It wasn’t sipping whiskey across from Sam Rockwell, gobsmacked as he heard the tale of an existential sexual awakening. It wasn’t shouldering the fatal ending and it wasn’t busting a litany of snakes free from their cages, either. Great moments, all of them, and plenty more to speak of from this year’s The White Lotus. But when it comes to his dominant year on TV, there’s one Walton Goggins moment that beat them all, and it boils down to a single word: “Teenjus.”
Let’s back up.
Despite being a television fixture for decades with iconic roles on FX’s The Shield and Justified (not to mention recurring as Venus Van Dam on Sons of Anarchy), Goggins utterly exploded this year. Hot off an Emmy-nominated turn on Fallout in 2024, the erstwhile Boyd Crowder entered 2025 with authority, starring as wounded bird Rick Hatchett on Mike White’s third season of The White Lotus. As Rick, Goggins got to show longtime fans and incoming members of his fan club a rarer side of the actor: quiet, restrained, in deep amounts of unspoken pain. In the end, Rick’s story ended as tragically as it began, leaving a sizable impact crater not only on an emotional level, but on a practical one — there was a sudden lack of Goggins on the regular HBO Sunday lineup.
Except, of course, Goggins was not suddenly gone from HBO. Far from it. All one had to do was invest in one of the most indelible HBO comedies in recent memory: The Righteous Gemstones, from the brilliant (and deranged) mind of Danny McBride, another one of Goggins’ frequent collaborators (not to mention travel buddies).
After leading a two-season run on Vice Principals together, Goggins and McBride’s latest team-up was an even more outrageous endeavor, a hilarious and surprisingly heartfelt examination of a televangelical family dynasty known as the Gemstones. While the show focused largely on the three core Gemstone siblings and their father, Goggins played a pivotal supporting role, again both hilarious and surprisingly heartfelt, with hair-and-makeup enhancements that made him almost as unrecognizable as The Ghoul on Fallout. (Emphasis on “almost.”)
Enter: Uncle Baby Billy Freeman, the shock-white-hair-wigged geriatric has-been turned has-been-born-again, having transformed from washed-up child star into a prolifically successful game show host, not to mention family man. Far from the days of feeding silver bullets from Colorado to his underage nephew, and far from the Baby Billy who abandoned his child (played by Macaulay Culkin in a memorable season two cameo), this final version of Baby Billy in season four was at the height of his powers — only to realize maintaining that high involved getting literally high, and perhaps the idea of chasing a final crowning achievement was a Quixotic errand in light of his true prize: a family that loves and respects him for the Uncle Baby Billy he is.
The Righteous Gemstones is over, and it has been for two months now. For Goggins, the process of closing down his time as Uncle Baby Billy came on the immediate other side of closing down his time on The White Lotus. Hopping from Rick’s devastating ending straight into Billy’s joyful conclusion was no small feat for the actor, especially considering what it practically involved: an elaborate dance number for the musical movie “Teenjus” (watch that, below), in which the 53-year-old Goggins starred as the 70-something Baby Billy starring as a teenage Jesus Christ. Wigs on wigs were required to make this work, among other necessities, and the results were clear: one of the most absurd yet joyful television moments not just of this year, but of Goggins’ whole career.
With Emmy nominations just around the corner, and with whatever awards-saturated future awaits Goggins, we cannot go on without praising “Teenjus.” Below, in my conversation with Goggins, we do exactly that. But first, we walk through the memory palace of Uncle Baby Billy’s life, from season one all the way through to the end, and well beyond.
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Walton, I’m trying to track how many different characters you were holding space for during this moment in your career. You have the Ghoul on Fallout, who is already effectively two characters, who you have to pause in order to play Rick on The White Lotus. You end your time as Rick, already an intense character for you to hold, and then you immediately return to Uncle Baby Billy on Gemstones. You have said in interviews that you weren’t done holding onto Rick Hatchett until The White Lotus finale actually aired. Was that the same with you and Uncle Baby Billy? Did you have to hold onto him until the final Righteous Gemstones season began airing?
