6:00

But it's a great trilogy

6:02

and it was nice to be a part of it. I

6:06

was down there doing Tomb Raider at the

6:08

time and he said, you know, we're doing this

6:10

and we're here. We come

6:12

by and play with us for

6:14

about five days and so I did

6:17

it. Okay, so what

6:19

about in this series? Did

6:22

you anticipate what you were committing yourself

6:24

to? I

6:26

didn't anticipate what I was

6:29

committing myself to. Initially, I

6:32

had a phone call

6:34

with my agents that Jonathan

6:36

Nolan wanted

6:39

to talk to me about something, along

6:41

with the writers Graham Wagner and Geneva

6:43

Dort Robertson. And

6:45

whenever you get a call like that, you

6:47

know, you perk way up. I've

6:49

been a fan of Jonas for such a

6:52

long time, like so many other people. And

6:55

starting with Memento and every film and

6:57

TV show that he's been a part

6:59

of since then. So

7:02

they told me it was for this property

7:05

Fallout. I didn't

7:07

know anything about Fallout. My son is

7:09

a gamer and a big fan of

7:12

Bethesda. He plays Skyrim. My

7:14

gaming ended with Galaga, right?

7:17

And I'm a Skyrim nut. I've

7:19

wasted probably six months of my life

7:21

in total playing Skyrim. But

7:24

that's the thing. I could be speaking with

7:26

Spanish with you right now. But

7:30

it is not wasting one's life, right? It

7:32

is, I see the way

7:34

that my son games and I

7:37

understand for him, it is

7:39

no different than me having a glass of wine at the

7:41

end of the day. It's just

7:43

a way for him to unwind, a segue

7:46

from the student that he is at 13

7:48

years old now to his civilian

7:51

life at home. And it's just

7:54

a gateway that he needs to walk through. And

7:57

I love that he loves it so

7:59

much. much. That being said,

8:02

I went on Wikipedia,

8:04

I looked up or whatever article

8:06

I landed on when I Googled Fallout and

8:09

the description of the person

8:12

or the game, I don't

8:14

know how I came to this place. I couldn't

8:16

find it now if I was forced to, but

8:19

it was of this male vault

8:23

dweller that was making

8:25

his way to the surface. I think

8:27

the guy had a name or something,

8:30

but he was a hero. I

8:32

thought, oh wow, somebody

8:35

wants to talk to me about being the good

8:37

guy right out of the gate. That's

8:40

a pretty good day for me. And

8:43

lo and behold, we got on the

8:45

Zoom with Jonah and Geneva and Graham.

8:47

Two minutes into the

8:51

conversation, looking at Jonathan Nolan's face, I just

8:53

said, I'm in, man, I'm in. He said,

8:56

but don't you want to

8:58

know who you're playing? And I said, it doesn't

9:00

matter. It doesn't matter. I'm sold

9:02

American. He said, well, don't you want to read

9:04

a script? And I said, yeah, well,

9:07

sure. Yeah, I'll read a script, but I'm

9:09

in. If you're doing this, I am in. And

9:12

he said, okay, well, you're playing a bounty

9:15

hunter who's been walking an

9:17

irradiated hellscape for 200 years

9:20

and you don't have a nose. I

9:23

said, maybe I should read these scripts. Should

9:25

I read these scripts? Really? And

9:28

we continued the conversation.

9:30

I did read the both episode

9:33

one and episode two and called them back

9:35

immediately and said, I absolutely have

9:38

to be a part of this. This is some

9:40

of the best writing I've read in a long time. And

9:44

what an opportunity to play these two people. We've

9:48

got so much more with Walton Goggins

9:50

still to come. Stay with us. It's

9:52

Bullseye from maximumfun.org and NPR. Support

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11:05

NPR's Through Line. The ancient peoples

11:08

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11:10

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11:12

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11:14

white supremacy. Find

11:17

NPR's Through Line wherever you get

11:19

your podcasts. Welcome back to Bullseye. I'm

11:21

Jesse Thorn. I'm here with Walton Goggins.

