Fallout’s Walton Goggins Says He Intentionally Chose To Avoid The Games

Actor Walton Goggins plays The Ghoul in the upcoming Fallout TV series, and now he’s shared a little more about what to expect from the video game adaptation. Speaking to Empire, Goggins said The Ghoul started out as a jolly actor named Cooper Howard. But 200 years later, Howard lost his nose and became The Ghoul, a bounty hunter in the post-apocalyptic wasteland.

He said The Ghoul is a person who will “do anything in order to survive.” Goggins also discussed why he intentionally chose to avoid playing the Fallout games to help shape his performance in the series.

“You have to understand the world that he was living in beforehand to really contemplate the horrors that he’s seen over the last 200 years and why he’s still alive,” Goggins said. “Why doesn’t he just succumb to becoming a [feral] ghoul or put a bullet in his head?”

Goggins went on to say that The Ghoul is a “morally ambiguous” character, not unlike the characters he played on the show Justified and other TV series and movies over the years.

“I can be funny to some people and maybe engender some pathos for horrible people. That’s what I like to think. Or maybe it’s because Sam Rockwell was unavailable,” he joked.

Talking to TV Line, Goggins revealed that it originally took five hours for the makeup team turn him into The Ghoul, but over time, the time requirement dropped to about 1 hour, 45 minutes.

He also said that starring in projects like The Shield, Justified, The Hateful Eight, and Django Unchained helped prepare him for The Ghoul and Fallout. The Ghoul is the “baddest dude in the room,” wherever he goes, Goggins said.

Speaking to GamesRadar, Goggins said he never played any Fallout game prior to being cast. After he got the role, he intentionally chose to avoid playing any Fallout games so he wouldn’t be influenced by what came before.

“I never played the game. So when this kind of came my way, I didn’t want to play it ’cause I didn’t want to be influenced by whatever version of the Ghoul is in the games. I also knew that what Jonathan and Graham and Geneva, our writers, what they were attempting to do,” Goggins said. “What they were asked to do was not to recreate a season or an issue, I suppose of Fallout the game, but to introduce a new story that would fit seamlessly into the canon that is Fallout.”

The Fallout TV series was originally expected to debut on April 11, but it’s now been moved up to April 10. All eight episodes will arrive April 10 at 6 PM PT / 9 PM ET.

For more, check out the gallery below to find out everything you need to know about the Fallout show, including how to watch Fallout on Prime Video. You can also grab a bunch of free Fallout games on Prime Gaming right now. It’s still early days, but it looks like Season 2 may be in the works already.

As for the Fallout game series, Fallout 5 is in the works, but no one should it expect it to release soon. The game is coming sometime after The Elder Scrolls VI.