“Three Christs” Walton Goggins about the role and his character

Walton Goggins is going to share about why he wanted to be a part of “Three Christs” and play the character that’s based on a real man, understanding mental illness, and about working with such a talented cast.

The question: What was it like to read the script and figure out how to play this character?
Walton Goggins: It’s such a great question. The director, Jon Avnet, is my old and good friend. He asked me to read the story that he was doing. I read it, and when I got to the end of it, I thought, “No one will ever see this movie. I have no idea what this movie is about, but I know, in my heart, exactly what it’s about.” I didn’t understand anything, and I understood it all, simultaneously. It was the most confused that I’ve ever been, after reading a piece of material, for the first time, which I think is what a person’s suffering through schizophrenia feels like, the very first experience that they have with it, or what a family member or friend of someone suffering from this condition must absolutely feel like, times a hundred.

The question: It seems like, with any illness of the brain and mind, the more you understand, the more you realize that you don’t understand? What do you think about it?
Walton Goggins: That’s right. I’ve been with this project for a long time. Even before we were close to making it, I just became obsessed with it, and obsessed with Milton’s book, and obsessed with author and psychiatrist R. D. Laing, who wrote a book called The Divided Self. I saw a documentary that R.D. Laing did about a halfway house for people suffering from schizophrenia in London, on the outskirts. It’s called Asylum, and it’s one of the most interesting films that I’ve ever seen in my life, and I watched it over and over and over and over and over again. I must have seen it 15 or 20 times. What you realize, the first time that you watch it is that you believe that you’re doing something voyeuristically and you shouldn’t be there. By the last time I watched it, I felt like I was a member of that house and I understood what everyone wanted, at any given moment. That’s what Richard Gere attempted to do, in the story. He wanted to lean into this and be a part of it.

The question: Could you ever have imagined, in your career, that you would be telling a story about three men who think they’re Christ, and that you’d be one of those men alongside Peter Dinklage and Bradley Whitford, and that Richard Gere would be playing your doctor?

Walton Goggins: No, not in a million years! I’m friends with and fans of everyone that you just mentioned. I deeply love Peter and Bradley, and Richard was a God to me. He was for everybody in my generation, coming up and watching him do his thing for so long. I’ve seen An Officer and A Gentleman 60 or 70 times in my life. It’s one of the greatest all-time movies for me, and I’ve mimicked him and tried to emulate his behavior, in my own career, although I was never given the opportunity to be a sex symbol. He’s Richard Gere, and I’m not. But like so many times in my life, I’m so privileged and fortunate to call those people that I hold in such high regard my friends.