11:23

He is an actor. You have seen

11:26

him on Justified, Vice Principles, The Shield,

11:28

and The Righteous Gemstones as well as in movies like The

11:30

Hateful Eight and Django Unchained. In

11:33

his latest project, the TV show Fallout, he

11:35

plays clean cut western star Cooper Howard. And

11:39

the nightmarish ghoul that Howard

11:41

becomes after a nuclear

11:43

apocalypse. He's a very, very, very,

11:46

very, very, very, very, that

11:48

Howard becomes after a nuclear

11:50

apocalypse. Fallout is streaming now

11:52

on Prime Video. Let's get back into our

11:54

conversation. I have

11:57

been reading Hal Needham's book.

12:00

stuntman. Oh, God, I want to read

12:02

that. It's really fun. Yeah, Hal Needham,

12:05

for those who don't know, was a

12:07

legendary stunt director who also

12:09

was a very successful film director,

12:11

but was famous for working with

12:13

Burt Reynolds on some of the

12:15

biggest Burt Reynolds movies. Hooper. Yeah,

12:18

Hooper and what's

12:21

the most... Smoking the Bandit. So

12:23

in this Hal Needham book, it's

12:26

like the first

12:28

half of it first two thirds of

12:31

it are about his career before even becoming

12:33

a director or much of it is about

12:35

his career before even becoming a stunt

12:37

director when he was just a stuntman. And

12:41

it's incredible stories. And

12:44

one of the things that

12:46

becomes really vividly clear, it's also

12:49

very true in Hooper actually,

12:52

is that the main thing,

12:56

there were two main things that they had to

12:58

do. Like if I think of a stuntman,

13:00

I think of explosions, cars, things

13:03

like that. Until

13:05

1980, the two

13:07

main things a stuntman needed to do was number

13:09

one, fall off of things. Absolutely. That was the

13:12

top. How far can you fall off of things?

13:14

Number two is horse stuff. So

13:17

you do some horse stuff and

13:20

look, your character is a Western

13:22

star or is a

13:24

Western star in the before the

13:26

Apocalypse world? Yes, absolutely. So

13:29

I wondered if you had any

13:31

horse skills? I've

13:34

been riding a horse since I was six years old. Continuously,

13:38

or have you taken breaks? I've

13:40

taken breaks in the sense that I don't own a horse.

13:42

Okay. Right. But I can ride. And

13:45

I'm a good rider. I'm a great rider.

13:49

My mother was a barrel racer in

13:53

Georgia in Warm Springs where she's from. So

13:55

she grew up on horses. What's a barrel

13:58

racer? A person who... She

14:00

takes a horse around a barrel

14:02

and a ring and is

14:05

timed for her skills. She

14:07

was also a bit of a trick rider. She

14:09

could stand up on a horse and hang

14:12

off a side saddle and all the rest of it.

14:15

She was a very good horse person. We

14:18

never – I owned a horse – I

14:20

don't know. When I was in a mother, we

14:22

got a horse from a friend of ours. We're just kind

14:24

of keeping it in this barn we had. I

14:27

was like 11 or something like that. We

14:30

had it for about three

14:33

months, four months, something like that.

14:36

It was one of the greatest periods in

14:38

my life being at home because I

14:40

grew up in a little small

14:42

town just outside of Atlanta, Georgia. I

14:45

would take the bus to school, public school,

14:47

and come back and get off the bus

14:49

and walk straight to the barn. There

14:52

was the horse. I

14:54

would get on him and just ride him through

14:56

my neighborhood. It

14:59

was so freeing. What a beautiful experience.

15:01

I have been riding for a very long time to answer

15:03

your question. Not only that, my

15:06

son, who is 13 now,

15:09

we got him into riding equestrian.

15:13

He's a properly

15:15

trained equestrian disciple,

15:17

if you will.

15:21

And he's been riding for about five

15:23

years, and he's a baller.

