“It’s like we were astronauts”: From peak TV to “Fallout,” Walton Goggins ascends to new heights

"It's always been like the perfect stock," says Walton Goggins. The 52-year-old actor isn't talking about his portfolio — although that's probably doing well lately too — but his acting resume. As he explained during a recent "Salon Talks" conversation, "It's gone down, but it's always kind of gone up." After three decades in a Hollywood career that's most often described as "scene stealing," with memorable roles on series like "The Shield," "Justified" and "The Righteous Gemstones" and movies like "Django Unchained" and "The Hateful Eight," Goggins this year reached "a new hilltop" with his Emmy-nominated role on Amazon's "Fallout."

Playing "a noseless cowboy bounty hunter who's been roaming the post-apocalyptic wasteland for 200 years" — as well as the same character's earlier movie star incarnation — Goggins brings his trademark blend of sly humor and chilling menace to a role that anchors the iconic video game's adaptation. He also brings a whole lot of psychological mettle to a physical transformation that he admits verges on "psychogical torture." 

The Georgia-raised Goggins also talked to us about what it was like inside the first wave of "peak TV," pushing past Southern stereotypes and the "new normal" of his "Fallout" breakthrough.

This transcript has been edited for clarity and length.

Let's talk about “Fallout.” You have said you're not really much of a gamer guy.

No.

How much did you know going in, and how did they rope you into this?

How did they rope me into it? Well, Jonathan Nolan, just that name alone is enough to be roped into anything for me. But it started with a conversation with Jonah, Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Graham Wagner, our executive producers. We just got on a Zoom call and we started talking. Literally five minutes into the conversation, I said, "I'm in. I don't know what ‘Fallout’ is. I don't know the game. I don't care that it's based on a game. You could do it on a comic book, you could do it on whatever. It just came out of your imagination. If it's with you guys, I'm in."

They said, "Well, don't you want to know what you're playing?" And I said, "Sure, but it's irrelevant." They said, "Well, you're playing a noseless cowboy bounty hunter who's been roaming the post-apocalyptic wasteland for 200 years. You don't have a nose." I said, "Yeah, you know what? Maybe I should read those scripts. Wait a minute. What?" But it didn't take me long. Two episodes into reading them, I called them back immediately and I said, "I understand what you guys are doing, and I think it's revolutionary, and I'd love to go on this journey with you."

You have played a trans woman, you've done prosthetic work playing a person much older than yourself, but did you know what you were getting into when you were going to sit down in that makeup chair? You've said, it's like with Jim Carrey doing “The Grinch,” it's kind of a little bit of psychological torture.

It really is psychological torture. Venus [his "Sons of Anarchy character] was different. I mean, that was my girl, and it took about four hours in the chair for that, but I was being made beautiful. I did one movie for a friend, it was one of the “Maze Runner” [films]. I was already working in South Africa, so I said, "Yeah, man, I'll pop in there,” and that experience was traumatic for me. The story itself was fantastic, but getting in the makeup chair and the time that it took and how I looked, I had them cover up the mirror. It was traumatic, and I thought, I will never, ever do that again — that, or work with snakes. I've done both of them a couple of times since.

I don't think I let myself think about it too much until the very first day that we were going to take this for a test run and apply everything. Luckily for me, Vincent Van Dyke, who's one of the best prosthetic artists in the world, was designing the piece with Jonah and myself. They invited me to be a part of that process, and Jake Garber, who is one of the best special effects makeup artist in the world, has been a friend of mine for over 15 years now. We've probably done seven movies together. He does Sam Jackson and all of Quentin [Tarantino]'s stuff, and he's just a great guy.

So I knew I was in good hands. It took five hours the very first time we did it. Jake knows me well enough to know that I'm a person that likes to move, and so we built in some time for me to stretch and get my thoughts together. By the time we really got into it, two weeks into the experience, Jake had it down to about two hours and 15 minutes. But every day it was like a transition to, OK, now this is your life for the next two hours and 20 minutes, and this is what it's going to be like for the next 14 hours or however many hours we were working that day.

Was it on that first day after it took five hours that you also got bitten by a brown recluse?

Hey, wait a minute. You do research. I did, I got bitten by a brown recluse five times.

That's a hell of a day, Walton.

That's a hell of a day. Yeah, that's a long day. Luckily for me, someone told me to go to the hospital on my way to this test, and I did. I stopped, and the woman gave me the shot and said, "On your way." I think my nose actually fell off during the first test from that brown recluse.

