Walton Goggins Says He Had Penis Stunt Double on Righteous Gemstones

Walton Goggins has warned fans of The Righteous Gemstones that his nude scene on the show isn’t quite what it seems.

“It wasn’t [me]. I had a d— double. It wasn’t my d—,” Goggins, 53, casually mentioned during an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live! on Wednesday, March 6.

Goggins stars on the HBO comedy series as Baby Billy Freeman, a 70-year-old song-and-dance-man-turned pentecostal preacher. Baby Billy has had numerous nude moments throughout the show’s history, but none actually featured Goggins genuinely stripping down.

“I don’t get to pick who represents me [in the nude scene],” he admitted to host Jimmy Kimmel. “I think there was a time in the business where that was a possibility.”

A baffled Kimmel, 57, asked why Goggins had no say in choosing his double, to which the actor explained: “[It’s] H.R. Something about lawsuits!”

He went on: “I don’t know if [The Righteous Gemstones creator and star Danny McBride] saw it first, or if a producer saw it first, but you can really hurt someone’s feelings if they come into the room, or you’re looking at a photo and you’re [swiping] no, no, no.”

Goggins did have a bit more input in the nude scene itself, revealing that he got to “dictate [his] d— double’s movements.”

“It’s my scene and I have underwear on when I’m doing it and the line that I have is, ‘This is what a man looks like,’” he recalled.

The actor admitted making some potentially dicey creative decisions for his double by “using [his] hands” in an improvised moment.

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“Danny says, ‘No, no, no, don’t do that because no-one wants to look at your d— double touch himself at all,’” Goggins quipped.

After he’d filmed this shocking scene, Goggins had a very unusual conversation with one of The Righteous Gemstones‘ producers.

“I went up to the producer, like, after, because he’s the only person who could sit behind the monitor … You know, you don’t want to make anyone feel bad and you really [think] it’s okay, we’re all trying to do this together and, ‘Thank you so much for lending me your d—,’” he declared.

“I did go up to [the producer] and said, ‘How was it? Was it a good representation?’ He said, ‘It was great but you don’t have any balls.’”

Goggins learned that the actor who doubled for him in the nude sequence was “sans testicles,” as Kimmel put it. The double was ultimately replaced for a second nude scene where Baby Billy went water skiing, since the double wasn’t trained in water sports.

“So, I got two [doubles],” Goggins reported with a big grin.

Goggins is currently starring in two HBO shows, as he is also playing the enigmatic Rick Hatchett on The White Lotus season 3. The show’s most recent episode, “The Meaning of Dreams,” featured some terrifying moments for Rick as he freed venomous snakes from captivity at a “Cobra Show” in Thailand while in the grips of a drug-fueled paranoia.

Unfortunately for Goggins, he didn’t identify with his character’s kinship with deadly snakes when it came time to film the dramatic scene.

“I don’t just have a phobia – it’s like a missing link when it comes to snakes,” Goggins confessed to Kimmel. “I am terrified of snakes – really, really terrified – and there’s something, like, genetically wrong with me when it comes to snakes.”

Despite being instructed ahead of time how to remove the reptiles from their tanks, Goggins got confused when cameras rolled and accidentally grabbed the wrong snake.

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“All I’m thinking about is the very first cage where the snake will kill you — ‘Don’t open that’ — and then the rest of it just goes out of my mind,” he remembered. “And then they yelled action, and it’s like, ‘Okay, don’t open the first one because it’ll kill you.’ The next one, ‘Was it green or was it brown? Which one has a big, big bite?’”

He went on: “As I was pulling the snake out, he didn’t wanna come, right? And so he turns around and he bit me … I wish I could’ve been cool — like I fancy myself a pretty cool guy. Like, ‘Hey, yeah, I got a snakebite.’ This was my reaction: I swear to God, it was like, ‘Oh my God, I’ve been bit by a snake! Oh my God!’”

Producers initially assured Goggins he would be fine, before eventually encouraging him to get a tetanus shot at a local hospital.

“In other words, they got a call from the lawyers at HBO,” Kimmel quipped, with Goggins confirming: “That’s exactly what happened. And they made me sign that day! Somebody just kinda came up — ‘I’m sorry you’re not feeling too good. Listen, can you just sign this little bitty piece of paper?’ I thought, ‘You want my autograph, or I’ve just lost all of my rights?”

A snake bite wasn’t Goggins’ only hardship in Thailand. Prior to The White Lotus season 3’s premiere, Goggins confirmed exclusively to Us Weekly that he’d gone on an extreme diet in advance of filming the HBO series.

“My White Lotus diet often centered around not eating until around one o’clock in the afternoon,” he told Us. “But I’m always like that when I work, and [I] only [have] two nine-minute boiled eggs.”

Jimmy Kimmel Live! airs weeknights on ABC at 11:35 p.m. ET.