15:26

He's a better rider than I am. He

15:30

rides English. Obviously, he can

15:32

ride Western, but he rides English, and he's a jumper. Now

15:35

he does some time to

15:37

kind of race up where we

15:39

live now. The

15:41

fact that we can share that together is

15:44

quality time of the

15:46

highest order. We

15:48

just talk without talking and

15:51

enjoy the beauty of this world from

15:53

the back of a horse. It's

15:56

extremely romantic, mate. The

15:59

whole vibe. and I've ridden horses in every

16:02

country I've ever worked in. On

16:04

a day off, I'll go find a barn and

16:07

jump on. A crazy thing

16:09

about Los Angeles, to me, as a guy

16:11

from San Francisco is, and this has never

16:14

stopped blowing my mind about Los Angeles, is

16:16

here we are in America's second largest

16:19

city, one of the biggest cities in the

16:21

world. And I live

16:24

in a very urban neighborhood in

16:27

Northeast Los Angeles. And

16:31

three minutes down the road is horses

16:35

that are allowed to just trot around

16:38

like it's normal. Yeah, that's

16:41

my son. I won't

16:43

say the name of his barn, but it's an

16:45

Atwater village, and it's right on the wash like a

16:47

lot of these things are. And most

16:49

of these barns were used

16:52

and are still used, I would imagine, but

16:54

for the old studio system, right? For

16:57

all the Westerns that they made, they needed to keep

16:59

them in town. I mean, they all went up to

17:01

Santa Clarita or like out in the desert and things

17:04

of that nature. But most of these barns

17:06

have their origins tied

17:08

to Hollywood back in the 1920s.

17:11

They've been around a really long

17:14

time. And yeah, it is a

17:16

big part of the history of

17:18

Los Angeles and their trails, obviously,

17:20

all over. I started riding

17:23

when I got here, not at a barn.

17:25

I just went to a place that you could rent

17:29

a horse for an hour and I would just

17:31

go out by myself. And it was in the

17:33

North, North Valley. And just

17:36

went all the time. If I didn't go once a

17:38

week, I went once every two weeks. And

17:40

it was just a great day to spend

17:43

time in nature and with your thoughts.

17:45

I saw a photo, there's a famous

17:47

photo coming

17:50

through the, I guess

17:52

it was the path that

17:54

ultimately became like the five freeway or

17:56

whatever, kind of making that turn into

17:58

downtown Los Angeles. over by

18:01

Dodger Stadium. It's a famous

18:03

bridge there. I don't remember if

18:05

it was, it wasn't paved at the time.

18:07

And it was chock full of, you

18:10

know, some cars for sure, but

18:12

mostly horses. You know, a

18:14

lot of horses kind of coming through there, making their

18:16

way, I guess, to downtown. But it's a, you know,

18:19

being a such a fan of Los

18:21

Angeles and especially old

18:24

photos of LA that

18:26

blew my mind the first time I saw it.

18:29

What about the

18:32

old lasso? You do some

18:34

trick roping right at the top. Is that a

18:36

computer generated trick rope? Oh, you

18:38

know what? You know, I'm not giving

18:40

anything away by saying that I did

18:42

not acquire a lifetime skill in

18:45

the six months that we just had

18:47

before we started filming. It is the

18:50

easiest and the hardest thing ever

18:53

to do. I think it's a

18:55

steep, steep, steep learning curve that

18:58

once you get it, then you

19:00

get it and you'll never forget it. It's

19:02

just the way that the loop on the

19:04

rope slides down and the way that you

19:06

flick your wrist and you constantly have to

19:09

move the rope. You can't just hold the rope

19:12

with your fingers. You have to twirl the rope

19:15

as it goes around. And so I had

19:17

tried, I got the trick rope.

19:19

I did the whole thing. I had tried for like

19:22

three months really. And it

19:25

usually ended with this man, bring

19:28

out the computer man. This is

19:30

horrible. To that

19:32

day, the scene that you

19:35

played to begin this interview was

19:38

the very first day I was Cooper Howard.

19:41

The first day I had been on set

19:44

without being in the makeup of the ghoul

19:46

and the very first day

19:51

that I got the trick down.

19:53

I actually did it

19:56

that day with a

19:58

wonderful a

20:01

rope guy that they brought

20:03

in to be my double. And

20:06

then this great old cowboy

20:08

from LA who kind of came in

20:12

and I have it on film and it's like, oh my

20:14

God, I'm doing it. Look at this, Jonah,

20:17

look at this, I got it, man. It's

20:20

like, yeah, that's great, well, but you're still not gonna do

20:22

it in the shot. Okay,

20:24

man, that's cool. I

20:28

have a question about the look of the

20:30

ghoul. So obviously your character in Fallout is

20:34

one character in two very different time

20:36

periods and two very different forms, right?

