Interviews
“Fallout” – Walton Goggins on Developing the Ghoul Through Tone and Practical Effects [Interview]
Among the many races in post-apocalyptic video game series Fallout is the Ghoul, posthumans severely mutated by prolonged exposure to radiation, which greatly extends their lifespans but gives them a zombie-like appearance. In the upcoming Prime Video “Fallout” series, Walton Goggins (The Hateful Eight, Predators) is almost unrecognizable as The Ghoul.
Bloody Disgusting caught up with Walton Goggins and executive producers, writers and co-showrunners Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Graham Wagner at the SXSW “Fallout” activation this week, where the trio revealed that The Ghoul was written specifically for Goggins. They also discussed what to expect from the series in terms of tone.
A character like The Ghoul requires extensive work in the makeup chair, as you might imagine, with the team transforming Walton Goggins into a noseless, zombielike cowboy in the wasteland. The type of transformation that surely informed his performance, right?
“No, it had nothing to do with my performance whatsoever, “Goggins cracks. “No, no, no. Yeah, it did. It was a bit past Covid at first. I mean, it was so many discussions kind of back and forth between Graham, Geneva and Jonah and myself about how we wanted this to look. We wanted the audience not to be repulsed by the visual experience, but to really lean in and look at the details. And we did it what, like three or four times? Vincent Van Dyke made the piece and a really good friend of mine, Jake Garber, applied it. We learned a lot over that process. Then we landed where we landed. It was an extraordinary experience. It was very daunting to begin with, but I’m so happy that it turned out the way that it turned out.”
As for what enticed the actor to the series, Goggins revealed he was on board almost immediately.
He explains it was the creators who sold him on The Ghoul: “[Director] Jonathan Nolan, Geneva and Graham.” Goggins elaborates, “I think at one point, the very first Zoom that we had, I don’t think I’m making this up, but I think three or four minutes into the conversation I said, ‘Look, I’m in. I’m in no matter what.’ They said, ‘Well, don’t you want to know what you’re playing?’ I said, ‘That’s irrelevant. It’s good. I’m in.’”
“We were stoked because we’ve written the role for Walton,” showrunner Graham Wagner adds. “It was several things. I think we were a week into talking about the project, we knew we wanted a Vault Dweller, a Brother of Steel member and a Ghoul. I mean, the first thing was just like, well, if Walton Goggins was in a Fallout show, we would watch it.”
Walton Goggins as the Ghoul in “Fallout.” Photo courtesy of Prime Video.
Geneva Robertson-Dworet expands further, “That was the first exercise; what’s the Fallout show we would watch? Walton’s name came up and we’re all like, ‘okay.’ And that was that.”
While the series leans into action and comedy, the games also veer into horror. Expect that to carry over into the series, as well.
Robertson-Dworet teases, “What was scary in the games was scary because you didn’t know where it was going to go, which made it important to us to not just replay those moments. So we had to create new scary scenarios. There’s a few in the first few episodes where some upsetting stuff happens and some of it is played goofy and some of it’s not.”
“Yeah, that’s exactly why we had to cast Walton because he gets to nail that,” Wagner chimes in. “The scary and then laughter. Although certainly that was hell for Walton in terms of the many hours of makeup every morning that he had to put on and endure all of that in the heat.”
Ella Purnell (Lucy) in “Fallout”
Goggins says of the lengthy makeup process, “I mean, I will say, I think for all of us, there is a tactile quality to this show, and this is not disparaging about it. I’m not going to say the name of another show or anything like that because I didn’t anticipate how tactile this experience really was. Reading it on the page, forgive my language, but I thought how the fuck are they going to pull any of this shit? It was so big. The ideas were so big, and once we were kind of in those spaces and Jonah was doing, capturing visually what these guys wrote down, I thought, of course. And it’s a very different experience when you feel like you’re actually in the world.”
Wagner’s response to Goggins highlights the series’ expansive scale and how they approached it through practical effects whenever they could.
“Yeah, no, it’s true,” Wagner confirms. “The production was almost as much of an adventure as what you see in the show. We shot all over the world, went to Namibia, to Utah, shot in the water, shot with dogs. It was explosive. It was one crazy thing after another, so we really did it.”
Prime Video’s “Fallout” TV series is set to premiere on April 12, 2024.
Interviews
‘The Death of Robin Hood’ Director Michael Sarnoski on Brutal Violence and Reinventing the Legend
Michael Sarnoski (A Quiet Place: Day One, Pig) gives a darker spin on a classic ballad in The Death of Robin Hood, which sees a legendary outlaw confront his own violent legacy.