Coming in as The Ghoul into an ER would be a very dramatic experience.

Very dramatic experience. I'm so grateful that I didn't see a picture of myself without the nose while we were filming. I didn't really see it for the first time until Jonah screened it for us. I think if I had seen it, I probably would've become obsessed with trying to speak like a person who didn't have a nose, which would've dramatically changed my voice. I would've thought, “Oh, well, The Ghoul will never wear sunglasses. You can't be nosy.” All of those things. So I'm happy that I didn't see it until the very first screening.

I want to ask you about The Ghoul and Cooper and their relation to each other, because you are the connective tissue in this story. As you're creating this character, are you thinking, “OK, are there the seeds of The Ghoul in this Hollywood actor? And is that loving father still in The Ghoul?”

Well, anyone that's spent any time in Hollywood can become a ghoul. [Laughter] It's a joke. I was there for 30 years.

For me, it was really trying to fully flesh out Cooper Howard's experience in the world that he inhabited, who his contemporaries were. He's an actor, a western movie star, but he didn't start off that way. I don't think he was like me. I don't think he came to Hollywood to become an actor. I think he was probably from middle America and from a good family, a really good family. He was a tough guy. He came to LA and he got offered to be a stuntman and was just kind of hanging around, was good on a horse and all the rest of it. One day an actor didn't show up, and the director really liked Cooper and said, "Hey, Coop, say a couple of these lines. You mind?" He's like, "Sure, why not? Yeah, I'll step in there." And he was good at it.

Then he got another part, and his stunt buddies kind of gave him a little flack for it. Before you know it, he's got his own trailer and a starring role, and the Western becomes a hit. It was understanding that world, who his contemporaries were, what his relationship with his wife was, to understand how full his life was and everything that The Ghoul had to lose. What was he thinking about? What's motivating him to be alive for 200 years? What's he searching for? And then to try to make that experience as specific as possible.

He's John Wayne.

Yeah, he's John Wayne. Alan Ladd, maybe. Yeah, a little James Arness. I've met a lot of those guys over the years.

You have been at this for 30 years, you've been nominated for an Emmy before. Having watched you all this time, this moment feels like you’ve pushed through to a new level in your career. Do you feel like something has shifted?

I do, yeah. I say that for a number of reasons. I was just in Istanbul for about eight days. I've been filming “The White Lotus” in Thailand, and we had some time off and I was just walking through the city. I've got some friends that live there, and I had people come up from really from all over the world. I've done shows that have been syndicated in a number of different countries, but not this many, and the response to it was surprising. I've really been on an island and haven't had an opportunity to experience life during this moment, but that was a taste of it. I did feel that way, and I'm very, very grateful.

My career has been, for me, filled with those moments. You're going along, you're going along, something happens, and then it changes. You're on a new hilltop, if not a mountaintop. For me, it's always been like the perfect stock: it's gone down, but it's always kind of gone up. I've been doing this for 30, 32 years, and I wouldn't have it any other way. If there is a God, he or she, whoever it is, has always given me a new plateau, or things that I could handle when I could personally handle them. I don't do anything different. It's always been about the work for me. And if this is a new normal, what does that mean? It just means that you get an opportunity to play in sandboxes that you may not have otherwise. Nothing changes, the process doesn't change. The access just becomes a little easier.

There have been so many other projects that have attempted to translate from a video game to a drama. Between this and “The Last of Us,” video game adaptations are now hits, they are prestige, they're getting Emmy nominations, they're getting commercial and critical success. Do you feel that this is a different moment for what viewers want?

I do. I've done a video game adaptation before. I did “Tomb Raider” with Alicia Vikander, and it was a great movie. It did pretty well too. I had a great experience, but there have been successes and failures over the course of trying to adapt the video game into a longer format narrative. I think we're just standing on the shoulders of everyone who has come before us and looking for what works and what doesn't work. I think that's just part and parcel of any new genre or any new source material for storytelling. We've had a lot of people that have gotten it right and have gotten it wrong, and then it just changes. Someone else will get something else wrong, but also get something really right. We mine so many sources for story over the course of, certainly since peak television. I was thinking about the golden era of television and how much story we've burned through really.

You were part of that.

I was lucky to be a part of that yeah, with “The Shield.” It was “The Sopranos” and it was “The Shield.” People may laugh at this, but I genuinely feel this way and I think the actors that I worked with feel the same way. It's almost like we were astronauts. What I mean by that is no one had gone on an 84-hour, serialized, nuanced exploration of a character before. I've never had that conversation with the cast of “The Sopranos,” but I've had that conversation with the cast of “The Shield,” and no one knew when we did the pilot that this is where it was going to go. I'm grateful, very grateful to have been a part of that.

