Interview: Walton Goggins of ‘Fallout’ On How Cooper Howard Lives On In The Ghoul

For Walton Goggins, joining the cast of Prime Video’s series Fallout was an easy decision. However, the real challenge lay in his dual role as cowboy actor Cooper Howard and the disfigured bounty hunter known only as The Ghoul, which demanded much more from the actor.

Based on the incredibly popular series of video games, which tells the story 219 years after The Great War which wiped out much of humanity. The results of the nuclear holocaust left some humans surviving as a peaceful underground society survival in Vaults (like another series standout Ella Purnell‘s Lucy), while the others lived out their days in a much fiercer aboveground world.

Goggins recalled the day he was offered the roles and how quick he accepted, ” It was a Zoom call with (the series’ producer/director) Jonathan Nolan, Graham Wagner and Geneva Robertson-Dworet (showrunners). They wanted to get on a call and talk about this property that they were developing and they wanted to speak to me about playing this character called The Ghoul. And it was five minutes into the conversation that, without too much effort on their part, I said, ‘Yeah, I’m in, no matter what it is.’

“And they said, ‘Are you sure you don’t want to read the scripts first?’ And I said, ‘Nah, I’m good. I’m okay.’ And then, lo and behold, they told me it was a bounty hunter irradiated cowboy without a nose. And I said, ‘Yeah, you know what, maybe I should read those scripts.’ And so I did, and it took me literally 30 pages into the first script to call them back and say, ‘This is one of the best things I’ve read in a long time, and I’d love to go on this journey with you.'”

Goggins spoke with Awards Radar (the complete video interview can be found above) about his Emmy-nominated performance in Fallout (the series garnered sixteen nominations) in a conversation that explored the reason he was drawn to the characters and much more. (You can watch the interview in its entirety at the bottom of the article.) “I was just taken with the story, the fact that it is satirical. But when it lands, it lands in a very grounded place. I love the take no prisoners political punches that it throws and observations that it makes about the world.”

He continued, “It was the opportunity to play a Western movie star and an irradiated ghoul who has seen the worst that human beings have to offer. And there was a lot in there for me to dig into. And it just felt like it was the right thing for right now.”

Goggins approach to taking on the roles involved looking past the page and seeing them through their most human qualities, as more than just characters. “I don’t even believe in playing characters, to be quite honest with you. I know that sounds like bullshit, excuse my language, but I don’t.”

“I believe anything that you put up that becomes an obstacle between who you are as a person and who this person is that you’re playing, it just makes it harder to do. So I don’t believe these are characters, because characters are out of a book or I guess out of a movie. I believe that these people exist in the world. That’s the only way I know how to do it. I just turn myself over to an imaginary set of circumstances and try to, I derive just great pleasure from trying to keep it as honest as I possibly can. I enjoyed playing both of them so much and I miss them terribly. And I’m grateful that I’m going to get the opportunity to do it again.”

(Slight spoiler alert) For those unfamiliar with the series, the characters Goggins takes on are actually the same man two hundred years apart. The blasts of the nuclear holocaust not only transformed him into a walking “corpse” it also took away everything he held dear to him,. In order to play these two very different sides of the same coin, Goggins delved deeply into Cooper Howard’s past and relationships to understand his transformation into The Ghoul.

“Well, I really wanted to understand who Cooper Howard was. I felt like I needed to understand everything about him and his world, about his relationship to his wife and who he was as a parent, who he was as a friend, where he came from, in order to understand everything that The Ghoul has lost. So I kind of retro-engineered it in the sense that we start the opening seven minutes of the show really starts in Cooper Howard’s world.”

“And it’s not even how he lives his life by the end of the show,” he explained. “It really starts months or a year after the show begins, the first seven minutes. And not too many people have really talked about that. To understand who his compatriots were, who were the people that he was up against.  I don’t think he came to Hollywood to be an actor. I think he was probably a stuntman.”

