Walton Goggins on Real-Life Loss and ‘Tomb Raider’ Truth

It’s been 15 years since audiences last saw Lara Croft on the big screen, and with the resurging popularity of the video games—thanks to Square Enix’s 2013 reboot—Friday’s release of Tomb Raider aims to hit the reset button on the failed film franchise. Not only does the film’s story mirror many of the plot points from the video game reboot, the project boasts some big names, including Oscar winner Alicia Vikander (The Danish Girl, Ex Machina) taking on the title role of Lara Croft; Dominic West (The Wire, The Affair) as her father, Lord Richard Croft; and Emmy-nominated actor Walton Goggins as the movie’s big bad, Mathias Vogel.

The first time I ever met Walton Goggins, we were one of the first people attending an industry party at San Diego Comic-Con. He lit my friend’s cigarette, clinked my glass of whiskey and obliged me to a brief chat about his work. That was a few years ago. And as we were introduced during his recent Tomb Raider press tour, he instantly recognized me. As humbling as that moment was, it was just the beginning of an emotional connection I never expected to make with the actor.

Oh, here’s some important context you need to know: Just days before this interview, I discovered I was going to be a dad. Maybe it’s kismet that Walton and I were here at that moment. Because learning of my pending fatherhood made viewing the new Tomb Raider movie—a video game adaptation, at that!—a more moving experience than I could’ve ever expected.

“A little about my journey: I was 39 when my wife and I, when we had our son. And [previously,] I was, you know, never going to get married again, and I never wanted to have children. That wasn’t on my trajectory,” explains Goggins, who has a 7-year-old son, Augustus, with current wife Nadia Conners. Walton’s first wife, Leanne Goggins, died by suicide in 2004. Fourteen years later, he still holds that trauma close to the vest. “And then it happened,” he continues. “And it is, you know, the greatest thing that has ever happened to me. It is the most inconvenient and greatest and convenient thing.”

“What the fuck are you talking about, ‘What is this?!’ This is Nina Simone, mate!”

Throughout his career, Goggins has developed a reputation of playing nuanced, morally ambiguous characters that walk the line between right and wrong. From The Shield‘s Shane Vendrell, to Boyd Crowder on Justified, to Lee Russell from HBO’s Vice Principals, it seems he is drawn to these types of roles, tapping into an emotional grit and human truth that separates him from the villainous pack. With Mathias Vogel, he has done it again. It drives me to wonder: What happens when audiences empathize with the bad guy? What does that say about us?

“I didn’t read it as a villain,” Goggins says, matter-of-factly. “And I didn’t read it as an actor trying to find some ground for empathy or ego. I just looked at it and … I just wanted to honor the truth of his experience—which is a man who has been isolated on an island, who has gone through the phases that one would go through with what became a forced isolation.”

For those keeping track, this Mathias Vogel is vastly different from the villain introduced in Square Enix’s 2013 video game reboot. That Vogel went mad from three decades spent trapped on this island—becoming convinced a supernatural force was controlling the weather, keeping him and his men isolated from the rest of the world. Walton’s Vogel isn’t a mad cult leader. He’s just a cog in the wheel, sent to fulfill a mission for the entity known simply as the Order of the Trinity.

“I’m sure he was a very talkative person. I’m sure that he woke up in the morning, not with a bullwhip to the people that worked for him—that’s just … I don’t believe that in the story,” Goggins continues. “But there’s this genuine need and selfish desire to find this thing. And I imagine what that must’ve been like when he said goodbye to his daughters and his wife.”

And then, as the actor points out, “One year turned into two, which then turned into three.” One look at the evolution of Mathias Vogel, and the camp he ran, it’s clear this was no Gilligan’s Island situation. “I just thought about his isolation—him no longer talking to the men around him—and this monster that he became to this workforce that was there,” Walton explains. “There’s also this grand sadness that was pervasive in his life. What must that feel like? How disorienting would that be?”

There’s a well of empathy and understanding that the actor has tapped into time and again with his varied body of work. When pressed, he gives some insight on his process: “I think that if you just imagine really what it’s like to walk in another person’s shoes, even if their role in the story is the antagonist—well, then you, worst-case scenario, have a thoughtful interpretation of something. You’re not asking the audience to go on a journey with you that you haven’t gone on yourself. I think that is selling out, and that’s cheap. And I don’t know how to do that, man. In some ways, I wish that I could. You know, because I wouldn’t be so fucking tired afterwards. It wouldn’t mean so much to me.”

