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As “Fallout” Season 2 transitions the show to the Mojave Wasteland and New Vegas, the creative team also moved filming from New York to Los Angeles during a period of record-low production in the state of California.
“We were a little insulated from what had changed here. So it was a shock to us when we came back here for ‘Fallout’ and realized,” executive producer Jonathan Nolan told Variety‘s senior artisans editor Jazz Tangcay at the “Fallout” FYC event. “It’s a no-brainer to shoot here in Los Angeles and it’s just an honor for us to be able to bring the production back home. And I think the results speak for themselves.”
Based on the video game franchise of the same name, this latest “Fallout” season follows the characters along their journey through the wasteland of a post-apocalyptic world. The panel was filled with many of the show’s top stars, including Walton Goggins, Aaron Moten, Kyle MacLachlan, Justin Theroux, Francis Turner and Moisés Arias.
Four months after the Season 2 finale aired on Prime Video, Tangcay asked the cast to reflect on their characters’ evolution and what drew them to this continuation.
Moten, who plays Maximus, explained how attached he got to showrunner Geneva Robertson-Dworet’s scripts and the show’s connection to the real world: “I think we all see a chaos that seems almost beyond repair sometimes. And as much as we all would like fewer parallels between this show of ‘Fallout’ and the world that we live in, I couldn’t help but want to just experience what I think we all have a shared experience of, ‘Where do I even begin if I want to change the world?'”
MacLachlan, who plays Hank, recalled a conversation he had with Robertson-Dworet about characters having both an A-side and a B-side. That shaped how he approached his character, who is on one hand a loving father but also an extremist. And in the Season 2 finale, Hank chooses to his wipe his memory clean.
“The ending to me, I don’t really know where this is going to lead, but in my mind I said, ‘This is the evolution. This next step has to happen in order for what’s to come.’ I saw it as sort of a sacrifice but also inevitable. The hope is that it opens another door and we get to walk through into another interesting journey,” MacLachlan said, with a third season officially on the way. “He loves his daughter so much … I don’t know if that has any validity or not, we’ll found out, I guess!”
Goggins also spoke about that ending and how it symbolized hope for his character. He recalled filming that scene where the Ghoul locates his family’s cryo-chambers, only to find Barb and his daughter Janey gone. Goggins recalled filming the scene and said, “Frederick E.O. Toye directed that episode and he set the cameras up in a way. He said, ‘What are you going to do?’ And I said, “‘I really don’t know. I’m going to come through that door and I know that this is the cryo-chamber that I have to look in.’ But he put two cameras. We only did it three or four times and we did one extra shot.” Goggins continued, “Even though we knew that they weren’t in the chamber, every take felt like they were and it felt like a supreme letdown at first and then he finds this card. And so it was really cathartic and I can’t wait to see what happens in Season 3.”
Tangcay then asked the cast to dive into the show’s intricate world-building, from Vincent Van Dyke’s prosthetic makeup (Emmy-nominated for crafts in Season 1) to Dayna Pink’s vibrant costumes.
Turner spoke about how her costumes tell a story about what is happening with Barb this season. “That purple vault tech suit, that is like armor, the angles, the structure of it. But Barb lives at the intersection of many things, her strength, her intelligence, all of those things, but her softness, her tenderness, and even in that suit with all of its substantial material and structure, there’s the hint of softness and the blouse underneath.” Turner went on to say that as Frances seemingly moves away from Vault-Tec, her silhouettes get less structured. She said, “They have more movement and the color palette gets lighter. When she’s with her family, there’s a lightness and a movement to her costumes.”
Robertson-Dworet talked about Cummings saying, “When [Jonathan] and I talk about what we want to do in the show and what ambitious new things we want to create, we can do so fearlessly because [production designer] Howard Cummings is a genius,” Robertson-Dworet added, “Many of the sets and locations you see in this final location, some of them are six different locations seamlessly brought together to seem like one.”
Goggins concluded by giving kudos to the writers and directors for building out the world: “We balance a lot of different tones in this. I still can’t believe Amazon’s letting us make this show at this scale that’s batshit crazy!”
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