Who Plays The White Lotus Season 3’s Mysterious Hotel Owner

This post contains spoilers for “The White Lotus” season 3.

Can somebody please give Walton Goggin an award for acting almost entirely with his eyes? He did it on last week’s episode of “The White Lotus,” when his depressed maybe-hitman Rick sat through a stunningly unexpected monologue from an old buddy played by Sam Rockwell. This week, he’s back at it again as the season enters its endgame — which no doubt will have something to do with the man known as Jim Hollinger. Hollinger makes his entrance in an out-of-focus shot at the end of episode 5, and the hour ends with Goggins’ almost imperceptibly shaken look.

The big twist here can be readily inferred, though we’ll have to wait until next week for the show to confirm or deny it. Rick previously said that he knew hotel owner Sritala’s (Patravadi Mejudhon) husband killed his dad when he was on what seemed to be a humanitarian trip to Thailand, but the man we hear speak at the end of episode 5 has a pretty distinct American accent that matches Goggins’ own. That would explain the “oh s**t” look on Rick’s face when he sees the man he’s there to visit under false pretenses; maybe this isn’t the guy who killed his father — maybe this is his father.

While we theorize, it’s worth unpacking the Jim Hollinger casting, because the character will likely play into the season’s final episodes in a big way. Based on his voice and blurry frame alone, I was reasonably confident that he’d be revealed as Billy Bob Thornton (this season does have major “Fargo” vibes, after all), but the episode’s end credits proved me wrong.

The voice actually belonged to none other than character actor Scott Glenn, making a (hopefully) triumphant return to the network that gave him one of his greatest roles. Glenn played stubborn, erratic family patriarch Kevin Garvey Sr. on HBO’s magnificent existential drama “The Leftovers” from 2014 to 2017. His other recent TV roles include a heartbreaking part on the short-lived Stephen King-verse show “Castle Rock,” a turn on the new Apple TV+ dark comedy “Bad Monkey,” and the part of Stick, a mentor figure to Matt Murdock on the Netflix version of Marvel’s “Daredevil.”

Go further back, and you can find Glenn in some of the best movies of the 20th century, from “Apocalypse Now” to “Nashville.” He played himself in Robert Altman’s “The Player,” showed up in the action blockbuster “The Bourne Ultimatum,” and was a priest in “The Virgin Suicides” and a cop turned drug dealer in the Denzel Washington favorite “Training Day.” He also played multiple characters in the deeply polarizing Zack Snyder project “Sucker Punch.” Glenn often plays authority figures, though they almost always have an edge to them. In “Apocalypse Now,” he was the captain who triggered Willard’s mission when he defected to Colonel Kurtz’s army. He also played FBI boss Jack Crawford in 1991’s Oscar-winner “The Silence of the Lambs.”

Glenn started out working on television in the 1960s (his first role was on “The Patty Duke Show”), but for several decades beginning in the ’70s, he didn’t act on the small screen at all. In fact, before “The Leftovers,” his only visible TV series role since 1975 was in a two-part episode of “Monk” back in 2008. We’re lucky to have him back; his turns on “Castle Rock” and “The Leftovers” were stunning, and he’ll no doubt blow the roof of the place in “The White Lotus” as well. Frankly, Glenn is one of the best actors of his generation who hasn’t gotten the Emmy he deserves yet. “Every inch of his face is memorable and photographable,” director Mimi Leder told IndieWire in 2017. “The creases on his cheeks, and his eyes — everything he does is very real and very visceral. Working with him is one of the great experiences.” 

In other words, he’s going to be an incredible scene partner for Goggins when the pair finally come face to face on “The White Lotus.” New episodes of the show premiere Sundays at 9pm ET on HBO.