In the Wasteland dominated by the Ghoul and all sorts of questionable characters, it’s refreshing to find a Maximus. The same can be said for the actor who portrays the armor-clad Fallout figure, Aaron Moten. Through two seasons, his Maximus has become the audience proxy, evolving from a opportunistic squire to a certified knight in the Brotherhood of Steel, whose personal code of chivalry is worthier than his peers’.
Following an eventful sophomore season, Moten received a promotion off-screen. He appears on the newly released Emmy ballot in the lead acting category, a bump up from his supporting designation after the first season, and in the same rarefied air as Walton Goggins, who scored a nomination for playing the dual roles of Cooper Howard and the Ghoul in Season 1.
Moten joined Gold Derby to talk about the evolution of Maximus, what it’s like wearing the battle armor and facing deathclaws, and why he’s looking forward to Aaron Paul joining for the upcoming third season.
It’s been quite a trip for Maximus. Over the course of the first season, he went from squire to pretend knight to actual to an actual Brotherhood-sanctioned knight. And he continues to evolve. Did you approach change at all from Season 1 to Season 2 in how you portrayed him?
We get the opportunity to make this eight-hour movie every season, and if we’re not developing the characters in that time, at least from my experience as an audience member, I grow tired of the thing.
Season 2, he’s got this promotion, whether he deserved it or not, he’s got a newfound status and power within the Brotherhood of Steel. We all know where his heart really wants to be and it’s with Lucy [Ella Purnell] and chasing her. But if he ran away from this newfound status and power without trying to do something with it, who would he be?
We knew the backstory of Maximus in our first season, we show it a little bit. But [the producers] wanted to show the entirety of it, and they wrote it exactly as they had explained to me when we first started filming our first season.
Now that we’ve allowed the audience in on that fully, they can understand the conversation that Maximus has been having in his brain. This world that he came from within the Wasteland, that functions together as a society, is what makes him different and more relatable to the audience. We all have come from something similar to what Maximus has come from.
One of the biggest challenges this year was that scene with Quintus, Michael Kristofferson, about children versus ghoul children. If Maximus by no fault of his own, had a mutation, you’re saying you would have shot him on site as opposed to enlisting him? It’s that chasm between Maximus and the Brotherhood that we see will never work.
I agree, Maximus is a proxy for us in the audience. With that in mind, what was it like to watch the Shady Sands segment play out — your character’s childhood — as a viewer?
Maybe because I was watching the Knicks last night, but it’s like you come off the bench and the star player is going to pass you the ball and you’re expected to hit that three-point shot. All you can do is hope that that actors show up willing to do the extra work that it takes to be ready, to hit those shots, and I thought those three actors [Amir Carr as young Maximus, Shinelle Azoroh as his mother, and Bashir Salahuddin as his father] did incredible work.
I just thought, “Thank you for the gift that we needed.”
It’s the lift that we needed off the bench. I’ve spent a lot more of my career being on the periphery than being a lead actor in a show like this. From my own experience, I think that is vastly more challenging to come in and deliver than to be more central and a main character of the action.
Speaking of the action, what’s it like being the suit? Does that help you discover who Maximus is?
It’s probably a 25- to 35-minute process to get into the suit. It’s made out of a tough material, so it’s extremely heavy, maybe 50, 60 pounds with the motorized helmet, because it’s got batteries and electronics in it. The full suit the stunt performer can wear that the can run and jump and be pulled on wires is about 100 pounds total, which includes a small stilt so they can be about 7-foot-2.
When it comes to Maximus, I think puppeting it in the correct way becomes extremely important, because we’ve decided where we started the character and where we’re taking the character [requires] having a physical sort of journey in the suit as well.
It’s difficult to even make something simple show for camera, because your body is totally covered under pounds and pounds. Just to lift your shoulders up and down as if you’re breathing, as if you’ve just exuded a lot of energy in the fight or whatever is going on, it’s a real workout.
