In an exclusive interview with CNN Chile, the co-stars reflect on their first professional collaboration after years of friendship, as the live-action adaptation of the video game saga prepares the debut of its second season.
Friday night, December 5th. At CCXP25 in São Paulo, Prime Video turns the Thunder Stage into a mini-Wasteland for a Fallout panel led by Ella Purnell (Lucy), Aaron Moten (Maximus) and Walton Goggins (The Ghoul).
It’s the second time the cast has landed in the Brazilian aisle of the Comic-Con Experience together.
The same trio was welcomed by the South American crowd back in 2023 as well, months before the series’ premiere in April. Back then, they were also followed by part of the creative team, executive producers Jonathan Nolan and Graham Wagner.
Since its debut, the series has quietly become one of Prime Video’s flagship titles, both in awards and sheer reach. Amazon reported that Fallout drew 65 million viewers in its first 16 days, the streamer’s second-best launch ever at the time, and by the start of October 2024, it had crossed the 100-million-viewer mark worldwide.
On the awards side, that momentum has translated into a serious haul, with 16 Primetime Emmy nominations, including Outstanding Drama Series and Outstanding Lead Actor for Goggins, plus Creative Arts Emmy wins for Music Supervision and Emerging Media.
The show has also picked up Saturn Awards (Best Science Fiction Television Series and a special Spotlight Award), trophies from guilds like the Art Directors Guild and the Set Decorators Society, and nominations from the Writers Guild, Producers Guild, Gotham Awards and more, effectively cementing it as one of the most decorated video-game adaptations to date.
That Thunder Stage panel is where Prime Video first rolls an extended, in-room-only sequence from season two, set in Novac, the fan-favourite straight out of the 2001 video game Fallout: New Vegas. On the giant screen, the crowd gets a glimpse of the roadside dinosaur Dinky the T-Rex and watches Lucy, The Ghoul and Dogmeat go up against a brutal pack of Wastelanders as they push across the Mojave toward New Vegas.
Purnell, Moten and Goggins are the first to walk out to screams that are arena level. After few minutes in, the lights cut and Justin Theroux’s voice floods the room in full Mr. House mode: “Wow, wow, wow… You think you can talk about New Vegas without me? Listen to me, Walton Goggins: the House always wins,” he booms, right before walking out to the stage in person.
The next day, clock ticks around 13:30. In a very sunny Saturday, Justin Theroux is slouched in a loose, sharp white shirt opened at the collar, while Walton Goggins sits beside him in a navy pinstripe suit. It’s the kind of tailoring that makes him look like he’s walked straight out of a pre-war casino in the Fallout universe.
There’s a glowing New Vegas banner burning softly on the set background. In front of them, a small table with a glass of water and a bowl of pão de queijo, a subtle reminder that this nuclear roadshow has landed, for now, in the homeland of football stars like Neymar and Kaká.
They settle into their chairs like they’ve done this a thousand times, but when the subject of finally sharing a set comes up, they’d still react like it’s a small miracle. “Can you believe that?” Theroux says, half laughing, when it’s pointed out that this is their first professional collaboration after years of friendship. Goggins echoes him. “First time… Yeah,” then slows down.
On screen, they have very different corners of the Wasteland. Goggins is the beating heart of the series as The Ghoul, a once famous pre-war actor named Cooper Howard who’s been chemically cursed with near immortality and a face that looks like it’s survived several apocalypses.
Introduced in the new season, Theroux now steps into the orbit of Robert House, the eerie competent magnate gamers remember from Fallout: New Vegas, a man who survived the bombs and rebuilt Vegas in his own image.
“I already knew how good Justin was,” he says, glancing over at his friend. “I know him. He’s my buddy and we have a history. But the things that we have in common are numerous. I’ve been able to sit back and look at him and enjoy the things that I enjoy after working together in an even deeper way. I just enjoy his company even more, if that’s possible, because of working together.”
Theroux nods, amused and a little embarrassed, then admits he’d been low-key terrified the job might ruin things.
“I love Walton so much,” he says. “If we had worked together and he had maybe been not nice on set… I never expected that, but it would have been such a heartbreak. I’d feel like, ‘Never meet your heroes.’ But he absolutely lived up to the expectation of what I exactly thought he would be like on set. Which is supportive, creative and just present.”
Goggins fires back, “I’m right back at you.” Theroux grins: “Thanks, buddy.”
In the past, Walton Goggins has been very open about just how long it takes to become The Ghoul in terms of appearance. In early makeup tests he’d described the process as “extremely anxiety-provoking,” with the first full applications stretching into five hour marathons in the chair.
