00:00Um, but it is a...
00:02Lucy! Come here, girl.
00:06It's my dog.
00:12What's up, GQ? I'm Walton Goggins.
00:14These are my essentials.
00:24This hat. This hat was a gift from my buddy Sam Rockwell
00:28almost 14 years ago when we were doing this movie in New Mexico.
00:32He actually got it for himself and we were at a party one night
00:35and I commented on how much I liked it
00:38and he took it off his head and he put it on my head
00:41and he said, it looks better on you than it does on me,
00:43so why don't you keep it?
00:45And I have kept it for 14 years.
00:48It's a Red Smith Stetson. It's like a state trooper hat.
00:51And you can see how often I've worn it because of all that sweat.
00:54And if you've seen me in an airport,
00:56chances are you've seen me wearing this hat.
01:03Wow, look at this.
01:04Who doesn't want to keep a lighter in their pocket?
01:06I happen to live in a house that has seven fireplaces,
01:10so whenever I need a light one, I have it right here.
01:14This lighter is a prop that I use in The White Lotus season three.
01:20Now I chose this lighter as an essential because
01:23any actor who's been around for a long time,
01:25you always take a token.
01:27It's because it reminds you of how valuable that experience was to you.
01:31This particular person that I play in The White Lotus
01:35is very near and dear to my heart
01:37and this is what I chose to take from him.
01:40I can't wait for you to see it
01:41and for you to see how I use it in the show.
01:47You know what's essential to me is reading.
01:49Books are very, very, very important to me.
01:51I try to have at least one going,
01:54if not two at a time,
01:55but I picked a few that are kind of important to me.
01:59Herman Hesse, I'm a big fan of.
02:01This is Siddhartha and I keep it on my bedside table.
02:04I also have Steppenwolf close by.
02:06Hemingway, obviously, is a classic.
02:09Maybe you've heard of him.
02:10Movable Feast.
02:12We spend a lot of time in Paris
02:14and Hemingway is just someone who's very, very close to my heart,
02:17but there is no other author that is more important to me
02:21than this guy right here.
02:23W. Somerset Maugham.
02:24The name of this book is The Moon in Sixpence.
02:26It is the one book that I will give any artist as a gift.
02:31I think that this book should be compulsory,
02:34really, for every artist in every discipline of art
02:37because of what it says about what we do
02:40and how it's going to come out regardless of,
02:44even if you try to suppress it, art just has to come out.
02:47And I love this book and this author so much
02:50that my wife and I named our son Augustus Somerset Goggins
02:56after Somerset Maugham.
02:58So, yeah, pick it up.
03:03Whoa.
03:04This is one of the most essential things in my life.
03:08You know what it is?
03:09It's an orange Sharpie.
03:12And you know why it's essential?
03:14Because this is the only color highlighter
03:16that I use to highlight every script that I have.
03:20And it's really weird, man.
03:21My thoughts, my brain opens up
03:24whenever I see this color on my lines.
03:27I travel with, like, 20 of these things
03:29just in case one of them kind of goes bad
03:31and I have, like, four or five in my bag
03:33in case I leave it in my costume or something like that.
03:36I'm just going to put you over here, Sharpie.
03:38Don't go anywhere because I'm going to need you later.
03:40The right story finds the right actor
03:43and finds the right director
03:45and finds the right DP and cameraman
03:47and crew and location and all the rest of it.
03:50But you can't do any of it without this orange Sharpie.
03:57Passport.
03:58One of the most essential things in my life
04:01for a variety of reasons.
04:03The only thing I ever really wanted to do in my life
04:05was see the world,
04:06and I dreamed of having a passport
04:08that was filled with stamps from all over the world.
04:12And that is indeed what has happened.
04:14This particular passport is my latest one,
04:16and there's stamps on almost every page,
04:18but it's not my first one.
04:20It's my fourth one, my fifth one.
04:23The other reason why it's so important to me
04:25is when I am not working,
04:27I do like to get out of the country
04:29and just go explore favorite places in the world.
04:32I love America, you know?
04:34I do.
04:35I think it's one of the most beautiful countries in the world.
04:37I love Morocco, India.
04:39I love Namibia.
04:40I love South Africa.
04:41I spent some time in Mozambique.
04:43It's one of the greatest pleasures in my life.
04:47Maybe just one of the greatest games in the world,
04:50backgammon.
04:51This is a travel set that a really good friend of mine
04:53gave to me.
04:54It's this old little vintage Pierre Cardin set.
04:58Oh my God!
04:59Where has this been?
05:00I've been looking for this for years!
05:02Oh my God!
05:03I picked this up,
05:04I didn't even know that this was there.
05:06I swear to God,
05:07I've been looking for this for like four years.
05:09This is a piece of stone
05:11that I got in Hanoi.
05:13Unbelievable.
05:14And you know what these are?
05:15These are Scopa cards,
05:17right here,
05:18that I got off this card game
05:20I was invited to play in Marrakesh
05:2322 years ago.
05:25Oh my God!
05:26This is amazing!
05:28We just moved to New York, see?
05:30So I just packed shit in places that would keep it safe.
05:32And I haven't been able to play this game since.
