Fallout | Contenders Television 'The Nominees'
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00:00Hello, I'm Dominic Patton, Executive Editor here at Deadline, and welcome to our Fallout
00:09panel.
00:10Having debuted on April 10th on Prime Video, the Geneva, Robertson, Duarte, and Graham
00:14Wagner created post-apocalyptic drama based on the hit video game of the same name has
00:19proved explosive in the best way.
00:22Watched by over 90 million viewers globally, Fallout, which was renewed for a second season
00:27on April 18th, has earned a very impressive 17 Emmy nominations last month, including
00:33Outstanding Drama Series and Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series for Walton Goggins
00:39and his dual role as mutant bounty hunter The Ghoul and pre-apocalyptic Hollywood Western
00:45actor Cooper Howard.
00:47Walton is here with us today from Filming in Asia, and we're also joined by co-showrunner
00:51Graham Wagner and executive producer-director Jonathan Nolan.
00:55Welcome guys.
00:56It's good to be here.
00:59Thanks for having us.
01:00Before we talk Fallout, we're going to look at a clip from the show, and then we'll be
01:04back.
01:05All right.
01:06I think that's everything.
01:07Why wouldn't you do it?
01:08The thumbs up.
01:09Oh, it's grown up stuff.
01:10Well, back when I was in the Marines, they taught us that if they ever drop a really
01:33big bomb, they told us to hold up your thumb just like this.
01:37And if the cloud is smaller than your thumb, now you run for the hills.
01:42And if it's bigger than your thumb?
01:46They told us not to bother running.
01:49Do you think it's going to happen?
01:53I certainly hope not.
01:55But us cowpokes, we take it as it comes, right?
02:01Can I have a slice, Dad?
02:06Let me see if I can't rustle you up a piece.
02:32All right, one piece of cake coming up for my favorite cowgirl.
02:36Is it your thumb or mine?
03:02That's smoke, Janie.
03:04It's just a fire.
03:34You know, I find that clip from the show so haunting, especially with Cooper and his
03:44daughter and the horrors that we're seeing.
03:47Walton, we've seen you on Justified, I'm a Virgo, Hateful Eight, Righteous Gemstones
03:52and many, many other shows.
03:53But what was it like here playing a dual role?
03:58You know, it was on the page, it was just an extraordinary opportunity.
04:04And then having these conversations with Jonah and with Graham and Geneva about being very
04:13specific about this person's journey over a 200 year period, right?
04:19It's through Cooper's experience that we get to see what the world was like before
04:26the bombs fell.
04:27And then the ghoul is someone who has been walking a post-apocalyptic landscape for 200
04:34years.
04:35And so the chasm between those two experiences is extreme.
04:40And they wisely wrote it in a way, both before the war began and then 200 years after.
04:49And Jonah with such skill depicted visually these two different experiences in a way that
04:59there's history in both of them, right?
05:02And even the things that you don't see, we talked at length, ad nauseum, really about
05:07the specificity of all of them and about Cooper and who was he?
05:13Who were the people that he auditioned against?
05:16What was his community of friends in Hollywood and where did he live in the city?
05:20And, you know, things of that nature.
05:23And then with the ghoul, we talked specifically about, well, what was the first day that he
05:29survived the bomb like?
05:31Who was the first person who tried to kill him?
05:34Who was the first person that he had to kill?
05:37And, you know, a lot of these things we don't want to get too much into because they'll
05:41be explored in the show.
05:42But it was through that that specificity, both in the written word and the way Jonah
05:48photographed this show that that it became alive to me, you know, and and it was, you
05:54know, just a rare opportunity to understand how far someone has has fallen, really, and
06:01what someone what being exposed to the worst that humanity has to offer can do to the
06:07psychology of a human being.
06:10Graham, one of the things I really loved about Fallout, besides the fact I love the game
06:15and so seeing the show translated to the screen so well was so, so enjoyable is there's a
06:20real mix here.
06:21Yes, you guys are obviously nominated for Outstanding Drama Series, but there's a lot
06:25of comedy.
06:26There's a lot of pathos.
06:27There's a lot of mixing of genres here.
06:29How did you guys manage that?
06:30And what were you trying to do with that?
06:32Because to me, it reveals more of the characters, more of the narrative.
06:37Yeah, I mean, you know, I think we just tried to pay attention to the humanity of the people
06:42we're writing about and not let sort of genre wag the dog.