20:39

A fading Western

20:42

star before the

20:44

apocalypse and hundreds

20:46

of years later after the apocalypse, a

20:49

zombie ghoul version of that fading Western star

20:51

who is the same person but is also

20:54

kind of like separated from

20:56

the person he was before because we're grasping

20:58

at the memory of the person he was

21:00

before. Separated

21:03

through experience and exposure to

21:06

an irradiated wasteland

21:08

that has fostered

21:14

and through necessity some

21:17

of the worst behavior that

21:20

human beings could possibly do

21:22

to each other. It's

21:25

horrific kind of what happened over

21:27

the course of those 200 years. So,

21:30

Walton, you're a very handsome man. Hey,

21:32

that's, hey, wait a minute. Hey,

21:35

that's nice of you to say, wow, I don't

21:37

get that often. You're a very handsome man. The

21:41

character of the ghoul is grotesquely

21:43

disfigured with no nose and horrific

21:45

radiation burns across his face and

21:48

so on and so forth. Yeah.

21:52

Also, I'm like, maybe he's

21:54

even handsomer than Walton Goggin.

21:57

I agree with you. That I...

21:59

I absolutely agree with you. I was

22:02

like, did they have a big production

22:04

meeting and say, what's the most grotesque

22:06

thing we can do that also makes

22:08

Walton look handsome? There

22:11

were conversations about this really early

22:13

on and looking at some of

22:15

these drawings that Vincent Van Dyke

22:17

had done. It's one of the

22:19

best special

22:22

effects makeup people in

22:24

the world. When he designed the piece, a buddy,

22:27

Jake Garber, applied it.

22:29

He's also one of the best in the world at what

22:31

he does. Looking

22:34

at these drawings, it's like, okay, what do we really

22:36

want to do? What

22:39

is the goal here? Jonah

22:41

led the conversation and I participated

22:45

in it quite a bit with Geneva and

22:47

Graham. We

22:49

all said, led by Jonah,

22:52

look, I don't want to

22:54

hide your face, man. I want people to

22:56

know that it's you and I just want

22:58

you to be able to do your thing

23:01

without thinking about

23:04

feeling insecure under

23:06

a layer of prosthetics. Over

23:10

the course of this conversation and

23:12

these months of planning, we

23:14

did, I think there were marching orders at

23:17

some point because we saw how it was

23:19

taking shape. We

23:22

want him to be handsome in

23:26

a rugged, irradiated sort

23:28

of way. Even though he

23:30

doesn't have a nose, a lot

23:32

of that has to do with his personality. There's

23:37

a story that is told on

23:39

his face and we wanted the

23:41

audience to lean into this experience

23:44

and want to question

23:47

and want to know what

23:49

his life has been like, what it was

23:51

like before the bombs dropped and over

23:54

these last 200 years and why is

23:56

he still alive and what is he

23:58

looking for? And if

24:01

you had an audience turned off

24:03

visually by that visual experience, well,

24:05

that would be harder

24:08

to obtain, you know. And

24:11

so that's really kind of – we did

24:13

have those marching orders. That was

24:16

with intention that we did that. We

24:19

just had no idea that it was going to

24:21

be received that way by a lot

24:23

of the people that have watched it. The

24:26

ghoul being a sex symbol was

24:29

a very big surprise, although he is cool.

24:32

Cool goes a long way. He's a cool guy.

24:34

He's got a cool cowboy – bad A vibe.

24:41

Yeah, he's got swagger for sure. He does

24:43

what he wants, like Chris

24:45

Christopherson or something like that. Like a

24:47

real – It's funny. I talked about

24:49

Chris Christopherson. Like, what could

24:52

we do with Chris Christopherson if

24:55

he had been on a bender? Like,

24:58

Chris Christopherson – He's the sexiest

25:00

man. Yeah, and he's not pretty

25:02

at all, but

25:05

there's a reason why he

25:09

is one of the greatest sex symbols, because

25:12

he's got it. He's

25:15

got it inside and outside,

25:17

up and down. He is

25:20

just a very, very, very sexy man.