I recently spoke to Walton and reminded him that he used to tease you about fumbling around in the suit, and this season he got to experience it himself for one episode.
What did he say?
He lasted about 10 minutes before he started feeling claustrophobic and wanted it off. He practically had a panic attack being confined in the suit.
[Laughs] We just do it. I think he would be the same with the suit as he is with the makeup. At a certain point, he hits his stride with it and, and he’s just doing it. I would probably be getting claustrophobic about [putting on all that Ghoul makeup] every day.
Who knows, maybe we’ll get Lucy in one of these suits one of these days?
A favorite scene of Season 2 is when you’re in your NCR armor and you confront the deathclaws on your own, like an old Western showdown. How did that scene come together?
I was a good two weeks to put all of those pieces together. We knew it would be a huge undertaking seeing it on the page. It’s also multiple location that are across L.A. We’re in Santa Clarita or we’re in North Hollywood. For me it was about breaking each moment down and letting each moment stand on its own.
I was bringing up earlier the joy of discovering like, “Oh my God, I’ve got a mortar on my back,” at the exact moment that you’re like, “Oh, I don’t know how I’m going to handle two deathclaws coming at me.”
Maximus never gets to experience so far in our journey that real pure joy, even though there’s also despair, because it’s like, “I’m not going to win … and if my best is giving up my life for these people, then I’m willing to do that.”
And you had the gift of actually having a physical creature there rather than staring at a tennis ball on a stick.
Yeah, it’s, just so much more. With the deathclaws, it becomes the sense of like, if the thing is actually there, I can invest my imagination in all the other things around it.
Let’s talk about another great moment: your side quest with Kumail Nanjiani. It plays like a buddy comedy that goes bad.
Yeah, really quickly, all of a sudden.
What kind of dynamic did he bring to the set? What was it like shooting those scenes together, and then ultimately offing him?
I really, I really loved working with him, especially because Kumail is a great filmmaker, and he finds the importance, like I do, of “let’s get the truth into the camera.”
And I felt like Kumail did a great job of playing with me in a way where it could be weird and reaching for a different way of delivering something that could be really funny. It’s really important to play that way when you come on a show like this because we’re looking for that thing that feels truthful in a world beyond ours.
We’ve talked about a couple of my favorite moments of Season 2. Is there something we haven’t talked about that you loved doing, or loved watching later?
I really loved working with Walton this year. We had gotten to share a scene [in Season 1], but it was with the suit, and I’m talking through the PA system of the suit. It just didn’t feel the same.
Geneva [Robertson-Dworet, the showrunner] has given us this great tease for what’s coming in the future is. Ron Perlman’s character [the Super Mutant] says war is coming and you’re going to need friends. And Walt and I spend a lot of time together on the set or while promoting the show, but it’s different to have real scene work with an actor, and I think that was special to both of us.
I went to Juilliard, I was trained in theater, and there’s an adjustment that I’ve been making to do television and film work. Walt created his process for TV and film all on his own, through experience. To see that he approaches it in such a similar way was really exhilarating, because you don’t know what’s going to happen next, and the camera gets something out of it that is truthful.
You mentioned Ron Perlman. We also have Macaulay Culkin. Aaron Paul is joining for Season 3. I know we’re in a no-spoiler zone, but as an actor, who would you like to see Maximus interact with among the heavy hitters he hasn’t yet shared the screen with?
All of them. But I say that only because they’re coming in to swing for the fences for us, you know what I mean? And I would love to pitch them some balls. It’s exactly what our show needs, and they really make the thing work, sometimes more so than we do as leads. We carry the story in a different way. They get to be the world creators a little bit more, and we walk through the world.
So, no, we’re just super grateful to anybody who comes on the show. It can feel like there’s no safety net for actors out there most of the time in our careers. We try things and we fail constantly, but [Fallout] is a safe place to fail. It’s really how we get a lot done as quickly as we do. We fail and we learn faster because of it.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
