Walton Goggins, Ella Purnell, Aaron Moten and the 'Fallout' showrunners break down the unforgettable season one finale. They describe shooting the big "whopper" revelations for all of the major characters as they coalesce at the Griffith Observatory. They also tease details for season two which finds many characters headed to the fan-favorite location of New Vegas.
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00:00War never changes.
00:02War, war never changes.
00:04I had no idea the iconic kind of nature of that line or that speech
00:10and what it meant to the game or to the players of this game.
00:14You look out at this wasteland, it looks like chaos.
00:19I just thought that Geneva and Graham had written one of the best line couplets that I had ever read.
00:26War, war never changes.
00:30Turns out they get no credit for it. Zero.
00:45Hey everybody, my name is Walton Goggins.
00:47My name is Aaron Moten.
00:48Hi, I'm Ella Pannell.
00:49I'm Geneva Robertson-Dworet and I'm one of the showrunners and creators of Fallout.
00:54I'm Graham Wagner. I'm also one of the showrunners and creators of Fallout.
00:58I play Lucy in Fallout.
01:00I play Maximus.
01:01And I play Cooper Howard and the ghoul in Fallout.
01:04And this is Variety's Making a Scene.
01:17I had two reactions when I read the final script.
01:20The first one was, oh my god, how am I going to pull this off?
01:23And the second one is just my jaw hitting the floor because they didn't tell me what was going to happen.
01:29It is essentially all these characters sort of realizing the most horrifying thing that they possibly could.
01:36We wanted it essentially to feel like one scene or one revelation that was multifaceted.
01:44When I read the finale for the very first time, I was taken with what Cooper Howard hears his wife say.
01:54How can you guarantee results?
01:57By dropping the bomb ourselves.
02:04I felt so much empathy for him.
02:07It was a loss of innocence that mirrors Lucy McClain's experience, Ella Purnell,
02:14because of what she hears her father say or what Moldaver says about her father.
02:21He never told you where he's really from, when he's from.
02:26That feeling of what happens when everything you've ever believed, everything you ever thought you were,
02:31your entire identity, that's stripped away from you, who do you become?
02:36That happens so many times.
02:37Lucy is irreversibly changed.
02:40This is permanent.
02:42There's no longer like she's keeping a part of her vault dweller attitude and a part of the wasteland.
02:47No, she is a different person altogether.
02:49We were trying to discover in the moment what Maximus does with the obliteration of optimism.
03:06I don't know how else to describe it.
03:08It almost feels like this is going to now be the biggest defining blow
03:13that's going to turn him into the man that we will continue to see develop throughout the course of this series.
03:20So where that drives him into this new status with the Brotherhood is going to be interesting to watch.
03:29Lucy, let's go. Come on. We've got to get out of here.
03:32No, not with him.
03:34Why not with him? What do you mean?
03:36Because it was him.
03:39Crassly would call them whoppers in a show.
03:42And we were like, how's our whopper placement doing?
03:45And we realized we had what we called a whopper pile-up in the finale.
03:49And we talked briefly about spreading the gravy a little thinner as you spread gravy, of course.
03:56At some point there was a moment where we were like, fuck it, it's Whopper City.
03:59And we just sort of piled everything, crammed everything to the end.
04:02The hope was to take all of these big moments for Lucy, for Coop, and for Norm,
04:08and stack them up just almost on top of each other and have it all happen as one super whopper,
04:15as Burger King has paid me to call it.
04:17And it's easy to miss in episode one, but as Cooper Howard is riding away with his daughter on a horse,
04:23you can see the Griffith Observatory there in the shot.
04:26So it was sort of wanting to come back to the beginning of the show.
04:29I would say, what, about five days that we were there?
04:32Four.
04:33Four?
04:34Yeah, four.
04:35I believe that was four days.
04:36It was, the entire production was a water slide that I feel like I kind of blacked out
04:41and came out and was like, we shot the show.
04:43We always reference Sergio Leone and the good, the bad, and the ugly
04:46as sort of a major inspiration for what we wanted to do with Fallout.
04:50It's the whole reason there's three parallel character stories playing out at once and so on.
04:56So that kind of incredibly intentionally over-the-top shooting style that Leone used
05:01was something that we wanted to build our way towards.
05:03We felt like maybe if we leaned into it too hard in the pilot,
05:07it would have been alienating or bizarre or made the show feel too campy.
05:11But by the end, when Lucy has experienced so many horrifying revelations,
05:17it feels like we're ready to be that close to her face.
05:22Thanks.
05:23Open the doors.
