Author: Wanggo Gallaga

One of Prime Video’s biggest hits last year was the series adaptation of the popular role-playing video game franchise Fallout. The eight-episode show immerses viewers into a post-apocalyptic world, following the stories of three survivors of the nuclear fallout that ruined America.

It follows Lucy (Ella Purnell), an inhabitant of an underground vault, who grew up there, unaware of the world above. When she exits the vault, she meets a world in survival mode and is the antithesis of what she raised for. There she meets Maximus (Aaron Moten), a squire of the Brotherhood of Steel, an order of soldiers that battles in metal suits, and later on, The Ghoul (Walton Goggins), a mutated bounty hunter transformed by radiation poisoning.

Once known as Cooper Howard, The Ghoul was an actor who become an endorser for the company that built the vaults and was alive before the Great War that triggered the nuclear cataclysm 200 years ago.

Now, the second season of the hit series arrives on December 17, and ClickTheCity was invited to a virtual roundtable interview with the three lead actors and alongside fellow journalists from across the Asia Pacific, to talk about what’s in store for the new season. 

Seated side by side, the three stars showed great comfort in each other’s company. They eagerly listened to each other’s answers, and even being late into their interview schedule (they had several roundtable interviews before our session), they were enthusiastic and excited to talk about the new season.

The discussion below is a mix of ours and the other journalists’ questions:

Do you remember how you felt when season 2 was greenlit, since it has been a while?

Aaron Moten: It has been a while since season 2 was greenlit. (laughs)

Ella Purnell: (turning to Aaron) I think we were at a wine bar, right? We were getting dinner or something?

AM: That’s right.

EP: And then Jonah told us and we cheered. And I had a feeling, but I wasn’t sure and it was a beautiful, happy moment, surrounded by this kind of little family. It was really great. I found it really emotional.

Going into the second season, were there any suggestions you were able to give for your character that you were able to implement? Now that you know your character better, were there ways where you were able to show yourselves in that character?

Walton Goggins: There were things about Cooper Howard that I can’t get into, but we dig much deeper into who he is. We pick up where we left off last year with the realisation that his wife might be the principal architect of the end of the world. And it was about talking with the writers about his journey and what is ultimately revealed and how best to get to that point. There were a lot of discussions back and forth about the relationship between Frances Turner, who plays my wife Barb, and it was a lovely collaboration. I can’t wait for people to see that side of the story.

Speaking of revelations, there were several revelations your characters discovered at the end of season one. How have those revelations changed your characters coming into this second season, without spoiling too much?

AM: Yeah, right. Because a SWAT team will come in and take us out.

(Ella Purnell laughs at the joke)

AM: It’s a beautiful thing that you are touching upon here because we are just at the beginning of our story. Thankfully. We are so happy to be doing the second one and finally get to be showing it to a wide audience and we are excited about getting into a third. But it’s a beautiful thing to know that these experiences that we have now been sharing together are changing these characters. And that where they are going is this mystery and I’d like to fantasize that we might not recognize them by the end of it from where they started. This is still the beginning. I just loved getting into season 2 because we are expanding these themes. We just come out of the overture and we’re now in the first movement, you know what I mean? And there are new players at the board. I was also obsessing about [Justin} Theroux and what he’s done and Kumail [Nanjiani] and Macaulay Culkin joining our show. We get a lot more and we have more to say this year and it is super exciting, all the growth these characters have.

I’ve seen how much excitement you guys have in talking about this show in season one and now in season two. Why does this show mean so much to you, in terms of making it and the story?