05:34But the game itself
05:36is one of the most important games in the world to me.
05:39Oh my God!
05:40I just found something else.
05:41I can't believe it!
05:42This is like,
05:43you have no idea.
05:45This is an owl
05:46that my wife gave me.
05:48A paperweight.
05:49Is there anything else in here?
05:51Whoa, I don't know.
05:52There is!
05:53Oh my God!
05:54This was a gift
05:55from this woman in Namibia.
05:57She was a Himba woman.
05:59It's on my Instagram from when I was there.
06:01And she gave me these three stones
06:03and I had the other two
06:04but I didn't know where this one went.
06:06I can't believe this has happened.
06:07It's only because of you, GQ,
06:09that I pulled this thing out
06:11to talk about how important
06:13backgammon is to my life.
06:15Hold on, there's one other thing in here.
06:17It's a treasure.
06:18I have no idea what this is.
06:19Oh my God!
06:20These are Christmas ornaments
06:23that my mom gave me.
06:25You might shed a tear because
06:27I put them away because they mean so much to me.
06:29She gave them to me a while ago
06:32so I must have packed them in here
06:34because I didn't want anything to happen to them.
06:36It's not the game that's essential.
06:39It's the communion that you have
06:42with the other person that you're playing the game with.
06:45And what's essential is what's happening right in here.
06:48I don't know about you guys
06:50but I didn't plan this shit.
06:55This watch means a great deal to me
06:57because it is the first really nice thing
06:59that I bought myself
07:00and I thought I was buying it for me
07:03but as it turns out
07:05not knowing that I was going to have a child
07:07I really kind of bought it for him.
07:09It is a generational gift
07:11and one that you bequeath to your child.
07:14I'm not a watch guy
07:16and it's a vintage.
07:17It's a Rolex
07:18and I never took it off my wrist for years
07:20until I got this new watch
07:23about three months ago.
07:25But this is one of the most important things in my life.
07:31You know what this is?
07:32It's a piece of brass
07:34but it's not just any piece of brass.
07:36Here, give me your hand.
07:39Feel that?
07:40Feels amazing doesn't it?
07:42Now this is a gift that my wife gave me
07:45just as kind of a reminder of her
07:48and our family
07:50and she gave it to me
07:51to take with me on location.
07:53It is something that I carry with me all the time
07:56and it is very, very, very important to my life.
07:59I'm so sorry that all of my essentials are a downer.
08:03I'm filled with earnest and emotion
08:06but you know the things in my life are meaningful to me.
08:10That's why I'm sharing them with you.
08:13You hear that sound?
08:18No, no, I'm not talking about an iPhone.
08:20What I am talking about is this right here.
08:24It's the fan app.
08:26I use this fan app
08:28every day of my life.
08:30I'm a big napper.
08:32I nap every day.
08:34Even when I'm working for the half hour that we have off
08:36I go straight in, I put on headphones
08:38and I listen to this app.
08:40And how I came across it was
08:42I always fell asleep to fans
08:44because of my aunt.
08:46She was an actress in the theater
08:48and it was a really busy apartment that she had
08:50with all these other actors in it
08:52so her and my uncle would sleep to a fan
08:54and I was staying with them
08:56and I got addicted to it.
08:58And I keep it at that distance, believe it or not
09:00every single day
09:02and it allows me to sleep every day.
09:04So, essential.
09:06White noise is white noise, man.
09:08It's not a fan.
09:10White noise is like the TV
09:12when the programming stopped
09:14in the 80s or 70s.
09:16A fan is like a circular motion
09:18and somehow
09:20this app
09:22mimicked that sound
09:24when it's like about
09:2618 inches from your ear
09:28and you feel, you get the sensation
09:30as if wind is actually blowing on you.
09:32You might not get it
09:34and I haven't been doing shrooms, I promise.
09:36But I get it and I absolutely love it.
09:40I didn't travel for a really long time
09:42especially for the first 10 years
09:44I was in Los Angeles
09:46and just kind of starting out as a storyteller
09:48I just studied
09:50and worked
09:52and then worked my day job
09:54and after a decade of doing that
09:56I finally gave myself permission
09:58to go out and see the world
10:00the way that I wanted to see it.
10:02These are just places that I've been
10:04represented in sand
10:06and seashells.
10:08I'll get like a little vessel in whatever country it is
10:10I'll just find a little place
10:12and then I'll put some dirt or rocks
10:14or fucking something from the experience
10:16in it.
10:18If you can see that
10:20that's sand from Namibia
10:22this is
10:24sand from the Sahara
10:26also the Sahara
10:28but from when I was 30 years old
10:30so this is like 22 years ago
10:32sand from a beach
10:34in Mozambique
10:36and this is sand from Tulum
10:38these are called mermaid dollars
10:40and they're from this little beach that I found
10:42just north of Cape Town
10:44so these things are essential
10:46only to the extent that they are
10:48representative of great experiences
10:50in my life.
10:52Thank you so much
10:54for checking out my essentials
10:56but as we learned that the essentials
10:58aren't in objects
11:00it's in the people that we spend time with
11:02and the places where we choose
11:04to go.
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