Walton Goggins makes everything better, whether as reckless Detective Shane Vendrell on The Shield, wily criminal Boyd Crowder on Justified, crazy educator Lee Russell on Vice Principals, or wackadoo silver-fox preacher Baby Billy Freeman on The Righteous Gemstones. With a smile that can suggest goofy cluelessness, endearing compassion or scary, snake-like cunning and menace, the 52-year-old actor has a charm that’s equally fit for empathetic dramas and taut genre fare, and as he’s illustrated throughout the course of his decades-long career, he brings an intensity to the screen that’s second to none. Thus, it’s little surprise that he’s the magnetic center of attention of his latest endeavor: Prime Video’s Fallout.
In the retro-futuristic sci-fi series, based on the best-selling Bethesda Game Studios’ video game franchise, he assumes the role of the Ghoul, a radiation-deformed gunslinger in a post-apocalyptic America whose ruthlessness is as great as his skin is charred and his trigger-finger is itchy.
Developed by Westworld’s Jonathan Nolan (who also directs) and Lisa Joy alongside showrunners Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Graham Wagner, Fallout is the finest game-to-screen adaptation ever produced. Though that triumph is attributable to numerous factors—including an astounding attention to formal and narrative detail, as well as excellent performances from its co-leads Ella Purnell and Aaron Moten—it most fully comes to thrilling life courtesy of Goggins. His 200-year-old Ghoul is the last part of the show’s good/bad/ugly triumvirate, even if he’s more than just a one-note scoundrel. With a twinkle in his eye that portends trouble, Goggins’ desperado electrifies a series whose eight-episode maiden season, which premieres Apr. 11, fires on all cylinders.
Despite being encased in Freddy Krueger-ish makeup, Goggins exudes sinister severity as the Wasteland’s resident badass (who used to be a movie star named Cooper Howard), all while lacing his performance with a dash of devilish humor that’s in keeping with the material’s gonzo energy. It’s yet another master class by the star, and thus a perfect opportunity—on the eve of Fallout’s premiere—to speak with him about his love of Westerns, his familiarity with the game, and whether he sees more Justified in his future.
The Ghoul is notable for a few things, including his radiation-burned skin and his lack of a nose and hair. He looks terrific, but was all that makeup a major pain in the ass?
No one has asked me that question, man—that is a great question! Now here is the truth. It took putting everything on just to begin to understand who this person was. You can’t know; you have an idea or whatever, but I don’t really believe in making choices as an actor. I think that it reveals itself as you go along.
I had an idea, I put it on three times, we settled on the look, and then the first day comes, and I felt like, okay, I’m starting to feel who this person is. Now I’ve got the jacket on, and I’ve got all these guns, and oh, that’s really fucking uncomfortable! [laughs] How does that work? Okay, well, I have to loosen this holster up. Then we went in to film for the first time, and the two things I didn’t count on—because I’d never really tried to speak much with the pieces on—were two pieces of the prosthetic: the little piece on my chin that covered my lower lip and brought it down, and the little piece on my upper lip that brought it up. It prevented me from creating any moisture in my mouth. I had no saliva in my mouth!
Oh, thought sounds like a nightmare for an actor.
I thought, oh man, how do I deal with this? I’ve got to overcome this. Then the last piece, which we’d put in but only to see if they fit, and it had been months, was the retainer! The stuff over my teeth! So now my peripheral vision, I can’t really see out of the side of my eyes, and something is pulling my top lip and my bottom lip, and I’ve got these things in my mouth, and if you watch it—especially the first scene we did, with Ella and I by the river—I’m struggling with it, man! I’m trying to get the words out, and between that and the sweat inside this thing, I thought, I’m getting too old for this shit! [laughs] I don’t know if I can do this.
It was difficult, it was a lot to overcome. But you know, these are high-class problems, so it’s okay.
And it works!
It works. We got it out. It was also easier because no one wanted to be around me, and I like that anyway, so everybody just left me alone.
You’ve had experience with Westerns before, be it Justified or The Hateful Eight. Yet this is your first real gunslinger-y role. What is it about Westerns that you like?
Well, I’m not going to play a mobster from New York City [laughs]. I don’t have a face for that. I love the genre. What I liked about this, among many things, is that this is science fiction. There’s a Western element to this story, of which I’m a part, but it’s not gratuitous. They didn’t insert this cowboy element to make the show cool. What they did do was build out Cooper Howard’s history in a way that organically weaves the Western elements into this story. I think that was what was so refreshing to me while reading these scripts. I hope the audience feels the same way—that all of this was meticulously thought through, and that the Ghoul is a heightened, painful version of who Cooper Howard was, and the world before the bombs dropped.
Personally, I love Westerns. I love what they have to say about the changing morality in America, historically, and we explore it in this show. How the sheriff was a good guy until he wasn’t, and when Westerns changed in the ’70s and that savior wasn’t needed or respected in the same way, or even seen in the same way. Because he wasn’t the same. As we’ve changed as a culture, one of our most iconic cultural references, the cowboy, has changed with it.
Did you take inspiration from any particular Westerns?