05:27The whole show is governed by a sense of what's fun,
05:32and here's this heavy moment, the heaviest moment in the entire show,
05:38and playing it conventionally might not have worked as well
05:42as opposed to just leaning in and being like, hey, this is melodrama now.
05:45We're having the fun version, the elevated version of this heavy moment
05:50versus, you know, doing it mumblecore.
05:53Kyle had to basically reveal the other side of Hank
05:56and sort of create a brand new character, essentially.
06:00The Hank who had lived for so long and led this double life,
06:05and that was an amazing thing to see, and it's something that he did so effortlessly.
06:09And then he would do Popeye voices between takes.
06:12You see what this place does to people?
06:16I'm your father, Lucy.
06:20You came all this way for me.
06:22You're already in a weird space because I know I have to do this incredibly emotional scene,
06:26so I'm trying to keep myself in a sad space.
06:28I'm listening to sad music.
06:29I'm scrolling through pictures of my ex-boyfriend,
06:31trying to be in that very depressed place all the time,
06:34and then you walk onto this beautiful set that is built up.
06:37You know, it's the observatory.
06:38You've got a ghoul in prosthetics, Kyle in a human-sized cage,
06:43giving this very, very, very emotional, incredible performance.
06:47My sad playlist, I've had the same one since I was like 19,
06:51and I just keep adding to it, basically.
06:53It's like four hours long, so I'll just listen to it throughout the entire day.
06:56One that really helped me on this day was when the world caved in.
07:10One of the frustrations, I feel like, of actually working on a show like this
07:14with such brilliant collaborators like Howard Cummings
07:17is he's constantly layering the set with these incredible details
07:20that you just don't have time to fully focus on.
07:23So actually, there was one of the lovely details about that cage
07:26was that it had a sign on it that said that it was a specific species of macaw
07:31from the Griffith Zoo.
07:33We did always know we wanted to come back to the Griffith Observatory,
07:37partly because we wanted to blow up our neighborhood,
07:41where we are the part of L.A. we live in,
07:43and we were very excited to do that.
07:45That set is one of my favorites, especially in the volume.
07:49Howard built the most practical set he could
07:52for the interior of the dome of the observatory,
07:56and it just felt like the best playgrounds you can imagine as an actor.
08:00Fallout is a tactile experience.
08:05Out of the gate, that's how Jonah wanted to photograph it.
08:08He wanted the actors to kind of feel that way,
08:10and he wanted the audience to feel that way.
08:12I was surprised, to be quite honest with you.
08:14I read this script for the first time and thought,
08:16hmm, I wonder if the screen is going to be green or blue or yellow or what?
08:21I had no idea that it was going to be that kind of three-dimensional.
08:26It was the last day that I got made up as the cool.
08:30We got to set, there it was, and I couldn't believe what I was seeing.
08:34I couldn't believe the set that Howard had built,
08:38and it all felt so surreal to me because it was a volume stage, right?
08:44And so the background were these images that seemed so real.
08:48We're standing in this space.
08:50It's my last day playing the ghoul for this season.
08:55Walton is feeling extremely emotional about the experience.
08:59It's very sad because you're going to say goodbye to all your friends,
09:02and everyone's kind of very excited
09:04because you've romanticized the entire grueling eight-month shoot,
09:07and now you're going to say goodbye to everyone.
09:08And so there's a lot of emotions,
09:10and I really just wanted to do this scene
09:12just because for me it was the most important scene in the entire show.
09:15The fact that the camera can get so close to Ella
09:18and her performance still holds,
09:20that you feel you're even more intimately with this character
09:24rather than feeling like, oh, now I'm watching someone act,
09:26is really a testament to Ella Purnell's incredible acting chops.
09:30We're constantly moving until that moment
09:32where everyone just gathers around and the truth comes out,
09:35and we didn't feel like those emotional revelations would have played as well
09:39if our characters were on the move.
09:41It also gives us an incredible view of the city
09:44for when Cold Fusion is plugged in
09:46and Maximus gets to see the lights go on
09:49and sort of the stakes of what this thing is
09:52that everyone has been fighting over this entire season.
09:54We really wanted to show so many different sides of Maximus
09:57in this first season,
09:59and I think part of it is to give us all a sense of this can go anywhere.
10:04Just the experience of shooting this whole thing on film
10:07is a first for me in my life.
10:10But it makes you want to work really economically.
10:12You know that you've got 7 or 8 minutes on the roll.
10:15Every time action is called, you're like, I have to do it.
10:18Like, let's get it now.
10:20We got the right flare on the lens, you know.
10:22We got the right feeling of the shot,
10:24and then walking out of it, and I ran up to Graham
10:27to try and see, like, is this working?