As the team refined the prosthetics, make-up designer Jake Garber eventually brought that down to a little over two hours for a typical shooting day, something Goggins later highlighted when he shared a time-lapse of the transformation. He’s said that becoming The Ghoul takes usually a little over about two hours in the chair.
But the real transformation doesn’t finish in the trailer. And although he’s never seemed to hesitate about his physical journey, he looks surprised when being asked about how does he turn off himself from an emotional perspective in order to let the Ghoul appear.
“I mean, it’s such a…” he exhales. “You turn yourself over to an imaginary set of circumstances, right?” he says, with his hands moving as he tries to articulate more. “I mean, it’s just a child’s game. That’s what it is for me. I enjoy it. I’m addicted to it. And it’s so private, really… I don’t even know how to explain it. Every actor worth their weight in salt makes that transition. For me, it happens after the clothing is on and everything is in place.”
Is there a song he’d like to listen in particular before turning into Howard?
“I think music is a very big part of it. I think it is for a lot of people,” he admits, before also bringing up the character who’d, just two days later after this interview, would land him the first Golden Globe nomination of his career.
“And just… falling in love, being in love with playing pretend. Rick Hatchett on The White Lotus was so fucking sad. And I was so sad for so long,” he admits and gives a glimpse of what’s coming for Fallout. “There are moments of The Ghoul this season that are so sad… and there are those that are so funny. Cooper Howard is so confused. And so, you know, (being in love with) the privilege of getting to go to work and just live in that. The people that I look up to, the icons that Justin and I have worked with, they play the same game of pretend. And to see what they do, it just stays with you. I stay in it because I enjoy staying in it… And it happens in a moment, going there and then coming back.”
Both Theroux and Goggins are 54 years-old and have had long lasting acting careers in Hollywood. However, getting to play live-action versions of characters that have been loved by gamers for decades might feel a bit different to their usuals get-ons. At the Sao Paulo Expo, almost an hour away from the hotel this conversation is taking place in rush hour, CCXP is on a fan frenzy. From a giant Vault Boy standing right outside one of the entrances to cosplayers in either Brotherhood of Steel power armor or Vault-Tec jumpsuits, standing in line to get into the series’ official fan experience.
Does the amount of madness behind the Fallout lore ever hit them? The idea that a video game that once lived on a handful of CRT monitors is now big enough to fly them to Brazil, filling the biggest stage of a convention center and landing journalists and media creators from all over the world talking with them about fictional post-apocalypses?
“I think of it in terms of, like, I’ve been lucky enough to create a small body of work that resonates, sometimes, with people,” Theroux replies. And instead of being coy about it, he puts it in perspective. “I have my favorite kind of… I guess, fame, for lack of a better word. Usually, I’m not followed,” he illustrates. “But I love it when someone just comes to me and they’re like, ‘Hey, I really like that thing (you’re featured in)… tarara.’ That’s it.”
Just hours earlier, he’d stood onstage in front of thousands of fans at the Fallout panel. Lights blinding, sound system shaking, screams at full volume. But he points out how he “kind of” has a “little leveler of it” with a very mundane example: “Obviously, last night at the Comic Con felt crazy. It’s a real fandom. But I also know I’ll be picking up dog shit on Wednesday when I go back home and get my dog and walk him around. It’s not like anything has changed, you know?”
For him, the lines between who Robert House is -or even American Psycho‘s Timothy Brice and Mulholland Drive‘s Adam Kesher- and who Justin Theroux is are not, by the slightest chance, blurred. “I don’t try. It just is separated,” he claims. I think trouble is when you start thinking that that’s a character that you are and you should try and be more of or get more of that.”
Goggins complements the statement pointing out it’s also about “being acutely aware of the opportunity you’ve been given,” as Theroux nods in agreement.
“The only thing, which is what Justin does and what I do and what most of our friends and our friend group do and beyond, is: when you get the assignment, you show up with everything that you have. That’s non-negotiable.” Goggins reasures. “And that, in and of itself, is gratitude.”
Just a couple weeks from now, their characters will be dealing with mutants, memory loss, broken systems and a world that ended in fire. But in here, are just a couple of working actors talking about friendship and craft as they navigate the end of the world together, one convention center at a time.
Fallout‘s season two will premiere on December 17, 2025, with eight episodes rolling out weekly on Prime Video through early February 2026.
El juego contiene diversos guiños a la cultura popular y a CNN Chile, como lo son el perro roba empanadas, el escudo de Capitán América de José Antonio Kast y conductores de CNN Chile, como Sebastián Aguirre y Sebastián Rivas.