25:23

I watched you on the Seth Meyers show, and

25:26

it was great. Seth Meyers always does a great

25:28

job. Thanks for coming on Bullseye, Seth

25:30

Meyers. He does a great

25:32

job. And he's such a – I've

25:34

seen his stand-up. He's really funny. God,

25:37

he's funny. But I think he

25:39

does a really nice job of talking to people

25:41

like human beings when he's setting

25:43

up anecdotes. You showed

25:45

a picture of your father where

25:49

he looked like – and this is – have

25:51

you ever heard of a pearly king? I've never heard

25:54

of a pearly king. Okay,

25:56

so in London cockney culture,

25:58

there's these pearly kings. in Queens,

26:01

and they raise money for charity by

26:03

making these black suits that are covered

26:05

in mother of pearl buttons, like completely

26:07

covered in mother of pearl buttons, hats

26:09

and the whole nine

26:12

yards, everything covered in. So it's almost like a,

26:14

you know, it looks like

26:18

a, they look like halfway between a,

26:20

you know, a vaquero and it's like

26:22

plate mail also. Like

26:25

a peacock. Yeah. Your peacock. That's an incredible

26:27

thing you've ever seen, right? And

26:30

as I saw this picture of your dad, I

26:32

was like, this is like the Western equivalent of

26:35

that. And

26:38

look, as far as I know, I don't

26:40

know where your father is from, but you're

26:42

from Georgia. You're not a Westerner. I'm

26:45

not a Westerner. No. So

26:47

this is a truly, this was

26:50

truly wild and it was in

26:53

service of an anecdote about him

26:55

giving out autographed pictures of himself

26:57

unbidden. But. And

26:59

autographed pictures of me that he had signed.

27:02

Yeah, autographed by him. They had forged. Pictures

27:04

of you autographed by him. And

27:06

that is a very, that was very fun and

27:08

cute and a great talk show anecdote, but the

27:11

whole time I was like, wait,

27:14

what? Well, you know, okay, this

27:16

is, this is, maybe

27:18

your audience can relate to this. Lord knows

27:20

I can. My

27:23

father is, I have a

27:25

lot of interesting, authentic characters

27:30

that were in, in my life and are

27:32

in my life, but we're in my life

27:34

early on. And, and my father

27:36

is, is one of them, one of

27:38

many of them. But

27:41

this show is not about that. We could talk ad

27:43

nauseam about the people that have come through my life

27:45

and the things that I have taken from them as

27:48

observing their behavior. And they have

27:50

informed who I am as a

27:52

person and I have regurgitated them

27:55

in different opportunities that I've had

27:57

to play people. But

27:59

my. My father was always a character and-

28:03

Was he always that big? I mean, like,

28:05

I'm not talking about physically big, but was-

28:07

His personality was that big. Yeah, was it

28:09

always that grand? It was, it's pretty grand.

28:11

Yeah, he can light up a room for

28:13

sure. He walks in and you know that

28:15

Sandy Goggins is in the room. He's

28:18

also has, when

28:21

I was a young man, he

28:24

growing up, you know, like a

28:26

kid, he had style

28:28

and flair and a Corvette

28:31

that, you know, was

28:34

leased or all the rest

28:36

of it. He just had this thing and he, that

28:38

he wanted to be, and he was into

28:40

design and antiques. I

28:43

grew up like whenever I was with him, which

28:45

wasn't that often, we would

28:48

go antiquing and inevitably he

28:50

would find a phone booth

28:52

that Larry Gatlin owned. Son, we're going to go go

28:54

up and get this, this phone booth

28:56

that was in Pigeon Forge. I need you to

28:58

come up there and help me bring it down.

29:01

This example is too specific to not be real.

29:04

No, it is real. Okay, yeah. All of it, it's still in

29:06

his house today. Yeah. Many, many things.