But wait, there’s more – the actor created a textured past for everyone’s favorite cowboy. “He comes from very good breeding, very good people, very good stock, if you will, from the middle of the country. And he could ride a horse and he had a great sense of humor. And one day an actor didn’t show up to work and everybody loves Cooper Howard. And the director said, ‘Hey, Coop, could you jump in here and say a couple of these lines?’ He said, ‘Yeah,’ and he just kind of had a knack for it. And before too long, all of his buddies, his stunt buddies were making fun of him and giving him flack because he had his own trailer. And a lot of stories in Hollywood kind of began that way. And that was really interesting to me.”

Cooper’s existence is much different than that of The Ghoul, from Hollywood to horror. “On the other side of all of it, taking his journey, because he does obviously survive the nuclear apocalypse, instead of just glossing over 200 years of pain and fear, I just really decided to dig into it. We think about what that’s like. Who’s the first person that he tried to kill? Who was the first person to try to kill him? And what was it like to be in that scenario with his daughter? If she died or if she’s alive, I don’t know. I have my own ideas about it. And what was it like finding shelter? What was it like depending on people? What was it like being betrayed by people?”

Beneath the disfigured exterior some of Cooper still exists. “In order to arrive where we landed with The Ghoul 200 years later, having a reputation that precedes him before he walks into a room, and a person who’s seen it all. He’s as wise and as cynical and as indignant as anyone. But he also has a sense of humor, very similar to Cooper Howard. He also has a swagger. He also has a practicality, like a go-get-em kind of attitude about him.”

“He’s pretty, when I say reasonable, I think he just has this sense about him that is from the middle of the country, if you will. And that’s how I tried to have him speak. These two people speak to each other over time.”

The series has already been renewed for a second season which means viewers will learn much more about Cooper and The Ghoul as well as more of the mysteries of The Vault and so many more secrets. While Goggins could not share details, he did provide some incredibly promising insight into a second season that is sure to have fans clamoring for more.

“Oh God, this is from the writers, not from me, but I think it would also be from me,” said and excited Goggins. We just scratched the surface, didn’t we, really, in season one. And I’ve been doing long form storytelling and television for a long time and you’re afforded a much longer runway than you are in a movie.

“So much is taken up with just introducing and building up the world to people. And I think that’s what we did here, even though once we started really cooking with gas, we didn’t burn through a lot of story, but we filled in a lot of blanks to set up what the potential could be for season two. What I don’t like is when shows or stories take a gratuitous turn, just to keep people hooked, if you will. I just think that’s a device and I think it’s unnecessary if the story is that good. And I don’t believe that that’s what we did in this case. I genuinely believe that what happens at the end of this show is baked into the linear progression of this show emotionally. And yeah, we’ll see what happens. “

Before closing out our conversation, Goggins returned to a previous question with and answer that put the whole dual role into great perspective. “And you asked that question earlier about how much of Cooper Howard is left in The Ghoul. I can only relate it to my own experience,” explained Goggins.

“I mean, is he there? Of course he’s there. I was 19 years old when I moved to Los Angeles. I’m 52 years old now. I am not the 19 year old that I was when I moved to LA. But the 19 year old is still in me. I don’t know how, I don’t know how he managed this, but his naiveté and his curiosity, his insecurities, a lot of those have been overcome. It’s still me. And it’s not just me, it’s you, Steven. It’s everyone, right? We’re all who we were at any given moment in our lives. And who we are today is impacted by everything that has happened to us. The ghoul is no exception. So yeah, Cooper Howard is in him. And we’ll see what happens, man.”

Now that the longer runway has been laid out, fans will be counting down the days to see Goggins bring more of Cooper to the surface through as the story continues to be told. While on the outside they may look quite different, the 219 year younger version of the man is still inside The Ghoul.

Season one of Fallout is streaming exclusively on Amazon’s Prime Video. Watch the full interview below.