06:47Like I just rewatched Remains of the Day and there's some very funny scenes in Remains
06:52of the Day.
06:53You know, it's got Anthony Hopkins telling Hugh Grant about the birds and the bees in
06:58a garden.
06:59You know, like I think that good drama has humor and it always has.
07:04And I think hanging on to that, not necessarily chasing humor, but chasing observed human
07:13behavior.
07:14Because I think as we've sort of seen in the last 20 years, great calamities can happen
07:20and humans are still going to be idiosyncratic, weird, and a little, I don't love the word
07:27quirky, but a little quirky.
07:30We joked a lot about, you know, if the nukes were coming and Twitter was still active,
07:36there'd be a funny tweet.
07:38I think there would be.
07:40And I think we'd be like, I got to hand it right before the lights went out.
07:45So, yeah, yeah.
07:47It's basically just that.
07:49Not really chasing the humor explicitly, but chasing sort of idiosyncratic human behavior.
07:55Now, Jonah, to take it to another level, something that's not idiosyncratic at all
08:00here is the sheer scope of Fallout.
08:03This is a big show, big landscapes, and many ways in which you guys, which you directed
08:08and you just get a sense of a world.
08:12What were you trying to put together here as you constructed what you wanted for the
08:16visual narrative?
08:17I think that was the fun of it.
08:19And I do think even with the scope, one of the things that drew us to the games in the
08:24first place is the idiosyncrasies of those worlds.
08:28I think it is richly detailed in the macro and the micro.
08:34And part of the fun of the game, the games, is wandering around these vast, beautiful
08:41ruined landscapes and finding the weird debris and detritus of civilization and the weird
08:49juxtaposition of the sublime and the banal, the way in which the end of the world levels
08:55everything, reduces it all to the same thing, high and low.
08:59And so we wanted to carry that.
09:02I felt like my responsibility, my end of this was trying to ensure that that experience
09:07that you have playing the games, that sense of overwhelming scale and beauty, but the
09:12hidden depths of the universe.
09:15The audience can't take control of our camera in the same way they can in the game.
09:20They can't wander over and explore that piece.
09:22The game here was to try to detail out and build out the world in such a way that they
09:27had the feeling of that experience.
09:29They had the feeling, the lived-in quality of that world.
09:33And that I think was the biggest challenge.
09:36Now, of course, one of the other challenges, and this is for all of you, but Walton has
09:40to deal with it on a daily basis on set, is the prosthetics of the ghoul.
09:44And they're elaborate and wonderful and striking because they're not repulsive, but they're
09:49also incredible.
09:51You can't look away.
09:52At the same time, I want to ask all of you, from the writing to the directing to the acting,
09:58how do you convey so much, buried under so much, Walton?
10:04Well, I give it to Jonah, who just kind of coached me through my profound insecurity
10:11at the beginning of this process.
10:13And he said, it's all in the eyes.
10:15Everything that we need to see is in your eyes, and your eyes are very expressive.
10:20That was the biggest concern right out of the gate for me.
10:24But the way that the piece was designed and the history of his experience kind of on his
10:29face really does a lot of the work for you, doesn't it?
10:32I mean, in some ways, because people are just kind of looking at that.
10:38I don't even know how to project emotion.
10:41Genuinely, I couldn't if you held a gun to my face.
10:44But what I can do is hopefully come from the tenor of your voice, right?
10:49And from your eyes, I suppose it's a combination of all of those different things.
10:53But the one thing that we haven't really talked about was no one really knew that when I say
10:58the durability of the piece, of course it was durable.
11:01But these were some extreme conditions that Jonah, Jonathan Nolan put us in.
11:08And so we didn't know how long the integrity of the piece would be in place.
11:14And so we had to work around that a bit.
11:17But to be quite honest with you, and I've said this in a couple of interviews, Dominic,
11:21once the very first day, in the opening of the show, the clip that you showed,
11:25that was my first day as Cooper Howard.
11:28And it was my first day coming to work and not wearing the ghoul makeup.
11:32And in some ways, it was Stockholm Syndrome.
11:36I'd become used to that torture, and I found a lot of comfort in it.
11:40And when that was removed and I came to set that day, I had a panic attack, really,
11:46because I didn't have anything to protect me.
11:48And all of a sudden, I felt like, well, people see me for who I am and who is this guy.