29:08

So he was, he was this guy about

29:11

20 years ago, 25,

29:13

27 years ago, he came out to see me in New Mexico. And

29:20

it was his first time in

29:23

New Mexico. No, maybe we had stopped. No,

29:25

we had stopped in Santa Fe. We

29:28

drove across country one time. And

29:31

he was so taken with

29:33

the flavors of this place

29:38

and the people and the dress

29:41

that I think for my father, he

29:43

felt at home for

29:46

the first time in his life. Like

29:48

that's who he is in his soul. He

29:52

is that guy. He

29:55

wants to be a cowboy, you know, like in that, in

29:58

that world. And I think the land spoke to him. I

30:00

think the food spoke to him. I think

30:02

the people spoke to him. And so,

30:04

as for the next, slowly,

30:06

gradually at first, but over the last 25 years,

30:08

he has become that version of himself. Even

30:15

though he doesn't live out there, I think

30:19

his spirit lives out there.

30:21

His mind lives out there.

30:23

And so, to see a

30:27

person at that stage in their life

30:30

reflect in their dress code,

30:35

who they are spiritually, I think

30:37

is so cool. It's

30:40

just, yeah, have at it,

30:42

man. Do and be whoever you are. That's

30:46

how I feel about everyone. You just

30:48

be you. We'll

30:50

be back in just a second.

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32:03

It's Bolzaj. I'm Jesse Thorne. I'm talking with

32:05

the actor Walton Goggins. You've seen

32:07

him in TV shows by Danny McBride,

32:09

movies by Quentin Tarantino, and in the

32:12

new series Fallout. I

32:14

want to ask you a question about being from Georgia. You

32:17

left as a teenager to move to Los Angeles,

32:19

right? You were like 19 or something. 19, yeah.

32:22

Do you modulate your accent in

32:25

your day-to-day life? Well,

32:27

do you hear the way that I'm talking now? Do

32:31

I sound southern to you in this conversation? I

32:33

mean, you do more than I

32:35

do. Yes.

32:39

Fair enough.

32:42

When I moved to Los Angeles at 19 years old, I

32:45

got into class, and the teachers

32:47

that I studied with, the first teacher said

32:50

to me- It was an acting class. An

32:52

acting class, correct. The first teacher

32:54

said, okay, you need to read this

32:56

book over and

32:59

over again and lose that accent.

33:01

It was Shakespeare's sonnets. He said,

33:03

you don't have the

33:07

looks, so you need to work harder

33:09

than everybody in the room. I just took

33:11

him at his word, and I said, okay,

33:13

I need to work harder than everybody in the room.

33:15

I need to read this Shakespeare's sonnet book over and

33:17

over again. I

33:19

had a valet parking company at the time.

33:22

When I first moved out to LA, I

33:24

started this company. I would sit there after

33:26

parking the cars, and

33:28

I would just read these sonnets over and

33:31

over and over and over and over and over and over

33:33

and over and over and over again.

33:35

Eventually, I started to

33:38

lose my accent to

33:41

a point where I could get away with,

33:43

I want to say, a mid-Atlantic. It just

33:45

wasn't so pronounced, my southern accent wasn't so

33:47

pronounced. I've played a number of roles

33:49

where, to my ear, I

33:52

don't have a twang,

33:56

but I suppose to another person's ear

33:58

who is not from the south. there

34:00

might still be a hint there, but it's nothing

34:02

for me to turn it on. I

34:05

quite like the sound of it. I

34:07

think it's so whimsical

34:10

and sing-songy and

34:12

the modulation of a Southern accent

34:14

is just so pleasant to listen to. That's

34:17

the truth. I think

34:19

in show business as

34:21

an actor, there

34:27

aren't a lot of folks with Southern

34:29

accents who get to play characters

34:31

who are incidentally Southern. It

34:34

happens sometimes, but I

34:38

think a lot of times, if

34:40

somebody is going to have a Southern accent

34:42

on screen, it's because they're being

34:45

capital S Southern in some kind

34:47

of grand imaginary way. That's

34:50

one of the few opportunities. You're going

34:52

to end up playing

34:55

whatever the stereotypes are, a

34:57

racist, a dumb

34:59

guy. But

35:02

I think you're absolutely right, and

35:04

that stereotype was perpetuated for a really long

35:07

time. I'm so far outside of that box,

35:09

30 years into my career. I

35:12

don't have that chip on my shoulder anymore.