As he’s explaining his experience, it becomes evident how taxing this conversation had become. With every sentence he spoke, his eloquence walked hand-in-hand with an emotional rawness that is rare to find—not just in performers of his stature, but in everyday people. It shouldn’t be surprising, though. To truly excel at the craft of acting, a plethora of emotions, choices and truths must be within reach at all time. Even if that means ignoring the previous films or games the project you’re working on is inspired by. “I’d never seen the movies, and I never played the game,” admits the Ant-Man and the Wasp actor, “so I wasn’t encumbered by the responsibility of holding up the mythology of this franchise.”

“Alicia [Vikander] is such an earnest actor,” Goggins says of his costar. “She’s so real and grounded and for me … I felt like I, after honoring this guy and really living in his shoes, walking this island from his point of view, I felt like I could service this version of it—and her journey from a girl to a woman in her power—by making the obstacles physically, mentally and emotionally, as real as possible. And knowing that, I didn’t even think about Tomb Raider!”

How do you not think about the movie, the franchise or the video games? Wouldn’t that hurt the final product? According to Goggins, it all just comes down to respecting the story and the rules that exist in the world you’re helping bring to life. “You live within that world, and you explore what that is. There are certain rules in that world, and there are rules that are meant to be broken in that world. Ant-Man and the Wasp: They’re rulebreakers. Really, they are living in their imagination at a very high level, and are very clever, smart people. That was my experience on that story as well, you know?”

Of course, to build that world, one needs a great cast to work with, and Goggins giddily admits to his longtime fandom of Dominic West, who plays Lord Richard Croft in the film. “I am such a big fan of his work and of him,” Goggins gushes. “You know, The Wire came on during season 2 of The Shield, and it was directed by Clark Johnson, the guy who did our pilot! I admired his work from afar for so very long, and I had wanted to meet him for so long, that when I met him, and he no longer existed as Dominic West, the actor that I admired, and became Dominic West, my friend …” There’s no end to this sentence—instead, Goggins gives me bewildered look and shakes his head, smiling.

Bringing the conversation back to the theme of fatherhood that feels pervasive throughout the Tomb Raider story, Goggins gives the insight that Mathias Vogel and Lord Richard Croft aren’t that different, even though they are working on opposing sides. “When it comes to the love of your child, that’s universal, man. That is sacred.”

With tears forming in his eyes, Goggins continues, “There was a moment in the story … there is an altercation, a confrontation with Lara. It is out of anger that they strike each other. It is out of hatred. Only, for something to happen, and the moment after it happens—it’s weird to get emotional about a Lara Croft movie—but for me, in that moment, this is what I saw the very first time that I read this story: This is when I, Mathias Vogel, hold onto the moment, when I can look at youth, and I can look at a young woman growing up, and I can be grateful for this gift of being close to a child again. You know what I’m saying?” He pauses, then adding: “If I can’t be with my own child, at least I can be with someone who can be a visual representation of them. And thank you for that. Do you know what I mean?”

By the sound of things, Walton Goggins took as much out of the experience working on the new Tomb Raider movie as he put into it. And when asked the very clichéd, actor-y question about lessons he may have taken away from the experience, his response is anything but clichéd.

“What playing Vogel, and being a part of this experience—aside from the friendships with Alicia and all of the filmmakers, [producer] Graham [King] and [director] Roar [Uthaug] and [executive producer] Patrick McCormick and everybody else—gave me was an opportunity to sit with the Hemba tribe on the Angolan border in the middle of fucking nowhere for five days and see how they lived their lives.” Yes, Walton Goggins left the set and explored Africa on his own terms.

“It gave me an opportunity to drive all over Namibia to Mozambique, to meet people in orphanages in Northern South Africa,” he continues, describing the moving, musical experience of living in a remote village for a week. “To turn on some Nina Simone and be told, ‘I like this. Oh, what is this?’ [I’m like,] ‘What the fuck are you talking about, What is this?! This is Nina Simone, mate!’ I said, ‘You don’t know Nina Simone?! Alright, let’s pull over.’ We had a six pack of beer and sat in his van, and I played her whole anthology, man! For like three hours! I said, ‘This is the music that defined the struggle in my country.’ We can have that. We can share that. This moment that we had in the car, sharing this thing, I just look for that in my life,” Goggins tells me, tears once again in his eyes.

I’m not sure when it happened, but this was no longer a mere interview between journalist and actor. This was a moment we were sharing, bonding over our own appreciation of art and music and life and fatherhood. “Playing Mathias Vogel and going through this … Did he teach me something? Absolutely. But what he did, and what these people—MGM and Warner Bros.—gave me was a chance to expand the definition of myself with real-life experiences. I can bring that back and affect my son and my community. And that is the gift that I take from this experience.”