That’s a great question, and I would say the answer to that question would have been very different for seasons one and two. Because it’s [a ridiculous character], but he’s also grounded and rooted in truth. Baby Billy is a narcissist, but Baby Billy was also left behind. He was a person who had this collaboration with his sister. That’s happened to many people over the course of a career in show business. We’ve seen it where you feel one way about yourself and then when that collaboration comes to an end, when that person is taken away from you or you’re not invited to the next party and you’re left alone and you venture out on your own, you realize that no, you’re not that person.
I think for anyone not to have empathy for a situation like that, what kind of person would you be if you didn’t see that for the reality that it is? So much of [Baby Billy] was about poverty and not having the resources to provide for his family the way that his sister did, for being the perennial outsider and being welcomed, but not really being welcomed, to the Gemstones house with his family and feeling less than for his entire adult life, really, until he meets [his wife] Tiff (Valyn Hall). [Pauses] We’re talking about a comedy in a very serious way!
Well, you kind of have to, in order to crack into the character, certainly, but that’s some of the genius of this show.
Season one was really tough, getting through a lot of that. Then season two, what Danny McBride does as well, if not better than anyone, is write these profoundly over-the-top satirical situations and people, personalities that are also grounded in real truth. That’s what it really is for me.
Season two was about Baby Billy reconciling his narcissism and the sacrificing of his child. I can’t even say that without tearing up, truly. He abandoned his family, he abandoned his child, and he has to come to terms with that in order to move forward in his new life with the wife he has now, and make amends and apologize. That whole season for me inching towards this ultimate inevitable confrontation with his son and finding the words to say “I’m sorry” and truly mean it. And in Danny McBride fashion, he’s able to do that from a narcissistic standpoint saying, “Well, you don’t think about me? You don’t wonder what I’m up to? And is there anything I can do for you, son?”
HBO
You can let him punch you in the face! Really, that scene lives with me, because it’s layered not only in what’s happening with Uncle Baby Billy, but there’s a lot in there about Macaulay Culkin playing your son, and knowing some of the public story about his career and how he grew up as a child actor under hard conditions. There was a lot of power in that casting decision.
When they told me it would be Macaulay, I had never met him but we had friends in common. I saw him standing outside of his trailer that day when I pulled up to set, but I didn’t want him to see me unless I was in my makeup. I didn’t look at him, I didn’t smile, I didn’t say anything. I saw him outside of the car, he saw me, I waved, then never said a word. I walked into makeup, did my transformation, talked through the scene with David Gordon Green, who was directing on that particular day, and we worked through the entire experience. It was only after I took the wig and makeup off that we sat and hugged and talked shit. I told him how much of a fan I was, and we’re friends now. We text and hangout.
Then on the immediate other side of this reconciliation with his son, Baby Billy becomes a father again with Tiff, which brings us to another scene that lives rent-free in my head: “… a toilet baby?”
That’s an opportunity to rewrite your own history, isn’t it? That was the bookend to my whole experience. Here he is: Here’s my son. Here’s my second chance. I need to do this all over again. It makes me fucking cry, because God, we all need second chances. We all want that opportunity. We all have regrets. We’re all just learning along the way.
So, a long way of answering your original question: season three comes around, Danny tells ms, “Okay, we’re just going to have a lot of fun this season.” And in season four, we continue that fun with Billy. He gets his Bible Bonkers game show. He’s back on television with Aunt Tiff, and playing all of that out with Valyn Hall — the joy and love of their relationship and the success they have is really special. He’s always craved this attention, and we see he does have something to contribute. He found his lane. We go right from that into season four and “Teenjus.” So, with all that said, am I still living with Baby Billy in a painful way? No. I’m sad that I won’t get to play him again. But I am so gratified with what we did with his story, and I am so proud of all the actors and people involved in this show. And I’m really fucking proud of my buddy Danny. I feel like it’s time to give him his flowers. He’s been doing this for so long, and it’s a real feather in my cap to be a part of his stable. I can’t wait to see what we do next.