10:29He just was like, I think we got it.
10:31That was really great.
10:34Lucy, you're coming with me.
10:38Grrrr!
10:40Ow!
10:42The moment that Maximus gains the knowledge that he needs to,
10:46I mean, we hear him say earlier,
10:48I want to hurt the people who hurt me.
10:50You know, he finally even has a face
10:53to that idea that he's lived with his whole life
10:56and what he's hoped to accomplish with the Brotherhood
10:59living in that harsh reality for him.
11:01And I found it so tragic to finally get the knowledge,
11:04to finally feel like, of course,
11:06Maximus is going to run headstrong into it,
11:09but, you know, to finally come to face that reality
11:14that you've imagined for so long
11:16and within 6 seconds of it be knocked out cold.
11:20You wake up from being unconscious
11:22and you just expect the person to be there
11:25and then sort of realize, is she alive?
11:28Did she just leave me?
11:30Everyone is gone.
11:31All the solutions that you think that you're coming to grasp
11:35are all gone.
11:36I always found him very upset with himself in that moment.
11:39He takes things on himself very heavily.
11:41When you only have yourself to rely on in the Wasteland, truly,
11:45I think you take things really hard.
11:48The final shot of Maximus
11:50as people are hailing him as a knight
11:52and he gets what he wants.
11:54Aaron Moten is a guy who can do soliloquies
11:58with his expressional journeys.
12:00All hail knight Maximus!
12:01All hail knight Maximus!
12:03All hail knight Maximus!
12:05All hail knight Maximus!
12:07All hail knight Maximus!
12:09We're not the kind of show to release deleted scenes,
12:12but the various iterations
12:14of how Maximus processed this moment that he's in
12:19of getting what he wants, but it isn't what he wants anymore,
12:24is amazing.
12:25Be careful what you wish for
12:26was always something we talked about.
12:27It's something we wanted the show to deal with.
12:29Like, Lucy's on this mission to find her dad
12:31and then she finds out the worst possible things.
12:34With Aaron and Maximus,
12:36that he really wants this suit and thinks it'll be his palace,
12:39but it turns out to be his prison.
12:41And that the Brotherhood,
12:42he's about to be knighted after the show ends, obviously,
12:45is where we end up,
12:46and he knows that that's going to be a prison for him.
12:49I love being there.
12:50It also, for me, I only got to work with Walton
12:53whether I was playing with the suit
12:56or I was on set just watching on and off day.
13:02Those were the only times I otherwise got to work with Walton,
13:05so I even made sure to make some nice jokes to him
13:08just like, we finally get a scene together
13:10and I'm passed out, you know?
13:12But, you know, and of course he was like,
13:14well, you better stay down there.
13:16I wonder if they fix that in this new model.
13:20ACTION SCENES
13:26We were anxious, honestly, about Walton entering the scene so late, right?
13:31In the present day storyline as the ghoul.
13:34We worried, would it feel too late?
13:36But Walton was so brilliant at making the coop and ghoul character
13:40feel totally continuous that the fact that you're seeing the coop
13:43and seeing his revelations in the pre-war world
13:46earlier in the episode,
13:48before the ghoul strides in very late in the episode
13:52into the present day storyline,
13:54he's the one who I think through his performance
13:56made that work and made it feel like one continuous character.
14:00I had no idea that this was going to be the end reveal
14:02of my character or anyone else's for that matter,
14:05even for the ghouls.
14:07I had no idea, I mean I had an idea of where it might be heading,
14:11but it wasn't until right before they published this draft
14:16that it fully kind of landed for me.
14:19I've waited over 200 years to ask somebody one question.
14:28Where is my fucking family?
14:30I've waited over 200 years to ask this one question.
14:34Where is my fucking family?
14:37I mean, that's a lot, right?
14:39There's a lot to kind of put into that.
14:41If you've got Walton Goggins, you've got to write one-liners,
14:43you've got to write soliloquies, you've got a hot rod,
14:45you've got to do some donuts.
14:47Yes, he can pull off truly anything,
14:49so we're incredibly grateful.
14:51Any actor that I look up to and respect
14:53probably approaches it like the same way.
14:55It's not a line, right?
14:57It can never be a line.
14:59You have to believe that.
15:01The line, where's my fucking family,
15:03was the line we were just like,
15:05at some point in the show,
15:07we played him very secretively,
15:09you know, a guy who keeps his cards close to his chest,
15:11and that was a line where,
15:13essentially a card, where's my fucking family?
15:15Yeah.
15:17As we broke the season, like, where does it go?