A24 releases the dark reimagining of the classic folk tale in theaters this Friday, June 19.
Hugh Jackman stars as a grizzled Robin Hood, who begins Sarnoski’s latest in a grim place of death and violence before a grave injury presents a rare chance at salvation.
In 13th-century grit and squalor, the violence in The Death of Robin Hood is especially brutal, setting up a stark contrast for the outlaw’s thematic journey in his final days. Speaking with Bloody Disgusting ahead of the film’s release, writer-director Michael Sarnoski explained that the visceral brutality at the film’s outset was both a reflection of period authenticity and in service of Robin’s story.
“It’s always a little bit of both,” Sarnoski explains. “The initial idea for the movie was I wanted to humanize these characters from this old legend and really understand them. So, part of that is understanding the authenticity of the period and studying the brutality of the old ballads. Both things evolved at the same time, because then it became this story about this person who was grappling with their own legacy of violence and their own folklore.”
Photo Credit: Aidan Monaghan/A24
He continues, “It was a little bit of a chicken and the egg thing where it was like, ‘Okay, the authenticity is where we’re going to access the humanity.’ But then, through that, we also have to access how these people felt about that violence. And because of that, we really have to make that violence feel human and real and brutal and not Hollywood-ized at all.“
But don’t expect The Death of Robin Hood to be too beholden to period accuracy; the filmmaker never wanted to lose sight of its characters or their humanity. “I was more trying to capture, in my mind and soul, what it might have felt like to live at that time. When you’re steeped in nature and all of its brutality, but also all of its divinity and spirituality, what would that just feel like on a deeper soul level? A lot of the research was focused on just trying to capture that human side of existing back then.”
The Death of Robin Hood avoids retreading the familiar origin story of the outlaw and his Merry Men; the past is a distant memory steeped in blood for this iteration of Robin Hood. Save for Little John (Bill Skarsgård), very little calls back to the familiar folklore fixtures and iconography.
“It wasn’t straightforward,” Sarnoski says of his writing process and choosing which characters to incorporate. “It kind of happened organically. I knew I just wanted the pieces that I needed for that character, but then at the same time, I wanted to acknowledge that he’s grappling with what he believes his life was, and the violence of that life and of that time. But then at the same time, he’s also not a fully reliable narrator. He has been jaded for decades and has just been steeped in that violence. Even he and Little John especially aren’t 100% sure which of these things were stories and which were real in some way, because I think even in our own lives we have that, where our memories become these stories that we just tell each other.”
“I wanted to make sure that we’re doing some justice to that Robin Hood legend, and there are a lot of references to that. I wanted to use it sparingly and specifically, but then also acknowledge that no one in this world is 100% sure who this guy was, not even the guy himself.”
Photo Credit: Aidan Monaghan/A24
While Jackman commands the screen as the world-weary outlaw, it’s Murray Bartlett (“The Last of Us”, Opus) who steals scenes as the enigmatic leper standing vigil over the Priory.
Bartlett’s complex performance, buried under unrecognizable costuming and prosthetics, surprised even Sarnoski in more ways than one. “The initial surprise was finding such a great actor who was willing to completely disappear. And that takes a lot of ego death and bravery and excitement for the pure creative, emotional side, and also bravery in the performance side of, ‘You’re not going to have 90% of the tools that you usually use. You’re going to have to do this with your eyes, your voice, and just your physicality.’ So, I think just the surprise of finding someone who was like that was the feature, not the bug. He was so excited about that, and he found it very liberating.
“Then, it sounds kind of obvious, but the next surprise was just you write this character on the page, and you’re like, ‘Okay, he’s supposed to have this depth, he’s mysterious, but he’s also gentle, and he becomes this almost teacher.’ In your mind, you’re like, ‘Okay, I think this character can work.’ But then you see Murray embody it and you’re like, ‘Oh, this is so far beyond what I ever could have hoped for.’ And it’s so moving and so human in spite of all the limitations on the performance.”
Sarnoski notes this character acts as the ferryman, right on the cusp of life and death. That, along with the period, also informed the Leper’s look, “In those old monasteries, they had these orchard cemeteries that were also where they buried the body. It’s this place of graves and growth. He has subtly different outfits that he wears depending on if he’s ferryman or orchardman. There was a lot of thought that went into all of that.”
Credit: Aidan Monagha
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