35:14

But you couldn't have done, for example,

35:16

your character on Justified, which is

35:19

frankly one of my favorite TV

35:21

performances ever, of

35:24

anything. How come you

35:26

didn't want to blow up that church? I

35:29

told you, they wanted

35:31

to ID my car. I got to

35:33

thinking that maybe you had an aversion to

35:35

hurting people. Hell

35:38

no. And I also got to

35:40

thinking that building on a

35:42

construction might just be

35:44

the kind of innocuous target. You know what that means?

35:46

That means harmless. It

35:48

might just be the kind of harmless target that

35:51

the Federal Bureau of Imperialism might be willing to

35:53

sacrifice in order to get

35:55

somebody deep in the movement. You think I'm a snitch? All

35:58

I know is you don't have any tattoos. You keep

36:01

rubbing that head like you don't think that head's gonna go

36:03

back. You think I'm a snitch because I rubbed my head?

36:05

I mean, you understand where

36:07

I'm coming from, right? You

36:10

couldn't have done that character without

36:12

the accent because the song of it

36:15

is like essential.

36:17

That's central. It's from Kentucky,

36:19

isn't it? Right? So you're

36:22

not gonna speak

36:24

with a Brooklyn accent coming from Kentucky. I think

36:26

it would have been very difficult, you know? But

36:29

the boxes are built for everyone. If

36:32

you're so lucky early on in your

36:34

career to get into a box, be

36:36

grateful for it. At least you're

36:38

working and you're in a box. You'll get out

36:40

of that box if you want to. If

36:43

you work hard enough, if you – when

36:45

those opportunities kind of present themselves and you

36:48

don't have – there is no ego involved and

36:50

look for those opportunities. Someone

36:52

– an Italian from New York,

36:55

an actor that's an Italian from New York,

36:57

they're gonna play them obstre. Everybody

36:59

has their thing. I mean, somebody from

37:02

California with blonde hair is gonna smoke

37:04

dope early on in their career. They're

37:06

gonna have a f***ing surfboard in their hand. I

37:09

just happen to be Southern and so that's the

37:12

box that I was in. But

37:16

everybody has something to lament

37:18

on that level. And

37:20

now I just don't think about it so much.

37:22

And I think – I'm so grateful that at

37:25

least I came from a region that

37:27

warranted stories being written about it

37:31

and I had the opportunity to

37:34

– and up

37:36

at bat. I had the opportunity to work, even

37:39

if I failed. At least I had

37:41

the chance to go to work. And

37:43

I would imagine that if you spoke

37:45

to any actor that

37:48

comes from a region in America

37:50

of which we

37:52

all do, that they're

37:55

grateful to

37:57

have been given the opportunity to serve.

38:00

a stereotype until they don't have to do

38:02

that anymore. One of

38:04

the things that I loved about the Fallout

38:06

show is Fallout,

38:09

both the game and the show, exist in

38:11

a kind of hyper real world. And

38:15

Kevin, my producer, texted me

38:18

a few weeks ago before

38:20

I'd seen the show and he said, oh, the Fallout show is

38:22

really good. And I texted him

38:24

back like, oh, really? I

38:26

had a hard time imagining it in the TV show. Because

38:30

the game's kind of glib. And

38:33

I thought, well, when I see this TV

38:35

show, maybe it'll just be cute and

38:37

funny. And

38:41

it is funny, but it's

38:43

not cute in that way, particularly.