(They discuss amongst themselves who would take the question. Goggins asks if he could and Purnell says she has a take, but he should go but then Purnell takes it while everyone laughs)

EP: We were talking about this today at the car. This show has changed my life on so many levels. It’s so incredibly, creatively fulfilling. I’ve learned so much in my personal life and I’ve become a better actor and I’ve met some incredible life-long friends. The reason I talk about this show so much with pride and excitement is because of how deeply it has shaped me. And how deeply it has touched me in so many ways. I carry this character in me. And I will forever. It’s been an incredible, emotional– and it’s not done! We’re doing it again! And it’s going to keep going on and keep evolving and hopefully, fingers crossed, touch wood, it will be with me in my thirties and for many more years. I think about when I hear the fans of the game, you know it’s been twenty years since this game has been around, and thousands of people have shaped this game and this show. We have 700 crew. We have an incredible ensemble. You know fathers have played it with their sons and fathers have played it with their fathers. People get emotional when they talk about this game. This is a global community and to be even a tiniest part of that, like, that’s incredible. It’s mind blowing.

How do you feel about your character’s growth looking back at season one again?

AM: I’m very excited about it. I don’t know. Maybe my excitement is… (thinks hard) It’s really interesting to do films and obsess over one script. Right? It’s one way we tell a story but we get eight scripts in every season of this show. And I love that we created this world where I’m not bored… as an actor. And I don’t mean that I’m easily bored but I do just think that if it were the same I would lose my taste for it. I like new problems to solve. I get excited about the development because it is what keeps me invested in what we put together. And not just the story but in how I’m evolving as an artist. Sometimes it’s even hard for me to talk about season two. It is the past for me. We are about to share it with the world but I’ve already moved on. Sometimes, even that can be challenging. But I know that it is going to keep growing and doesn’t necessarily mean in the linear way with how these characters develop. But it is exciting.

After watching the first three episodes, it would be interesting to ask Walton who he prefers playing, Cooper or the Ghoul? Because they are two different people. What was that like?

WG: You know, you can’t have one without the other, right? And I enjoy both. One of them takes two and half hour on the [makeup] chair and the other takes about eight minutes on the chair. But Cooper Howard is going through a lot this year and he’s a man who is having his entire – much like Lucy, in a way, coming out of the vault – I never really thought or talked about it in this way. Like Lucy comes out of the vault in season one and the world that you thought you knew is not the reality of what the world is and that is a journey that Cooper Howard is on. And it is chaotic. It just doesn’t make sense to him and it was so delicious and so complicated and so dark, going to work, even when it’s funny. And then anytime I get to put on that jacket and those spurs and walk in the desert as the Ghoul, man. (laughs) Look. Look. I love everything about this show. The question before this, it dovetails into this: about why we care so much about it? Because if we don’t care than nobody else will care. But if we do care, then maybe everybody else will care. And more importantly, it’s because this is what I love to do most in the world. I don’t know how not to care about something I am a part of. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t care. And just to speak to that, very specifically. You guys have seen the first three episodes but this journey that Lucy and I go on, it’s fun to think “Oh it’s two actors on a fucking road trip.” Well, who gives a shit? I’ve seen that movie, right? But then I see two people: one, who doesn’t even know how to have a conversation with another human being, you know? He doesn’t do that. And the other doesn’t know where she’s going or what she’s doing. They are in two completely different spaces. One is an optimist and the other is a nihilist. And eventually, she is thinking “I will or vice-versa” but that’s irrelevant to me. We had the most fun. There was one morning when we first started, Ella and I were walking next to each other – this is just an example – and then Ella said “wait a minute, why are we walking beside each other?” Because it’s easier for you to get a two-shot? Why am I walking next to him? (looking at Purnell) And I was, like, “Yeah? Why are you walking next to him?”

EP: They would not walk next to each other!

WG: They don’t. They’d drift back and forth. Right? They have to earn that proximity. And we messed with all of that and thought about who is the first person to speak. It was Lucy. What was the first time the Ghoul answered? What was the first thing out of her mouth that the Ghoul had a response to. And what was the first question the Ghoul asked her about her life?I just get obsessed about thinking about the reality of any situation and that’s a long-winded answer to the question you were asking.

EP: It was a great answer.

WG: But I just felt like talking.