‘Fallout’s Walton Goggins Could Be the First Ghoul to Win an…

[Editor’s note: The following contains some spoilers for Fallout.]

Yes, in the Prime Video original series Fallout, actor Walton Goggins plays a more than 200-year-old ghoul without a nose. But the role and his performance is so much more than that, weaving layers of struggling movie star Cooper Howard and the life he lived before the nuclear apocalypse that turned the surface into the Wasteland into who The Ghoul is, 219 years later. The eight-episode first season quickly became one of the streamer’s most-watched titles ever on the service and a second season was ordered, which doesn’t guarantee awards attention, but in this case, earned 17 well-deserved Emmy nominations, including Outstanding Drama Series.

During this one-on-one interview with Collider, Goggins talked about how his Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series nomination feels like “winning the lotto,” the different challenges that have come with so many of the memorable characters he’s played, in everything from The Shield to Justified to The Righteous Gemstones, what he’s looking forward to with the possibilities for Season 2, his favorite character moment in Season 1, what it’s like to work with show creators that have a very clear vision, and how The White Lotus Season 3 compared to his previous projects.

‘Fallout’s Walton Goggins Feels Like He’s “Winning the Lotto” With an Emmy Nomination

Collider: You were previously nominated for an Emmy for Justified and, and now here we are with Fallout. How did it feel to get that recognition for Fallout when that’s the type of show and character that often gets overlooked by something like the Emmy Awards?

WALTON GOGGINS: I guess it does. For a long time, sci-fi was trying to find its place in a category at the Emmys. The Last of Us broke that mold and blazed the trail for this new iteration of this experience. I suppose we’ve benefited from being on the heels of all the great work that was done on that show, in front of and behind the camera, and the actors there, like Pedro [Pascal] and what he did. I’ve just learned, at this stage of my life, not to really question why you are at any place in your life, but just to be grateful for being there. For me to be included in this category with some of my heroes like Gary Oldman – are you kidding me? – and some friends – I’ve known some of these actors for quite some time – and just to be in that room with this level of professional storyteller, I’ve already won. I think we’ve all already won. I make my living as an artist and that, in and of itself, is like winning the lotto. And then, now, to be in this particular moment and have this recognition is the icing on the cake. I don’t even know what to say. I’m just so grateful to be invited to the party.

You’ve played so many memorable characters throughout comedy and drama. Which one would you say has been the most challenging? People might assume that it’s The Ghoul because of the prosthetics and how different he is, but is that the case? Is the most challenging character, or has there been one that you felt was more challenging, emotionally or for whatever reason?

GOGGINS: That’s a great question. I don’t think anyone has ever asked me that question, specifically. As The Shield went on, that my first real experience with a serialized, linear emotional journey, no one knew that it was gonna go for 84 hours. I think that was my participation in it. By the end of it, and knowing what I knew after reading the script, where it was ultimately gonna land for Shane, that last season or season and a half, up until that point, was the toughest emotional experience that I’ve had to go through, as an artist. I say go through because if you’re addicted to this employment and this form of expression, then it requires that of you. You have to give it away. You can’t hold onto it. You have to fully invest in what someone is going through in their life, and it was exhausting, emotionally. On the other side of that, looking back at it at the time, everybody needed a real break. Everybody left everything on the field. So, that was extremely challenging. And I would say the same thing for Boyd Crowder (in Justified). He’s not an easy guy to hang out with, but he’s a lot of fun. The fact that we got the opportunity to tell that story over six years and for it to land where it landed, and to sit in that jail cell and have this conversation about life with Raylan Givens was a challenge in its own right.

They’ve all been a challenge. Lee Russell (in Vice Principals) was a challenge. It wasn’t just fun and games. It’s never just fun and games with me. Ultimately, that story, for me, was about two very lonely people that needed a friend. It was funny and ridiculous and poignant and painful, by the end of it. You have these two people that went through this chaotic experience, and ended it in a mall, looking at each other across the food court and saying, “I see you, and I’m so grateful you were in my life and I went through that with you. I’m forever changed by it.” I feel that way about The Righteous Gemstones. Baby Billy is exhausting. Trust me, I was him all day yesterday. It’s funny as shit, but it ain’t easy to play a 72-year-old man. I suppose if you held a gun to my head and said, “Pick one,” I’d say Fallout is the most difficult, only because of the challenges of the prosthetics, not knowing what was gonna come through, how uncomfortable all that gear was, and the elements and the temperature, and just not knowing this world or how to navigate this world, right out of the gate. I might say the same thing about The White Lotus. It was one of the greatest experiences of my life, as was Fallout, as was The Shield, as was Justified, as was The Righteous Gemstones, as was Vice Principals. But The White Lotus took it out of me. It was a lot. I’m just grateful to have had that experience. If you don’t fucking care about it and if it doesn’t take it out of you, then what are you doing it for? That’s how I feel.

