[This story contains spoilers from Fallout season two, episode five, “The Wrangler.”]
After several quiet episodes in the Justin Theroux department, Fallout fans finally heard the words they were waiting for: “Mister House would like to see you.”
The Leftovers star is the man of the hour this week on Fallout, appearing in Amazon Studios’ video game adaptation as one of the franchise’s most notable players, Robert House. In a setting where so much is unknown (How did the apocalypse come about? Who ended the world? And, why are they called Deathclaws?), House has all the answers. A mathematician and roboticist who claims “knowing everything” as his primary talent, Theroux’s character is the most enigmatic figure in the show up until now, all the more intriguing after his long-awaited face-to-face with Walton Goggins‘ Cooper Howard.
Following a clandestine conversation in the bathroom at a veteran event some episodes earlier, Howard and House finally see each other for who they are in episode five, which was largely set in Las Vegas and future counterpart, New Vegas. Flashbacks bring Cooper to the City of Sin on a mission to assassinate Howard on behalf of the resistance, with an eye toward stopping armageddon before it ever gets off the ground. Howard doesn’t want to go through with it, but he finds himself called upon by House all the same.
Not only that, House knows all about the assassination plot, thanks to his propensity for running probability odds. While he wants to know everything, there are things House doesn’t know, including Howard’s wife’s role in things, or even Howard himself, beyond the fact that he’s supposed to kill House. House says he’s not going to bring about the apocalypse, but that doesn’t mean someone else won’t spin the end of the world online — perhaps even Howard himself.
The scene is the culmination of so much of Howard’s pre-apocalypse journey, not to mention the crowning moment between Goggins and Theroux in the series thus far. In fact, Theroux’s very involvement in the series owes thanks to a phone call from his old pal Goggins, making the dramatic scene between them all the richer. Below, Theroux speaks with The Hollywood Reporter about all that’s involved in bringing one of the most iconic Fallout characters from the video games to TV life.
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With Robert House, you’re stepping into the shoes of one of the major characters from the Fallout games. Does that assignment come with extra pressure?
Of course! But at the same time, I’ve had a couple opportunities, whether it’s Iron Man or Beetlejuice or whatever, to step into things that are sort of preexisting and that are huge. I’ve learned early on that you can’t really take it on. The only thing you can do is show up and be the most believable version of that character you can possibly be. Then hopefully the fans enjoy it. So I can say I did have the opportunity to really, I think, ring this character out in a good way, and I put my back into it to try and please them.
Did you hone in on a central tenet of the character to bring him to life?
You never see him in the game in flesh and blood. He’s always sort of on a monitor, and so I decided to try and pick up a big bat and not do any impersonations of what was already in the game.
That’s what the guy did in the first episode, picking up the bat!
Right, he does. (Laughs.) I wanted to swing for the fences a bit, at least with the voice and the way he carries himself, without being too ridiculous. But I did know that I wanted a voice that immediately placed people beneath him, some of that old Connecticut, articulate, really biting off the ends of consonants way of speaking that is a lost art. Those people who can speak in paragraphs, and beautiful paragraphs. So I wanted to do that, and it was already baked into the writing, too, but I wanted a voice that immediately put people beneath him.
Walton Goggins as The Ghoul in Fallout season two.
Courtesy of Prime © Amazon Content Services LLC
You have previously said it was Walton Goggins who connected you to the higher-ups at Fallout for the role. Once you connected, what were your biggest questions about the character?
Obviously when you’re presented with this character and material, there are a trillion questions. Even having watched the first season, there were a trillion questions. How does this work? What does this look like? And it was just like a warm bath. It wasn’t cold water. They were really helpful in answering any question, no matter how small. I had a few thoughts I wanted to incorporate, which they were very open to — little flavors that I thought would be good to bring to it. It was very collaborative and great that way.
Dialing back to your conversations with Walton, how much did he have to reassure you that you wouldn’t need to spend as much time as he does in prosthesis?
Oh, man. I only had to get into the makeup chair 10 minutes early for this mustache I put on, and then I have to live in that mustache forever. (Laughs.) That was small potatoes compared to what he goes through. There were a couple of days where we were crossing each other in the makeup trailer when he was the Ghoul. Holy moly. I mean, we’ve heard a million anecdotes of people who have to go through prosthetics and how hard it is, and everyone usually says, “Well, yeah!” But it’s so cool.
What was the most difficult prosthetics experience of your career?
It has to be a movie I did called Your Highness.
I knew it. I can see Leezar’s nose right now.
There’s a scene that got cut where a dragon burns my face off and I had basically a ghoul-like makeup that took six hours to apply. Then we shot this scene where this dragon breathes fire on my face and then they cut that scene. (Laughs.) At least I got a photo out of it.
Justin Theroux in Your Highness (2011).
Universal/Courtesy Everett Collection
You and Walton have known each other for a long time. What was it like having such a rich scene together at this point in your careers?
It sounds like every bad junket answer in the world when you say, “Oh, it was so great to work with Walton,” but it really, really was. I’ve admired Walton for so long and loved him for so long as a person, as a friend, and particularly as a performer. So to be able to work with him was just… I’ll stop short of saying he’s a hero of mine, but he really is. The way he goes between comedy and drama, he’s just everything I love in an actor, which is incredibly malleable, incredibly hard to pin down. I love those kind of actors.
A lot of people call them character actors, but to me they’re leading men. And we just had a blast. Every scene we rehearsed together was so imbued with mutual respect and love and really enjoying playing together. Me and him have talked about it over dinner and stuff where it’s like, “God, it’s such a privileged thing to be able to be in a scene with him,” and then also using that 5 percent of your brain, which is, “I’m also an audience member while I’m watching him give the performance live.” In that way, it’s almost like theater.
You mention character actors and leading men, and I have seen you play both, whether it’s Leezar in Your Highness or Kevin Garvey in The Leftovers, or in Maniac, or any other number of roles. At this stage in your career, what’s guiding you to these types of different characters? Are you drawn to specific creators, is it something more ephemeral in the material? And within that, how does House tick the boxes you’re going for?
House ticks all the boxes, I’ll start with that. He ticks all the boxes of a character that I’d love to play and that’s far from myself. It requires me having to sharpen a different set of knives, performance-wise. It’s a character I haven’t played before or it doesn’t feel close to any other character I’ve played before. The writing is fantastic, so it’s like tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. The directors were fabulous. And then obviously, the biggest tick is getting to, for the first time, work with Walton.
Just in general, it’s always a gut feel and sometimes your gut leads you wrong. I’ve found that whenever you choose a role where you think it’s going to bring you money or prestige, you’re usually choosing a role for the wrong reason. For me, it’s like choosing a play: I really like this play. It’s that simple. It’s looking to see, do I like the story it tells? And then hopefully the other ingredients — whether it’s the showrunners or writers or directors — hopefully those all fall into place and make a really good soufflé. It sounds kind of douchey, but really it’s the work. Lord knows all of us in our early careers, when you’re just trying to steal a crumb off the table, you have to eat a lot of shit before you get the nutrition.
A bunch of bowls of head lice soup.
Exactly. (Laughs.) Gross.
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Fallout season two releases new episodes Wednesdays on Prime Video.
