Photo by Fallout: The Apocalypse Comes to TV
The post-apocalyptic world of Fallout has finally made its way to our TV screens, and it’s a wild ride. From the masterminds behind HBO’s Westworld, Prime Video’s Fallout takes us back to the 1960s before blowing things up - literally. A jaw-dropping nuclear explosion kicks off the series, rivaling the skull-rattling blast seen in Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer.
The apocalypse has arrived
The majority of the show takes place in a retro-futuristic wasteland full of underground vault dwellers, psychotic bandits, and irradiated monsters. It’s a world that’s both familiar and strange, like a twisted version of our own.
Fallout started as a role-playing computer game in 1997, which became popular enough to spawn a sequel a year later. The franchise really caught on with 2008’s Fallout 3, when video game developer Bethesda acquired the rights. Bethesda turned Fallout into a sprawling, open-world series, where players could make choices in-game that affected major storylines, from controlling characters’ fates to nuking towns.
The game that started it all
From Gamers to Actors
The stars of the Fallout TV show, Walton Goggins, Ella Purnell, and Aaron Moten, all had varying degrees of video game knowledge. Goggins had zero gaming experience, but learned about Fallout through his 13-year-old son. Moten watched Fallout playthroughs on Twitch, while Purnell encountered some difficulty.
Goggins in his Ghoul costume
“I’m not a gamer, but I tried to play Fallout,” Purnell says. “I’m just not good at it, and that annoys me because I’m competitive. It was the controls that I didn’t get the hang of. My thumbs don’t control the right way.”
Shooting in the Apocalypse
To recreate the desolate, post-nuclear wasteland of Fallout, the cast, Nolan, and showrunners Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Graham Wagner traveled to New York, New Jersey, Utah, and the Skeleton Coast in Namibia to shoot. They faced some truly apocalyptic weather conditions.
The Skeleton Coast in Namibia
“It was an incredible experience, but exhausting at the end of every day. It was fucking hot,” says Goggins, who plays an undead, prosthetic-heavy bounty hunter named The Ghoul. “The very first day I put [the costume] on in New York, I think the heat index was like 104 or 105, and we went down and started shooting. At one point, Jonah looked over at me said, ‘I know it’s an emotional scene, but are you crying?’ I said, ‘No, man, I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ He reached up and poked my eye and water just came gushing out underneath this prosthetic.”
The Future of Fallout
All eight episodes of Fallout are now streaming on Prime Video. Will you be tuning in to see the apocalypse unfold?
The Fallout TV show is now streaming
