The Ghoul is a man (monster?) of few words on Fallout. But the actor under the 12 pounds of prosthetics has plenty on his mind.
Walton Goggins splits his time on the series between Cooper Howard, a pre-apocalypse cowboy actor whose carefree life suddenly becomes more complicated as he learns of his wife’s involvement in a shady plot, and the Ghoul, the tortured, diseased husk of Howard making his way as a bounty hunter across the bombed-out Wasteland.
“I’m fully invested in this experience both as the Ghoul and as Cooper Howard, so the stakes are really high for me personally,” Goggins tells Gold Derby. ”These two people that I got to know intimately in Season 1, or Chapter 1, now are switching sides in some ways. One is regressing and the other is progressing. It’s just so fascinating. And I can’t believe that at this stage in my life, I’m getting the opportunity to do this both.”
Fallout continues an incredible run for Goggins. After breaking through with his first Emmy nomination for Justified back in 2011, the veteran actor could very well be in line for this third consecutive nod this year for Season 2 of Prime Video’s blockbuster video game adaptation, following bids for The White Lotus in 2025 and Fallout’s first season in 2024.
Here, in an unfiltered, free-flowing conversation with Gold Derby, Goggins explains what connects his wildly different characters through the years, the terror of being trapped inside the show’s signature battle armor, the “old-school” joy of facing off with radscorpions, his favorite scenes from the second season (including the “cathartic” sequence that wound up on the cutting-room floor), and whether the Ghoul deserves an happy ending. Watch above for our full conversation and read on for the highlights.
You’ve been on an absolute heater these last two years with The Righteous Gemstones, RIP, The White Lotus, and two seasons of Fallout. The characters you play in each of those are radically different in tone and performance, but I was curious if you see a commonality or find a throughline among them?
Walton Goggins: Well, I’ve been in this medium for, almost 25 years. I think I was 29 years old when we shot the pilot for Shield, and, over the course of that time, I’ve been very fortunate to maybe do 260, 270 hours of television. I’ve gotten to play people that are radically different from one another. But the thing I think that they all have in common, if I’m being honest, is most of them are lonely, and a lot of them are funny. But also there’s an underlying sadness to their experience.
They in some ways desperately want to connect with people and to be seen. Working with Danny McBride in Vice Principals, the first thing that I said to him after reading that script was, “These are two lonely, insecure people who desperately just want to connect with each other.” And I feel that way about Shane Vendrell [on The Shield] and Boyd Crowder [on Justified] or Venus Van Damme [on Sons of Anarchy] or Rick Hatchett [on The White Lotus], certainly, or Baby Billy [on The Righteous Gemstones]. And the same for the Ghoul and Howard Cooper.
Howard might be the coolest of the bunch.
Is that what brought you to Fallout? Being able to play two sides of a character — almost playing two different characters — in the dual timelines? There’s a lot of swag to Cooper, but he discovers a dark plot that involves his wife, and he struggles to come to terms with how to act. The pre-apocalypse storyline is a blend of relationship drama and at times a spy thriller during Season 2, while the Ghoul story in the Wasteland is a straight-up Western. Is that how you approach each performance?
It’s such a great question. In Season 1 — I hate to even say Season 1 because I don’t look at it that way… Chapter 1 of a story — these are two people that are running parallel to each other. They don’t really intersect. You have a feeling you understand that that Cooper was there, and you witnessed the ending of the world through his eyes.
And then you see, the aftermath of this person, who was unrecognizable was to me when I read it. And I think that’s how it was for people who watched it for the very first time. There wasn’t a lot of overlap. They were into very different worlds. And over the course of Chapter 2, the story of these two men is now one man in two different times.
They begin to merge. They haven’t intersected, but their roads start turning towards each other. [The writers] take every opportunity to make [Cooper and the Ghoul] speak to each other without having to talk. They were able to do that visually.
One instance in particular was this moment when the ghoul is splayed on a pole in Episode 5, and he’s about to die — because he can die in this world. And when he sees the writing on the wall, he is leaning back and says, “I’m a man, and I have a family, and I have a daughter” that he loves deeply and that he wants to see again.
And he starts to climb up this pole. He doesn’t make it. He falls back down and he’s splayed backwards on this pole. And they did this beautiful cut to Cooper Howard laid back on this bed, about to have a conversation with his wife that is going to change the trajectory of both of their lives. And that, for me, was really the first time they came together, and you could see them occupy the same space at the same time.
That that was my favorite episode of the last season. From my conversations with Lisa Joy (who directed the episode) and Jay Worth (the VFX supervisor), it was a challenging scene for you to shoot. They had to build an entire rig to make it seem like you were impaled on that pole. It wasn’t simply done with CG. I assume you were able to use that for your performance.