11:54So there are pluses and minuses to both experiences.
11:59Graham, obviously Walton is here with his well-deserved nomination.
12:03But, you know, Fallout's an ensemble, and there's many different parts.
12:06There's many different worlds inside the vault, outside, et cetera, et cetera.
12:11As we close, I wanted to ask you, for you, what was the biggest challenge
12:16taking this from the video game to the small screen?
12:19Well, I mean, it's a massive world.
12:22You know, there are people out there who put thousands of hours into the games
12:27because there is truly, as I sort of remarked before,
12:31there's story in every filing cabinet, on every terminal screen.
12:35This is a world that has had multiple writers over the last 25 years contributing to it.
12:41And we wanted to add to that while also, you know, honoring the work that came before us.
12:46So a lot of it was, you know, we could, it's a different exercise.
12:51The games, you're just sort of throwing all this story out there for people to find.
12:55And for us, it was, you know, a pinhole.
13:00We were kind of going through that world through and selecting what we showed
13:05and what we didn't show was, you know, an ongoing process.
13:09Like we would just generate scenes.
13:12Steve and I would just write scenes.
13:13I mean, that cold open from the pilot was maybe the eighth version that we wrote.
13:20We just wrote hundreds of scenes and just threw them away
13:23because we just wanted to learn about this world for ourselves
13:27and then decide among all of that.
13:29Okay, well, what's worthy to show?
13:31Did you create like a backstory Bible?
13:34Well, I mean, the games have been the sort of, oh, for the characters.
13:37Yeah, yeah.
13:38We have all of that stuff, but it's all, what are we showing?
13:42You know, the ghoul has been around for 200 years, you know,
13:46being selective about what we show.
13:48And a lot of that-
13:49A little bit, Graeme.
13:50You have to show all of it, all 200 years.
13:53If we figure out this technology to make this makeup process a little faster,
13:59we maybe can pull it off.
14:01But yeah, a lot of it is just choosing.
14:03What do we get to show in the limited time we have?
14:06And it was painful, but luckily the audience came out
14:10and we're going to get a chance to show more in season two.
14:13That has to keep happening 100 times so that we can keep,
14:17actually cover everything from the games.
14:18It has to be 100 seasons, unfortunately.
14:21100 seasons.
14:22Jonathan, you've worked on some pretty, pretty big shows over the years.
14:27Were you surprised at the huge response there was to Fallout?
14:32Well, I think you're always hopeful.
14:34And we feel a certain responsibility when we go in
14:37and ask our partners at Amazon to step up,
14:40given the scope of the games.
14:42You want to be sure you calibrate it correctly.
14:45We knew how many fans worldwide loved these games.
14:48That's some of the reassurance you have.
14:50Six games, you know, 25 years, as Pam said.
14:54But it's always a delight and it's always a surprise,
14:57especially with a show like this.
14:58It's so weird, right?
14:59It's so weird.
15:00It's so dark.
15:01It's so funny.
15:02It doesn't pull its punches politically, satirically.
15:06There's so much fun to be had here.
15:08And I think in so many moments with Geneva, with Graham,
15:12with Walton, with the rest of our incredible cast and crew,
15:15pushing it a bit, feeling like, no,
15:17we want to push it a little bit with this show.
15:19We want to go for it a bit.
15:20It's a delight, then, to have an experience like my mom
15:23telling me how much she loved it.
15:25I'm sort of having an inner craze when I think about some
15:28of the moments that my mom experienced.
15:31There's some wonderful, weird, wacky, beautiful,
15:34dark, amazing stuff in here.
15:37And it's a delight when you find something.
15:39I think our timing with this was sadly pretty good.
15:44I think we lost a lot of time looking at the end of the world
15:47right now.
15:48And, you know, why not sugar in medicine a little bit?
15:50To Graham's point, I've always felt throughout my career that,
15:54you know, you can always get the audience to a slightly darker
15:56place if you tell them a couple of jokes along the way.
15:59If you warm them up a little bit,
16:01you can actually get them to a darker place.
16:03So, it's been a delight to see the reaction to this show.
16:07Well, it's been a delight spending some time with the three
16:09of you.
16:10Thank you so much.
16:11When it's all out,
16:12you can see all of the first season on Amazon Prime Video with,
16:15as Graham said, season two coming.
16:18Thank you so much.