I couldn’t really move when we were putting the makeup on, so I watched copious amounts of Westerns to really understand who Cooper Howard was. I’ve seen all these movies before—some of them many times—but when you’re researching it becomes a very different relationship to them.
However, it wasn’t just the movies that I watched; I also watched a lot of interviews with John Wayne or with James Arness, and I would try to find Alan Ladd or some of these stars who had done interviews, just to see what they were like outside these characters that they played. How did they move, and there’s an elegance to them, and there’s an exposure to stories and the people that they were around. The community of actors was much smaller then, and Hollywood and the business were smaller, and everybody knew each other. I loved it, man—I loved it so much. It was one of the best parts of this thing.
The Ghoul has been around for 200-plus years, and there’s great mystery about his past. Did you talk to the creators and showrunners about what took place with the Ghoul during those unseen centuries?
That’s mine. That belongs to me. I never asked, just like I never asked Quentin [Tarantino] if Chris Mannix was the sheriff of Red Rock [in The Hateful Eight], and he never told me. I didn’t ask Jonah [Nolan] or anyone else; I know what happened during that time. Not every year, but a lot of them. I know what he’s seen, what he’s been exposed to. That’s the kind of thing as a storyteller that you just kept locked away in your heart, and that’s for you.
Did you think that playing the game might interfere with preparing for your role—especially since Fallout is so enormous, and you can’t get a real feel for it by just dipping your toes in it?
Exactly—you’re not going to pick that up overnight, or even in a month. It takes years to really understand that game. I just felt like someone needed to be at the table that wasn’t weighed down by the responsibility to service the fans of this show. Someone who can look at these scripts and these stories with a critical eye, without that baggage—and when I say “baggage,” I don’t mean it negatively, but without having that to refer to. It’s like, I’m just reading this right now, and okay, this makes sense for this reason and this reason, but I don’t feel anything. What am I supposed to feel? What am I going through? What are we saying here outside of these other things, which Jonah and Geneva and Graham are more concerned with anyway.
We knew this world was built on Fallout. Wisely, Jonah and the writers said we love this game so much that we’re going to take into this experience what we would want to see, so that we are happy, and we’ll hope that the fans of this game see what we see, because we love it so much. I felt like, even to be one step removed from that, I could bring a different set of ideas to the experience.
This show is tonally different from your other recent ventures, whether it’s The Righteous Gemstones or the upcoming The White Lotus. Do you actively seek out dissimilar projects to keep yourself creatively fulfilled?
I just go where the stories are. I play the hand that I’ve been dealt, and I’ve been very fortunate to have had some incredible opportunities to work with some incredible people over the course of my life. I’m not Mark Ruffalo, I’m not Sam Rockwell, but I have my opportunities, and I’ve tried to make the most of every opportunity I’ve been given.
The thing I look for more than anything isn’t just a tone; it’s, does this resonate with me, and do I think I can help my director and my writers tell their story? It’s really that simple. I don’t say, go out and get Danny McBride, I want to do a comedy like that! I feel that the things that are supposed to come my way, come my way. There are things I’ve gone after, for sure, and some I’ve gotten and some I haven’t.
That’s the life of an actor.
You know, Owen Wilson is a friend, but also someone I really respected and admired after Bottle Rocket. After seeing that, I just put out into the world that I wanted to work with him; I think we would have a lot of fun and it would be really, really cool. Well, Shanghai Noon came along, and it’s like, okay! With Owen, a lot of our stuff got cut because of time, but we had a fucking great time.
The same thing with Bob Duvall. That’s my guy, that’s my hero—and then The Apostle came along. Same thing with Danny McBride. The same thing with Quentin Tarantino! And the same thing with Mike White! And the same fucking thing with Jonathan Nolan! I’ve had this happen so many times in my life, and not in some Machiavellian sort of way where I’m going to network and reach out to them. I just meditate on it, and think wow, this is a person I feel I could do something special with, or for. I’ve been lucky in that way, to have had those opportunities over the course of my career.
Between Fallout, The Righteous Gemstones, and the forthcoming third season of The White Lotus, how do you find time for all these projects? And related to that point—is there still a chance for more Justified, following the finale of last year’s City Primeval?
I think everyone wants to do another lap [of Justified], and, again, this is not a money grab [laughs]. Our motivations are pure, because there was no reason for me to go back. When I say I needed to be talked into it, they made a very compelling argument that there is another chapter to this story, and they’re right. I think everyone wants to do it and we hope we get the opportunity to do it. It’s a matter of it making sense for FX, and I know in their hearts they want to do it, and it’s also about timing. Hopefully that will happen.
The rest of it, I take every day as it comes and play it as it lays, and just go to work and try to do the best job I can. I’m grateful for all of these opportunities, and I’ve had things co-exist or things happen simultaneously for a while in my life, and I’m grateful for it. I like to work! I do.
When I spoke with Timothy Olyphant last year, we talked a lot about you…
I’ll just talk about him! He’s such a wonderful man. I just saw him in Los Angeles, and here’s the thing—he’s working in Bangkok right now, and I’m over in Thailand [for The White Lotus], and I’m going to see him in Bangkok soon [laughs].
There’s your next season of Justified!
Yeah! It’s going to happen in Bangkok. There you go.
