Fallout TV series star Walton Goggins has said he’s not played the franchise’s video games and is “not interested” in doing so — because it would upset his method for playing The Ghoul.
Goggins, who also portrays his character’s pre-nuclear war counterpart Cooper Howard, told PC Gamer that he wanted to “believe” the show’s Wasteland setting was real when going to work — a level of immersion that would be broken by seeing its original video game form.
“No, I haven’t sat down to play the games,” Goggins said. “And I won’t. I won’t. I won’t play the games. I’m not interested.
“All of a sudden, I’m looking at this world from a very different perspective, and as something on a screen in which I am an avatar in,” he reasoned, discussing why he hadn’t played any of the Fallout series to date.
“I don’t believe that I’m an avatar,” he continued. “I believe The Ghoul exists in the world. I believe that Cooper Howard exists in the world. The best way that I can serve this world and serve the fans of this game, I think, is to go to work every single day and believe the circumstances that I’m presented with.”
As part of the same interview, Ella Purnell, who plays former Vault-dweller Lucy MacLean, said she had spent some time playing Fallout 4 before shooting the series’ first season as it “heightened the enjoyment and the experience” of then going on set and seeing the show’s Vault set for real.
Aaron Moten, who plays Brotherhood of Steel soldier Maximus, meanwhile said he wanted to be “done with the work” before playing the games. “And who knows,” Moten suggested, “maybe we’ll be working on this so long that Bethesda will have a new Fallout number for us to jump into.”
Could Fallout’s TV series run long enough that the world gets a brand-new Bethesda game to play? It seems unlikely, since Bethesda is still years away from finishing The Elder Scrolls 6, which it intends to launch first. But rumors persist that Bethesda won’t wait quite that long to launch something more for Fallout fans to play, with some form of remake expected.
Fallout’s second season is set to begin airing from December 17, and will take a “fog of war” approach to how it juggles Fallout: New Vegas’ various endings. A third season has already been confirmed, and is expected to begin filming next year.
Image credit: Alan Chapman/Dave Benett/WireImage via Getty.
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at [email protected] or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
