Fallout BTS Video Shows Walton Goggins As The Ghoul Without CGI - And It's Weird
From Steph Harper (Annabel O'Hagan) to Bud Askins (Michael Esper) to Overseer Benjamin (Chris Parnell), Amazon Prime's "Fallout" has plenty of colorful characters. Still, it's hard to top Walton Goggins' Cooper Howard. The Ghoul, as he's known in the postapocalypse, is a radiation-ravaged former Marine and Hollywood actor who witnesses the lead-up to the nuclear apocalypse firsthand and after the bombs drop, roams the wasteland as a Western-themed bounty hunter.
Walton Goggins behind the scenes in the makeup chair for 'FALLOUT' pic.twitter.com/7fQ81O5X4v
— DiscussingFilm (@DiscussingFilm) April 16, 2024
Goggins transformed into the Ghoul with the help of extensive prosthetics and a dash of CGI — and when you remove the computer magic from the equation, the effect is strange. Of course, the actor has a nose in real life, so it makes sense that the production had to remove it digitally. Even so, seeing Goggins in full Ghoul makeup with his nose poking out is somehow even more jarring than the skull-like, noseless finished version of the character.
Goggins learned to see the Ghoul as an armor
It's been established that Walton Goggins is seriously dedicated to getting into character, but that doesn't mean he found it easy to play the Ghoul. "I had all of this profound insecurity going into playing the Ghoul, because I didn't know what I was conveying emotionally," he said in an interview with GQ. "It was like driving a Ferrari and not knowing how it takes the curves." Plus, the mountain of facial prosthetics he had to wear for the role took two hours to apply, limited his facial movements, and wasn't especially nice to wear on hot days.
However, after "Fallout" executive producer and director Jonathan Nolan convinced Goggins that he was doing fine wearing the Ghoul makeup, the actor relaxed ... to the point that when he started filming scenes as Cooper Howard, he found it surprisingly difficult. "I felt very vulnerable, because I didn't have my armour on," he said, referring to the Ghoul prosthetics. "All of a sudden, I'm just this guy that's in the world, about to experience for the audience ... what the end of the world looks like. I didn't anticipate how visceral it would be."
Goggins essentially plays two incarnations of the same character — or three, if you count the "Fallout" TV show's huge twist that the iconic Vault Boy character is based on Cooper. Either way, this doesn't sound easy, especially when they're as radically different from each other as Cooper and the Ghoul. Still, regardless of the difficulties he encountered, Goggins clearly understood the assignment and delivered on both fronts — even with his nose poking out of the Ghoul makeup.