, it happens to me too, because we’re connected now.” In a way, this is what she wants, which is disturbing but also kind of gorgeous.

Chelsea could have walked away but didn’t: “Her death drive and her life force are equally as big. If she had just let her life force be a bit bigger than her death drive, she probably would have walked off and picked herself. But she’s proving herself right in that moment. She’s got a very strong unconscious drive, and I think she’s proving herself right by being like, “I said we were cosmic feelings. I said I would follow you to the next life. And I’m gonna prove it.” So, she walks into the firing line; it was an accident that she gets hit, but she doesn’t leave the danger zone, right? She sees Rick shoot Jim, and she just stays still. She’s just seen that her boyfriend, the love of her life, is a killer — and she doesn’t walk away.

Chelsea is nuts: “People are so mean about Rick, and as they should be. It’s not nice watching someone be mean to a ray of sunshine, but she is nuts. She’s just as nuts as he is. His God is his own pain, and she’s made her God him. Both of them are crazy. I love them so much, but they are crazy, and they die because they’re crazy. They don’t die because it’s a love story. They die because they’re crazy.

Whether Rick & Chelsea’s relationship is toxic: “I think it’s even post-toxic. It almost goes full circle to being very pure, because I don’t think there’s malice in it. I think for something to be a toxic relationship, there’s got to be some kind of control. There’s a power dynamic. There’s a this, there’s a that — and there is in Rick and Chelsea. But there’s also not, because they’re both as willful. It’s almost like it’s so nuts, that it can’t even be judged by other people. It can’t even be judged by those standards anymore, because it’s so beyond that. He’s getting what he wants, which is revenge, and she’s getting what she wants, which is him, right?

[From Variety]

There’s also a nice part where she says Mike White wanted the audience to feel like Chelsea was right all along, that she knew something bad would happen, that she really was a witchy mystic all along. Which I think is correct – Chelsea was proved right, her intuition was correct. Aimee’s also right about Rick and Chelsea both being nuts. It wasn’t a toxic relationship – they loved each other a lot and they were both getting what they wanted out of the relationship in various ways.

Photos courtesy of HBO/Avalon.