When Walton Goggins learned he was nominated for an Emmy for his performance in Prime Video’s “Fallout,” he was abroad shooting another upcoming project: “The White Lotus” Season 3 for HBO.
“I was actually in Bangkok and doing ‘The White Lotus,’ and right before I started working, I was at dinner. I got the day and time wrong, to be quite honest with you. I thought the announcements were coming in the next day,” the actor said. “I left dinner to go walk the streets of Bangkok, and I got a phone call saying, ‘Congratulations.’ And I literally said, ‘For what? That meal that I just had? It was the best meal that I’ve had in Bangkok, so thank you very, very much.’ They said, ‘No, Walton, you just got nominated.’ ‘A lovely surprise’ feels like an understatement. I was just overwhelmed with joy.”
The Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series nod, which marks one of 17 total nominations for the series based on the video game franchise of the same name, is Goggins’ second overall nomination after his 2011 nod for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series for playing Boyd Crowder in “Justified.”
In “Fallout,” the Alabama-born actor portrays Cooper Howard/The Ghoul, a former movie star who’s tapped to be the spokesperson for Vault-Tec, a company that builds luxury shelters in preparation for the end of the world.
Nuclear apocalypse quickly follows, with Howard left behind with the other surface dwellers. In the new world known as the Wasteland, Howard has been disfigured from the blast’s radiation and transformed into a zombie-like bounty hunter who’s after an artifact that has the potential to reshape the world that has been thrown into devastation, chaos and violence.
To transform into the Ghoul, Goggins underwent intense makeup sessions. It took three separate attempts before filming started to get the final look right. The total transformation time initially took five hours before being cut down to an hour and 45 minutes by the end of shooting Season 1. (The show’s makeup artists were nominated for two Emmys.)
“It was not easy,” Goggins, 52, said. “Every day presented its own challenges. It took a lot to understand this makeup process and to get comfortable with that and to lean into the experience of becoming The Ghoul. Once I was able to do that and find a real rhythm to it, then all of a sudden it became joyful. And then ultimately, [I was able to] get into the story itself and figure out in real time how Cooper Howard and The Ghoul spoke to each other over time. I don’t know that I’m a cool guy in real life, I’m probably a little too earnest, but The Ghoul is really cool and Cooper Howard is really cool. So to break down and get into the process of having them talk over time was challenging and very rewarding.”
The actor had nothing but praise for the cast and creatives who were instrumental in the “Fallout” adaptation, which uses the video game setting but tells an original
story.
“This show pulls no political punches,” he said. “It’s satirical on so many levels, but when it hits emotionally, it’s talking about very big themes that resonate with all of us. One of the most gratifying parts of this experience was really understanding how far a person could fall emotionally and what they might be exposed to over the course of their life.”
The Emmy buzz for “Fallout” is the latest for the video game adaptation genre, after HBO’s “The Last of Us” received 24 nominations and took home eight awards for its first season.
“Video games are one repository for great storytelling,” Goggins said. “They’re fully developed worlds. Throughout time, whether it’s comic books, novels or whatever source material people can find to mine new stories, you’re going to use
it as a precious resource. So we’re all standing on the shoulders of the source material and every person that has attempted to do video game adaptations in the past 25 or 30 years. With the successes and failures of people that have ventured into this genre before, people are starting to figure out what makes a really good, compelling story that also serves people that are so passionate about these games that are such a big part of their childhood.”
“I think ‘Fallout’ will be another resource for the next generation of people to step into this genre,” he added. “It is within the canon of ‘Fallout,’ but it is an original story, and they gave all of these Easter eggs and were able to move these characters through this maze of experiences in a way that satisfies the players. I’m sure that there’s going to be another level to this. Hopefully we’ll reach it in Season 2. That’s certainly what we’re trying to do.”
This story first ran in the Down to the Wire Drama Series issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine.
Read more from the Down to the Wire Drama Series issue here.
