Fallout Star Walton Goggins on The Ghoul and The White Lotus Season 3

If you’re going to play a quintessential scene-stealer, there’s no better creative landscape to do that in than an edgy post-apocalyptic drama based on one of the world’s most insanely popular video games. In Fallout, Prime Video’s highly anticipated new series based on the video game of the same name, Walton Goggins (Justified, The Hateful Eight) sets aside Bible-thumping Baby Billy Freeman from The Righteous Gemstones and morphs into unforgettable Ghoul, a mutated outlaw who exists in the terrifying shell of a once honorable man whose only concern is his continued survival and killing anything or anybody who gets in the way. This will be, hands down, one of the most memorable characters introduced into the streaming landscape.

Welcome to Los Angeles, 2296, some 219 years after a nuclear apocalypse decimated the entire planet. The Ghoul — face and nose (ahem) challenged with wrinkled skin and craving another hit of a mysterious drug to keep him intact — is one of dozens of fascinating characters in this elaborate new series executive produced and directed (episodes 1-3) by Jonathan Nolan (The Dark Knight Rises, Westworld). Creators Geneva Robertson-Dworet (Captain Marvel) and Graham Wagner’s (The Office, Silicon Valley) wild cinematic adventure explores humanity’s post-nuclear apocalypse survival.

Mixing dark humor, elaborate sets, and action-packed sequences, Fallout is world-building at its finest. The eight-episode first season tracks three distinct character-led narratives, one of them Goggins’ character, that sometimes overlap. Also starring Ella Purnell (Yellowjackets), Aaron Moten (Emancipation), and Kyle MacLachlan (Dune, Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks), the series creates a link between individuals living in luxury underground vaults (fallout shelters) to those existing on the surface where life is much more dangerous.

In this exclusive MovieWeb interview, Walton Goggins opens up about the emotional first day he walked out of the make-up trailer in prosthetics, surprise spider bites, and teases coming aboard Season 3 of The White Lotus. Read on.

When Goggins First Saw Himself as The Ghoul

Executive producer Jonathan Nolan reteams with Lisa Joy here after collaborating on Westworld. Expect a fully immersive, exploratory world that was first introduced by the groundbreaking video game franchise. Things to know: Apocalyptic events occurred in October 2077. Vault dwellers are the privileged souls who live underground. The Wasteland is the Earth’s lawless irradiated surface, filled with danger, quirky humans, dangerous animals, and the Brotherhood of Steel, a cult military group whose efforts to restore order are untrustworthy and sketchy at best.

Goggins’ transition into The Ghoul involved an hours-long prosthetic application process. The man had to wear an entire mask over his face. The actor collaborated with Nolan and the showrunners on the look of The Ghoul, in fact. The overall look is off-putting, yet you can’t help being drawn into exploring The Ghoul’s face or how Goggins captures him, for that matter.

When asked what it was like to be there on the first day he was in full prosthetic makeup, and what ran through his mind as The Ghoul, Goggins said, “I sat outside in a private place by myself for like an hour and a half and I just looked at it on the phone and then I just started moving my head around I looked at it in the light. He continued:

“It’s what it’s like trying to drive a car like a Ferrari for the first time. I mean this is like a like a Ferrari piece of prosthetic, and it’s like just seeing what I could do; [I] was kind of registering who am I? Who was this guy? I looked at it in the shade. I looked at it in the sun. I put it down, I have a cigarette, and picked it back up and just sat with it, and just got up and slowly started sitting in chairs and walking around.”

Taking in his full transformation into The Ghoul, Goggins added: “At the end of it, I said [to the character], ‘I don’t know how much pain you’re really carrying, but I do know you have a great sense of humor. So, let’s just go find it out together.’ And that was it.”

Walton Goggins Got Bit by a Brown Recluse 5 Times

So many things stand out in the production — in front of and behind the camera — but look for how well the action-packed scenes between Goggins, Purnell, and Moten play out. The Ghoul wants to survive and isn’t about to make friends. He’s a dangerous mutant. Meanwhile, Goggins will never forget the first day he was due in full makeup — he was bitten by a spider.

“I was staying in this hotel, I put my pants on in the morning… going to make a cup of coffee at 5 o’clock in the morning because I was up, it was New York time. And then I felt my leg just started burning. And then it started burning again and again and again.”

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Goggins wondered what the hell was happening. “It just made no sense,” he added. “You want a spider bite after you have a cappuccino, not before, right? Because you can’t understand really what’s happening. [I] pulled my pants down, there was a spider, took it to a doctor, and he said, ‘That’s a brown recluse, and you got bit five times by it. So, you’re lucky that you came in when you did.’ It all worked out, thank God.”

News on Season 3 of White Lotus

Beyond Fallout, news recently dropped that Walton Goggins was cast in Season 3 of The White Lotus. The already packed upcoming season features first-season regular Natasha Rothwell, along with Leslie Bibb (Pam Royal), Parker Posey (Mr. & Mrs. Smith), Miloš Biković (South Wind), Carrie Coon (Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire), Jason Isaacs (Archie), Michelle Monaghan (The Family Plan), and recent add-ons, Sarah Catherine Hook, Sam Nivola, Patrick Schwarzenegger, and Aimee Lou Wood.

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Season 3 arrives in 2025. When asked what excited him most about appearing in The White Lotus, and if there were any nerves or trepidation, Goggins said he couldn’t reveal… “much… other than the season was being filmed in Thailand.

“But look,” he quickly added, “I think Greg Archer Mike White… it’s pretty much universally agreed upon that the man is very special, and he sees around the corners of humanity. And we’re having a great time. You know, I just adore him as a writer, and as a director, and as a person.” Dive into Fallout on Prime Video, beginning April 13. Watch it through the link below:

Watch Fallout