Maxance Vincent
When the first season of Fallout aired, and the audience learned that Barb Howard suggested to Vault-Tec that they drop the bombs themselves to begin a nuclear war, they might have had a strong reaction to this moment, which shaped their conception of the character. However, with new information that adds more nuance to the character and this specific decision, our conception of who Barb might be has changed significantly.
According to actor Frances Turner, who spoke to Awards Radar during a Zoom press day, “the beauty of how Barb has unfolded is that you can have ideas about her at the end of season one, but you haven’t experienced anything from her point of view yet. You don’t know what she’s experiencing, the decision she has to make, and what she’s up against. Barb is very capable. She’s smart, she’s intelligent, she’s strategic, but she also feels a great deal of responsibility for the people she loves. She wants to protect them – she’s driven by that. She’s trying to protect their family, their unit, that love, that tenderness, that sanctuary.
Walton once described Coop, Barb, and Janey as moving through life as a tripod. I love that, because there’s something that they’re trying to protect. However, Barb also understands the instability of the world in a way the average person doesn’t. Yes, we’re in a resource war. There’s fear; she’s operating with that fear, but she has additional knowledge. Underneath all of the strategy and the positioning, there’s a softness and a tenderness to her. Yes, she has strength, but it comes from her softness. I was really excited to see how the audience would receive that once we saw her point of view, what she was really up against, and the decisions that she has to make moment to moment.”
One of the things that Turner enjoyed the most about shaping the character is that she didn’t know where Barb’s journey would end up in the second season, stating that she “had to trust the writing. I’m always and only interested in playing three-dimensional women who are complex and dimensional. If I’m in Barb’s shoes, I’m always going to approach her that way. I really tapped into the love she has for her family, her husband, and their daughter. That never went away, even when we got to see more of her at Vault-Tec. I was very intentional about not defining her by her strength, but by the whole of her.
There was less having to change gears as we learned more about her, and more going deeper into the nuances of her, her complexity, the strength that exists with the softness, the protection that exists with the fearfulness, all of those things. That’s why it’s so hard to categorize Barb, because you can think she’s doing the right things for the wrong reasons or the wrong things for the right reasons, but my job is to examine why she feels like those her choices are necessary.”
Watch the full interview below:
[Some of the quotes in this article have been edited for length and clarity]
Comments
Loading…