‘Fallout’s Walton Goggins Is Excited To Learn About What Comes Next for The Ghoul

You could be playing The Ghoul for multiple seasons, but he’s also unique because at the same time, you’re exploring who he was before. What are you looking forward to continuing to explore, now that you have more tidbits about who Cooper Howard was and what’s driving The Ghoul?

GOGGINS: I’m not quite sure how that’s going to play out, but I can’t imagine that he wouldn’t be affected by the information that he has now. I’m really interested in the socio-economic/political pull-no-punches aspect of this story and exploring this communication between two people who see the world so very differently, based on economics, privilege and circumstances, and having a lot of information versus having no information at all, between Ella [Purnell] and I, and how they inform each other going forward in this world. I’m really curious in exploring what the reasons are behind this consortium of people who have come together to bring about the ending of the world, the prophet, what that really means, and what that way of thinking means for the rest of us. I’m not a conspiracy theorist, on any level, but if that is happening on some level and if there is an Illuminati, I don’t even know.

I just think about great food in whatever city I’m in and a great cocktail at the end of the day. But it is fascinating to me to at least hypothesize or live in a fantasy version of that. I’m excited about what happened to Cooper Howard’s family and what it will mean to The Ghoul and how he will respond to the information that he gathers, over the course of the season. I’m also excited just to shoot some fuckin’ guns, man, and to be in a frame that Jonathan Nolan is directing, and to be with these actors in some really cool locations in the world. I love to travel. I love being on the road. We got to go to some pretty cool places last year, and I’m looking forward to that opportunity again this year.

What is your favorite moment of Season 1, and does it involve The Ghoul or Cooper Howard? Because we get to see how one has informed the other, when you think of the moments that stand out, is it The Ghoul that comes to mind first, or is it the man behind The Ghoul?

GOGGINS: There’s a moment that resonated so deeply with me. I like the way in which our writers, Geneva [Robertson-Dworet] and Graham [Wagner] and El Jefe, our fearless leader, Jonathan Nolan, decided to tell this story. They give space for behavior. Not every scene is jam-packed with words or explanations of what’s going on. They allow the audience and believe that the audience is patient enough to watch two people walk across the desert and not talk, and what it means to withhold water from someone that is really thirsty, and what it means to shoot up a billboard without explaining why he’s shooting up that billboard in that moment. My favorite moment along those lines is a scene that, at least when you read it, is an eighth of a page, and it involves episode four, where The Ghoul walks into this place that Lucy has just shot up and given him a new lease on life. He goes on this bender of things that prevent him from becoming a feral Ghoul. He’s just overdosing on as many drugs and any drug he can find to put in his mouth. And at the end of that bacchanal, he finds this tape of a movie and he obviously knows the title because it’s a movie that he starred in 210 or 215 years ago, and he puts it into the Fallout version of a VCR and he plays it. I suppose it was that moment as The Ghoul, watching himself as Cooper Howard, and absorbing everything that he has lost, not with just sadness but with fascination, that was one of my favorites.

Why Was ‘The White Lotus’ One of the Greatest Experiences of Walton Goggins’ Life?

You’ve played such a variety of characters across genres. How does something like The White Lotus compare? When you’re working with someone like Mike White, who has such a vision for that series, how does that and his world compare to doing something like Fallout with Jonathan Nolan, or the shows you do with Danny McBride? What’s it like to work with these creators that have very clear world visions?

GOGGINS: There is no difference between them. I’m sure Mike was finding it in Season 1, as one does. It depends on how long it takes you to find it, and maybe Mike found it on day one. I didn’t have that conversation with him. But Season 3 is a very unique worldview and a style in which he has chosen to communicate what is going on inside of him. Jonathan Nolan has done it in words for years, in the scripts that he’s written, and Fallout is no exception, in the language that he uses to tell the story. Our showrunners have a very specific mission and marching order that is walking a really fine line between comedy and drama. With Danny McBride, it was baked in from the very beginning with the personalities that he’s looking to explore and this angry version of people that are incapable of seeing that they are the source of their own chaos and that they are the problem.

I felt that way about Shawn Ryan and Clark [Johnson] when we set out to do The Shield. They had to find it in the first episode, but they found it pretty quickly, and they knew they wanted to explore very specific questions about what we’re willing to accept for our security. What civil rights are we willing to give up as a society, in pursuit of our own security? That coincided with a very, very, very specific moment in our nation’s history. And it was the same with Justified. It was a lot of things early on, and then it became very narrow and very focused on the experience of these two people that are very, very different, but had this common struggle of working in the coal mines, which is a struggle of a lot of people in that part of rural America, and that was fascinating to me. I’ve been very lucky, in that aspect. I talk about The White Lotus, only because I wrapped [recently]. It was, as every one of these other experiences has been, one of the greatest experiences of my life. It took a lot out of me and a lot out of every person that was invited on that journey with Mike. It’s not a right, it’s a privilege, and one should be so lucky to feel exhausted on the other side of any artistic endeavor.

Fallout is available to stream on Prime Video. Check out the trailer:

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