15:19And of course, finale, why not?
15:21If they are these one-liners,
15:23I definitely don't set out to do that.
15:25What I try to do
15:27is just make them real
15:29to the person that I'm playing.
15:31You know, like,
15:33World War never changes.
15:35I had no idea the iconic kind of nature
15:37of that line or that speech
15:39and what it meant to the game
15:41or to the players of this game.
15:43War.
15:45War never changes.
15:47I just thought that Geneva and Graham
15:49had written one of the best line couplets
15:51that I had ever read,
15:53and they really got it,
15:55and it turns out
15:57they get no credit for it.
15:59Zero.
16:01He's the guy who's like,
16:03I'm going to the laundromat.
16:05You'd be like, boom, yeah.
16:07You know, like, that's an amazing line, Walton.
16:09He's like, no, I'm just going to the laundromat.
16:13You want another autograph, young Henry?
16:17Feo, fuerte,
16:19y famo.
16:21Anytime we could just sort of harken back to the Western.
16:23Yes.
16:25We just took the opportunity, and the Spurs,
16:27sure, he's been wearing
16:29those Spurs that whole time.
16:31This guy has been on sort of one track
16:33for 200 years.
16:35He's wearing the same clothes.
16:37A lot of those decisions came from our brilliant
16:39costume designer, Amy Westcott,
16:41who I think really brilliantly,
16:43it could have been incredibly cheesy, right,
16:45that he's still wearing his movie star costume
16:47200 years later.
16:49It's like, what, he didn't take it off?
16:51This is ludicrous, but she aged it so beautifully
16:53that I think it's subtle enough
16:55that it feels like it's mostly existing
16:57at the level of metaphor about,
16:59is he still this heroic version of a cowboy?
17:01The makeup was a work of collaboration
17:03between Vincent Van Dyke and Jake Garber,
17:05two absolutely brilliant
17:07special effects makeup artists.
17:09We looked at many iterations with them
17:11of the ghoul, and some of them were closer
17:13to sort of the most push ghouls
17:15in the game, who are very disfigured,
17:17but what a waste of Walton Goggins,
17:19and we wouldn't then be able to see
17:21his emotion as clearly.
17:23So the most important thing, of course, to us was the eyes.
17:25The ghoul is almost performative
17:27in a way that is...
17:29You have to find humor
17:31in such a bleak world, right?
17:33Every single day,
17:35people are just walking
17:37without really a destination,
17:39trying to stay alive.
17:41And for the ghoul,
17:43he takes pleasure
17:45in taking his time
17:47talking to people.
17:49You know, I mean,
17:51what else is he going to do?
17:53Looking back at
17:55the movie,
17:57looking back at
17:59how the ghoul's relationship
18:01with Lucy
18:03changed over time,
18:05that was one
18:07of the most fulfilling
18:09parts of this process for me,
18:11that it was so antagonistic
18:13and so brutal
18:15without malice
18:17to end in a place that isn't sentimental.
18:19I think it is a person
18:21that has seen the loss
18:23of innocence in another person
18:25and deeply
18:27empathizes with it
18:29because he himself
18:31went through a similar experience
18:33200 years earlier
18:35and is still reeling
18:37from the loss of that innocence,
18:39right?
18:41That his tone changes.
18:43And when he says,
18:45are you coming?
18:47You coming?
18:51I just think that's a pretty
18:53cool way to go out.
18:57Okie dokie.
18:59That
19:01okie dokie was the hardest
19:03thing about the entire scene.
19:05I can't tell you how many times I must have said
19:07that line.
19:09It was always okie dokie.
19:11Me, Geneva and Graham and Wayne
19:13were all working towards the same goal
19:15and we couldn't figure out how to get there
19:17because there were so many different emotions
19:19in that moment.
19:21It's easy to layer emotions
19:23but in this moment
19:25you're pulling from so many
19:27non-relatable things.
19:29What would you do if you found out
19:31that your father, your hero
19:33is evil
19:35and bombed your boyfriend's
19:37family and city
19:39and your mum's a ghoul
19:41but your dad caused your mum to be a ghoul?
19:43There's just so many different things
19:45and it's not easy to layer them all.
19:47I can't shoot my dad.
19:49I can't do it.
19:51There's a level of self-hatred and frustration
19:53and anger and then you add on to that
19:55that Maximus is passed out
19:57and I'm not strong enough to take him
19:59with me. If I stay here, the Brotherhood will kill me.
20:01There's fear. There's pounding on the doors.
20:03There's so many different emotions
20:05and so do you do okie dokie broken?
20:07Do you do it strong? Do you do it like a badass?