I must ask: you are 53-year-old Walton Goggins playing a 70-something Baby Billy playing a teenage Jesus Christ. How do you do that?
You take it seriously! We talked a bit with our wardrobe designer about how he would dress for the part as a director — taking it very seriously like he’s Martin Scorsese, for real. But then we have to figure out: How do we transition from him as this very serious director to deciding that he’s going to do it himself and get in front of the camera [to play Teenjus]? He has a very specific vision but he’s working with amateurs, and he sees they’re not up for it so he’s gotta go do the job himself. (Laughs.) I didn’t know any of this was going to happen ahead of time, by the way.
You didn’t sit down ahead of time with Danny to map out Teenjus?
We would sit down and read everything beforehand for seasons one and two, because clearly that was very important for me as this character. For season three, I didn’t have a lot of time to work, so he was able to backload all of my stuff into a concentrated six or seven weeks. Then for season four, obviously, I wasn’t there for the first four and a half months of shooting. I was shooting The White Lotus, and when that was done, I came right back for Baby Billy.
I landed, [went to The Righteous Gemstones production], and it was all Baby Billy all the time. I had gotten to a certain point where I couldn’t let any other story in my head other than Rick Hatchett and getting to the end of that experience. And because of that, Danny kept Teenjus from me. I had gotten episodes one through four in my head while I was on the treadmill in Thailand, but after that, it’s March or April or something, and I hadn’t looked at all beyond that. So when I got there, and when he told me about the Teenjus storyline — I could not stop laughing.
There’s the big “Teenjus” music number — “On a groove that’s so divine, turning water into wine” — and you’re dancing your heart out. Talk to me about the preparation. Was it different from some of the other song and dance numbers you had done as Billy previously?
It was lighter. We took a lot of time in seasons one and two to get the dance and vocals right. I’m not a singer. I do the best I can. My bucket carries some water. It might be leaking. (Laughs.) But I get away with whatever I can. Then comes “There Will Come a Payday” [in season three], which Danny put a ton of thought into, so that was a lot as well. In season three, we had Bible Bonkers, and we got to literally the day beforehand — our incredible choreographers had come up with all of this amazing stuff for me to do, and I kind of blew all of that up. I said to them, “This is all so good. It’s so visual, it’s so funny. It’s also so real, and it’s great for [all the other dancers], but Baby Billy cannot do these moves.” I just needed them to create enough space for me to imitate Tina Turner. I wanted to do the apex of “Proud Mary” for 20 seconds, and just let me do my thing.
The same thing happened this season with Teenjus. They have to tell this story of two warring sides, and then they launch into this huge dance. It’s so funny. They had it all completely choreographed, and the only big X-factor was my participation. I came and saw what they had come up with, I got to look at everything and everyone’s moves, and we decided that all I need was my circle. Let everyone else move out and let me just stay in that circle, let me do my thing and let’s see what happens. We did that, and beyond the beats where we needed to be in a certain place for the camera to pick it up, no one really knew, including myself, what was going to happen next.
Were you wearing your Uncle Baby Billy wig underneath your Teenjus wig?
Yeah, of course. I had to! I had the Baby wig on, the Jesus wig on, and man, it was just so fun. I knew after one take with these people that this whole thing was going to be so fun and special. Just the message of this song, and even the name: “Turn the Other Cheek.” Doing a rap, and playing a teenage Jesus? It was the perfect way to end all of this for me.
The way Danny architected all of this, that it’s on the other side of all that Baby’s gone through, that he has this family that he cares for greatly — he loves his wife, he loves his kids and he loves his work. There’s this beautiful conversation he has with Eli (John Goodman) where he talks about how he’s in a season of his life where it’s raining and he wants to catch every drop. It’s such a good conversation, so important and so well-written. I feel a bit like that right now.
I was going to say, it sounds very much like where you’re at.
I understand it, without being gross about it. I want to feel and touch every part of this experience, and never forget it. Because you never know what’s going to happen next. No one knows.
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Righteous Gemstones is now streaming in entirety on Max, along with The White Lotus season three.
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