Very little that we do on Fallout is CG. The monsters from the game that are transplanted to our world are controlled by four or five puppeteers, artists. That’s what we get to interface with. And the same thing with that rig. It took upwards of a month to kind of figure out how it was going to work. I spent 12 to 14 hours on that pole.
I’m fully invested in this experience both as the Ghoul and as Cooper Howard, so the stakes are really high for me personally. And those days were hard, but in the best way. Right? It’s that thing where “I can’t wait to go to work today/Man, I got to go to work today” because you know how grueling it’s going to be. But as funny as this show can be, when there are consequences, those consequences are very real, and they land in a real place. And for me, that episode in particular says a lot about the Ghoul’s journey towards retaining a part of his humanity. He forgot.
Conversely, Cooper Howard, is beginning to fray. Not to lose his humanity, but he doesn’t have all the answers. The world that he thought he knew no longer exists.
These two people that I got to know intimately in Season 1, or Chapter 1, now are switching sides in some ways. One is regressing and the other is progressing. It’s just so fascinating. And I can’t believe that at this stage in my life, I’m getting the opportunity to do this both.
To a person that I’ve spoken with among the Fallout cast and crew, they also say how wonderful you are and how committed you are. But I get a sense that perhaps they’re taking advantage of your good nature, because, like you said, they put the Ghoul through it. Impaled by poles. Hanged. Attacked by all manner of deadly creatures. In Episode 4, not only does your faulty armor nearly kill you, then you have to deal with a deathclaw. Are you concerned?
[Laughs] I think a lot of us, regardless of your political affiliation, feel that the world you thought you knew no longer exists. And you wake up in the morning, you read the paper and you’re like, “What the f–k? What am I doing here? Who am I in this world? What is my relationship to it?” And so that’s very much what Cooper Howard is going through. And the Ghoul, what’s so fascinating to me about that moment on the pole and those words, you know, “I am a man, I’m a human being.” I think we all feel that way. The nature of our experience, on whatever level that is for each of us individually, there comes a point where it’s like, “How the f–k did I get here?”
But that’s not me. There’s something else here. There’s something else, going on inside of me, that I matter. Yeah, man, the smile on my face is because of how delicious it is to play this role.
You were in two terrific revisionist Westerns directed by Quentin Tarantino, Django Unchained and The Hateful Eight. Utterly different characters, different kinds of films. But was there anything in the Western vernacular from those films that you brought with you to Fallout?
I love the genre, I love Westerns. I don’t have a pretty face, but maybe, you know, just a Western face. So I’ve had the good fortune of being in a number of Westerns over the years, and, selfishly, I like the locations. I like the idea of this lone figure out in the wild, self-reliant. I don’t know if there was any one thing [from those films], I think it’s just the genre in general.
I’ve made it a habit every morning in that chair getting ready to go, to watch a Western. In Season 1, I watched probably 30 or 40 of them, many I had seen already.
What are some of the standouts?
Oh, God. So many. John Wayne. John Ford. The Searchers and Rio Bravo and Red River. All the spaghetti Westerns again, I watched them all. But the thing that affected me the most was some of the interviews that I was able to dig up of, like, James Arness on a late-night or talk show appearances. Some of whom I believe would be Cooper Howard’s contemporaries in the Western world, people that he would have been friends with and hung out with. What really impacted me was to see them [in real life]. They didn’t have gun in a holster around their waist, but they dressed a certain way, they talked a certain way, and they all had a really great sense of humor.
The humor really shines through for the Ghoul, too. You watched those while you were sitting in the chair. How long does that makeup take now? I know it, they’ve gotten it down to a more manageable application.
Yeah, we’ve got it down to about two hours ans 15 minutes, from about five hours.
So you’re watching movies while they’re putting on the prosthetics?
Yes. There’s a whole kind of ritual. My friend Jake Garver, who is one of the best special effects makeup artists in the business, we have this dance that we do. The first 20 minutes is bulls–tting with each other. The next hour and 20 minutes, hour-and-a-half is a movie. And then the last 20 minutes is no talking, a soundtrack for me, usually [Ennio] Morricone, and he seals it and then no words. Just done. Bye, bye. I walk into my trailer, put on my outfit, and the last thing I put on is the coat. That’s it. Let’s go to work.
And you feel transformed when you have that makeup on?
I am transformed when I have that makeup on.
Aaron Moten (Maximus) said that during Season 1 you would sometimes tease him about him acting in the armor. He explained it was challenging to manipulate it and act in it. And he was glad the tables were turned this season because you had to get into the suit. He wanted to make sure I asked how you felt.