But to bring it back to your earlier question, “The Last of Us” was extraordinary. The simplicity of that story is accessible to everyone. Everyone understands what it's like to be alone with your daughter, protect your child, or someone that is like your daughter, put in that place. “Fallout” is different. I mean, it's a world in and of itself. It's been around for 20, 25 years. It is a beloved game, and it has something that a lot of these other things don't have, and that is a satirical, "pull no political punches" point of view. That humor that is built into the DNA of it that has been a part and parcel of our success, and then certainly Jonathan Nolan's take on it and his execution of it. I expect this will continue.

You are one of a handful of actors I can think of who can be so, so funny and so, so scary. You are a scary guy, right?

Really? [Leans over intimidatingly]

You're scaring me right now. I'm just going to wipe off my palms.

Really? [Leans further]

You're going to make me cry and run away. Who are your role models for playing that kind of character? You've worked with John Goodman, I think he's one of those people who can do that.

He's extraordinary.

Who do you look to for inspiration? Is that something you set out to do in your career, to be the dark, funny, scary guy?

No, not at all. I've worked with most of my heroes, and I really didn't think about the genre that they were working in. I didn't think about dramas or comedies or the rest of it. I did “The Apostle” with Robert Duvall when I was 24 years old, and he was at the center of the people in the pantheon that I looked up to. That was my guy. And I got to work with Tony Hopkins and I got to work with Chris Cooper. I haven't got to work with Ed Harris yet, but there's still time and a few others kind of along the way. It was just their love of storytelling that I was attracted to.

I don't think about being funny or being serious, and I think we're all of those things over the course of a day. The best dramas are funny, and the best comedies are serious, right? I've been very fortunate to have been given the opportunity to play in both of those worlds, but there's no one specifically. John Goodman is an icon, John Turturro is an icon, Sam Rockwell's one of my best friends – nobody does it like Sammy. I have a lot of heroes, but I don't look to them specifically for this experience, just their love of storytelling.

You're a Southern guy and you have played a lot of Southern guys. You've spoken in the past about feeling a responsibility to those characters and to playing people who are from that part of our country, because it is easy to stereotype.

I think subcultures in America in general. I mean, an Italian guy from New York is going to be in the mafia. Somewhere along the way if you're a young actor coming up, you can bet there are pigeonholes for everyone. Somebody in California with blonde hair is probably going to play a surfer or smoke a joint. We all have ideas about different places in this country and the South is no exception. I was just grateful when I started out in my career to have a box to fit into. “Please, yes. What do you want me to say? How can I say it? Sure.” Then if you're lucky and you're around long enough, you can break that glass ceiling and kind of move into a different arena. But it was important for me, for a few of these jobs, “Justified” in particular, to paint a different picture of the South.

And that wasn't my experience. People [from the South] aren't dumb at all. People aren't uneducated. People have some of the best senses of humor in the world to me, and people are passionate, and kind, and wily, and unpredictable. So yeah, it has been important for me. I made four films with my partners. We started with a short film, and we were very lucky to win the Academy Award for it [2001's "The Accountant"]. The three [feature-length] movies that we made, they all give you a different point of view on the South. I think it's important for people from any region of this country to make stories about your own culture and expand the definition of and understanding for the rest of us.

You mentioned you've been filming "The White Lotus." Is there anything you can tell us? Are you going to clog in the new season?

No clogging. I just landed from Thailand where I've been for the last six months, about a week ago. Then I just went straight to Charleston to meet up with Danny McBride and I started "The Righteous Gemstones" this week. They saved all of my stuff until the end of the schedule, so I'm deep in that.

But I will say [this season of "The White Lotus"] is good. It's good. I felt that way about "Fallout" when I left it and everything was in the can. I feel that way about everything, I'm not a result-oriented guy. I'm into this for one reason and one reason only, and it is the experience of the moment. I don't watch a lot of things that I've done unless I have to, because nothing will live up to the experience that I have with whoever I'm working with between "Action" and "Cut." The rest of it is beyond my control, but that's where I derive the most joy from. And yeah, "The White Lotus" was that.

And you wanted to do it. You were a fan of the show already.

I'm a very big fan of the show, so when I got that call to come and play, it was just like getting to play with Jonathan Nolan, another feather in my cap, if you will.