20:09I was going to Geneva and Graham. Help me. What do I do?
20:11Give me a note. Help me. How do I make it better?
20:13They were kind of looking at me like,
20:15It's good. Calm down.
20:17And I think actually I was having to
20:19fake a lot of the eye lines
20:21because of the camera angles
20:23and so I couldn't actually see Walton
20:25for the majority of when we filmed our little
20:27exchange.
20:29It's all how you say it. And throughout the season
20:31Ella says it at least
20:33three very meaningful ways.
20:35Yes.
20:37Four. Up to four.
20:39And very different ways. It means something different
20:41every time. Lucy's character
20:43transformation is the thing that
20:45excited me the most about this role.
20:47I wanted to break her. I wanted to
20:49destroy her and then see
20:51what we get on the other side.
20:53When I signed up for this I'd only read the pilot
20:55but I also knew from speaking to
20:57Jonah, Geneva and Graham that they had
20:59big plans. I didn't know what they were
21:01but I knew they were big. She's still trying to be
21:03that person who has a sense of optimism
21:05about everything they're stepping into
21:07and a sense of bravery and just being down.
21:09I've always just loved Lucy's down.
21:15Lucy killing her mother
21:17is the confirmation of the thing
21:19that we both know. And he's looking at me like
21:21he knows but he's not going to say I told you so
21:23because he knows that that's painful. And there's a part of
21:25Lucy that I'd say actually
21:27most of Lucy hates herself for what she's
21:29turned into, hates him for what he's turned her into
21:31but she doesn't have a choice.
21:33She can't stay here.
21:35When he says, do you want to go meet your makers?
21:37Or you could come meet your makers.
21:41Lucy is never going to say no to that.
21:43She has to. At this point she has to.
21:45And so it's an
21:47okie-dokie. It's not a broken okie-dokie.
21:49It's like an acceptance of what's
21:51happened to her. It's an effort.
21:53There's nothing else for me to do except to put
21:55one foot in front of the other.
21:57My echo
21:59My shadow
22:01And me
22:05We knew there were
22:07very exciting elements and
22:09elements we wanted to tackle in the second
22:11season. To be honest, the Death Clause is an element
22:13we were troubled by not finding
22:15the right space for it in season one.
22:17And we very deliberately wanted to box ourselves
22:19in. Sometimes as writers you do that.
22:21You set yourself a challenge and you just
22:23say like, well now we got it.
22:25I think that we talked
22:27so much about the Death Clause being so
22:29central to the games. We always
22:31wanted to introduce it in a way where we could do it
22:33proper justice. And I feel like
22:35we were very careful to try to
22:37construct a first season
22:39that would appeal to gamers and non-gamers
22:41alike. So we didn't want to throw too much in.
22:43There are
22:45mysteries from season one.
22:47There are things that seem
22:49benign but may carry
22:51weight in season two.
22:53And things that are
22:55worth dedicating
22:57an episode to
22:59that seem
23:01outside of the
23:03overall trajectory of this
23:05experience. I like taking
23:07side trips.
23:09And just kind of exploring something
23:11that was mentioned in passing
23:13and making a thing out of it.
23:15And I know Graham and Geneva
23:17and Jonah
23:19are down for that too.
23:21So we'll see what happens. Regardless of what
23:23it is that Maximus is after,
23:25he's almost starved
23:27for it. There's a desperation in which
23:29he sort of goes about trying to get it.
23:31So I don't see that stopping
23:33for him in season two. I feel like he's
23:35going to find a way
23:37to be going after what he
23:39wants. Many of our
23:41lead characters are Vegas bound.
23:43And Las Vegas
23:45in the world of Fallout is Robert
23:47House's town. Robert House
23:49might have something to do with it.
23:51Will be involved
23:53in season two. The first thing I learn
23:55from season one is just always
23:57stretch before your stunts.
23:59You might not want to. You might
24:01think, I don't have to do that.
24:03But you should.
24:05Because it hurts otherwise. And number two,
24:07don't try to guess
24:09the outcome.
24:11Don't try to guess what
24:13is going to happen or
24:15if people are going to like that line or
24:17laugh at that line or find your character
24:19likeable or not.
24:21Just be
24:23present and do it and enjoy it.
24:25That's where the fun is, is the surprise.
24:27Can I just say one thing?
24:29I think Cooper Howard is
24:31cool as shit. I think he's so cool.
24:33And I think the ghoul is
24:35cool as shit. And I can't believe that I get
24:37to play two people that are that cool
24:39over the course of 200 years. That's
24:41pretty amazing.
25:01you