In a flashback. [Cooper] was in the service, equivalent to the Korean War. And, and I spent two days in that suit.I was in it 10 minutes the very first time before I said, “You got to get this off me. Please, please get this off of me.” There’s this strange sensation, because it’s so heavy, it’s pulling your arms down and your legs down, yet you’re standing up. It’s this extreme, kind of gravity hyperbaric chamber.
It’s very strange, but I did not like it. It made becoming the Ghoul the next day that much easier.
In that episode, in that scene, you got to interact with the deathclaw. It’s the first time we see this iconic creature from the games. The puppets and animatronics they use for the Deathclaws are very impressive.
The experience was the same experience that I have interfacing with any artisan working behind the camera in this story, and they are the best in the world. Every department head and everybody that works under that department head. The Nolans have a lot of connections. I’ve had an embarrassment of riches.
A show like this, in this genre, it’s a different metric system. They make it so real for those of us in front of the camera.
Aside from deathclaws, you also have a run-in with a clutch of radscorpions.
Well, we have to use some CGI in this in the show, obviously some green screen. But whenever given the option, we solve problems using old-school Hollywood trickery, and this one particular day was a very big scene for, for the Ghoul and Lucy. He is interfacing with these radscorpions. And before he gets to the big Radscorpion, mama, he deals with some little bitty baby scorpions. And I walked in thinking that it was going to be this elaborate set-up, ready to take on all the radscorpions.
I then realized that it was a guy with a fishing line attached to a pulley on the ceiling, and he was just yanking this very expensive toy fadscorpion at me. And that was it. Then it was up to me to kind of react. Sometimes the red scorpion would hit you in the head or bounce off and land at your feet, but eventually we got two or three in the can.
It was terrifying in the best way. And the outtakes from that are so funny. It’s a day I’ll never forget. And again, it was just a dude with a fishing line.
Lisa Joy told me a funny story. She said that when she was shooting Episode 5, with the pole scene, that your most difficult scene partner was Dogmeat. She said there were two dogs would take turns and one was a troublemaker.
[Laughs] And I didn’t want to say it, but since Lisa brought it up. Yeah. Dogmeat can be challenging. These dogs will can kill you. That’s what they do. We have one that’s really highstrung, which is great for running, and then one that is so docile and so sweet, and she stays right beside me, only because I have a bunch of dog food in my pocket. And sometimes she’s a little skittish and she’ll wander off.
You know how we solve that? Fishing line. Just put a little invisible line around neck or her body and attached to my belt, and then she’ll stay with me. But it was it’s a lot of work, man. And I’ve worked with a lot of animals over the course of my life, and it’s easy when you don’t have 12 pounds of prosthetics on your head to deal with that. But it gets a little hairy sometimes.
We talked about the pole scene, which is my favorite of the last season. Were there any other scenes where you thought, “We’re doing something special here”?
The road trip with Ella [Purnell], Lucy and the Ghoul was its own journey, a story within a story. He’s never been on a road trip with anyone, since before the bombs dropped. He hasn’t been that close to another human being in the last 200 years. Their dynamic and how far apart they were when they started this journey and how close they came together when they part ways. I had a lot of fun doing that with her.
Two things that also had a lot of consequence for me. One is the ending and finding out that that my family is still alive. We only filmed it three or four times. That was particularly meaningful to me.
Then there was a part of a scene that wasn’t included, when the Ghoul was tied up after his life had been saved by Ron [Perlman, as the Super Mutant]. During this segment, my daughter came to visit me in this hallucination that he was having because he was in so much pain. And she kept asking the question, “Why don’t you find me, Daddy? Why are you looking for me?” And Lucy was in my other ear saying, “You’re a horrible person. Your family will never accept you if you find them.” And on this particular day, I’d been away from my own son for a long time, and it really got me. I didn’t know that was going to happen, but it was very uncomfortable for people, because it was painful.
Ultimately, I think we all decided that now wasn’t the time for that. But the process of doing that was so cathartic for me. And it’s one of the reasons why I’m a storyteller. Anyway, I think most people in my position would say the same thing, you get to work a lot of s–t out for free.
I know you’re in pre-production on Season 3, and I don’t want to talk about what’s in the script or spoilers. But so many characters you’ve played have met an unfortunate demise. Do you want a happy ending for the Ghoul?
Do I want a happy ending for the Ghoul? I suppose a number of the people that I’ve played haven’t had a happy ending. And in some ways, that’s easier for me because I don’t have to think about what they’re doing in the world. But the Ghoul has suffered like the world has suffered, and I think the world needs a f–king break, and so maybe the Ghoul does, too.
