“I spent a lot to time thinking about that”: One Walton Goggins Decision May Have Turned The Ghoul into Fallout’s Greatest Breakout Character
Created by Graham Wagner and Geneva Robertson-Dworet for Amazon Prime Video, the post-apocalyptic drama series Fallout is based on a role-playing video game. The show stars Walton Goggins, Ella Purnell, Aaron Moten, Kyle MacLachlan, and Moisés Arias. Jonathan Nolan, co-creator of HBO’s Westworld, directed the first three episodes of the drama series.
The series premiered on Amazon Prime Video on April 10, 2024, and received favorable feedback from critics as well as the audience. The performances on the show have been specifically praised, along with the writing, the visuals, and the makers’ faithfulness to the source material. Walton Goggins, in a recent interview, detailed his preparation process for his role on the show.
Walton Goggins reveals he read the script for Fallout nearly 250 times
In an exclusive interview with First Post, Walton Goggins, who plays Cooper Howard and The Ghoul on the show, was asked about his preparations for the role. He said,
“I read the script 250 times, and that’s a lot of reading. It’s always in my head. It’s always in my imagination. So I watched a lot of movies and took a long time to put this makeup on every day. And I watched a lot of Westerns, trying to understand, Okay, well, this is a good comparison for the goal or a good comparison for Cooper Howard.”
The actor mentioned that, just like other actors, he also made a playlist of 50–60 songs that just played in the background. Talking about the physical preparation in terms of makeup, he revealed that despite having pictures of how the character should look, it took them five months to come up with that. He admits that he may have been kind of the extreme version of it.
Walton Goggins shared that initially there was a look they had discussed, but he is grateful that it didn’t work because that made him extremely claustrophobic. He added that he tried on three different iterations of eyes, trying to pick the one that went the best for the character, and the last one was it.
The actor mentioned during the interview that he is not a gamer, so when he heard the name Fallout, he was not aware of it. He goes on to say that he’s glad he didn’t play the game, adding that he has the blessings of Todd Howard with him.
Walton Goggins talks about the challenges of playing two characters in Fallout
The actor was asked during the interview about the challenges he faced while portraying two characters on the show: Cooper Howard and The Ghoul. Goggins added that to understand Howard, he tried to understand how rich and full a person’s life is to understand what they’ve lost. Walton Goggins says he does not believe in making a lot of choices as an actor but in making a connection between the two characters he is playing. And with the help of a sense of humor, he was able to find that connection.
“And a certain swagger and, I suppose, on some level, a charisma; you know that an actor would have his stature, and though he’s a B movie star, not an A-lister star. So things are of that nature. I spent a lot of time thinking about that.”
The actor in talking to Collider mentioned that he is very grateful for having the opportunity to play such characters on-screen. He added that The Ghoul is a complicated guy so it was compelling for him to portray him noting that it felt like an opportunity to be a part of the world he enjoys reading. He also mentioned that Jonathan Nolan has assured him that it’s all about how he conveys the emotion via his eyes.
In his interview with GQ, Goggins acknowledged that he had no idea how significant his finale line, ‘War. War never changes…’ is until the episode premiered. He shared that he thought Graham and Geneva had written one of the best lines of dialogue that he had been allowed to speak. He admitted that he was wrong all along. However, he is pleased with the response and shared that he is glad that he didn’t know because that would have intimidated him.
Fallout is streaming on Prime Video.