38:46

And it's also not

38:49

like, the

38:52

idea is not look how small and real

38:54

we can play this ridiculous thing. The

38:57

opposite of it being cute and glib. It

39:00

is a very sincere hyper

39:02

reality. And your character,

39:05

most of all, there's a guy

39:07

running around in a robot suit shooting

39:09

lasers and stuff, not lasers. I don't

39:11

think they have projectiles in Fallout, but

39:14

you know what I'm talking about. There is a robot suit. But

39:17

your character is like an imaginary

39:19

version of mid-century

39:21

America transformed into an

39:24

imaginary version

39:26

of the future. And that's

39:29

something that I feel like is really special

39:32

to your gifts. Just

39:35

like your character

39:37

on Justified made

39:40

real a kind of

39:43

insane grand eloquence and made

39:45

it feel as

39:49

honest and grounded

39:51

and homey as it could possibly be. Like

39:53

your job on this show is to ride

39:55

around in a cowboy hat with

39:58

a... with

40:01

zombie makeup on, do

40:04

that justice, like do the ridiculousness

40:06

and bigness of that justice while

40:08

also being an actual

40:10

character. Yeah,

40:13

I mean, I guess so. You know, I don't look

40:15

at it that way, but if that's how you look

40:18

at it. How do you look at it? Well, I

40:20

look at it as a person that was living in

40:22

a Pax

40:24

Americana world, as if the 1950s had reached

40:26

its potential. You

40:29

know, there were so many things

40:31

wrong with this country, obviously, in the 1950s,

40:34

but there was a, we

40:38

were on the way to something

40:40

that we thought was illuminated, illuminating,

40:42

right? And a more illuminated, evolved

40:44

kind of world. And

40:47

this retro-futuristic

40:50

1950s, again,

40:53

the timeline is different in the fallout universe.

40:56

It was as if we were on our way to

40:58

reaching this potential that

41:01

we had, and

41:04

the bombs were dropped

41:07

and the world changed. I

41:11

played this guy, Cooper Howard, and to me,

41:14

I don't look at it as a video game. I

41:17

don't look at it as playing

41:20

someone in the 1950s. I

41:22

look at it as a real

41:24

human being. Cooper Howard existed.

41:27

He made these movies. Are there winks

41:29

at the audience? Sure, but I'm not

41:31

doing them. You know, when people

41:33

are funny, to me, the funniest version of

41:35

people is when they're not winking at the

41:37

audience, but they're actually believing what it is

41:39

that they're saying. And so, I believe

41:44

that he had a wife. I believe that

41:46

he made these movies. I believe that he loved his

41:48

child. I believe that he came from, you know,

41:52

I have a place that he came from in America. I won't share

41:54

it with you, but that

41:57

he made his way out of- I'll say it. New.

42:00

Port Rhode Island. I'll just say it out

42:02

loud. Yes, that

42:04

is it. That's exactly it. I guessed it in

42:06

one. But he's made his way to Hollywood and

42:10

he was a stuntman, he was a horse guy.

42:12

And one day, I mean, he was just an

42:14

affable, had

42:16

a lot of charisma and just people

42:18

were gravitated towards him. They

42:20

liked hanging out with Cooper Howard. He was

42:23

just a cool guy and a very dependable,

42:26

pragmatic, jovial

42:31

guy. And one

42:33

day an actor didn't show up and the

42:35

director just said, at the craft service table,

42:38

"'Coop' here, there's a few lines. Why

42:40

don't you jump in there and say this? That happens all

42:42

the time in this town." And

42:44

he did and then he was

42:46

pretty good at it. And another director said,

42:48

"'Coop, you know, you say this." And then

42:51

eventually he kept getting these bigger and bigger

42:53

roles just because he had this kind

42:56

of gift, if you will, and his

42:58

stunt buddies started giving him about

43:02

having his own trailer and all the rest of it. And before

43:04

you know it, he's starring

43:06

in a B Western and

43:09

it does really, really well. And he becomes

43:11

that guy. And

43:14

then he has,

43:17

you have to see the show to

43:19

understand exactly what happens, but the bomb's

43:21

fallen. And then the ghoul is

43:23

not some zombie that's running around like that, but

43:25

I could never think of it that way. I

43:27

think of him as a person who survived the

43:30

apocalypse. And I thought about, if

43:32

not every year, certainly his life

43:35

right after those bombs dropped and

43:38

to be specific about what it is

43:40

that he experienced to get

43:42

to a place where 200 years later he

43:45

has our sardonic sense of humor and he's

43:47

indignant and cynical and

43:52

is looking for something and

43:54

that he's a real person. Or

43:58

why else would I do it? I wouldn't

44:00

do this for a living if I didn't approach it

44:02

that way. Plus, not

44:05

many of us get the chance to see ourselves on

44:07

screen without a nose. Yeah,

44:11

that's true. Not many of us do. Do

44:14

you wear ping pong balls on your nose? I

44:16

do not wear ping pong balls on my nose.

44:18

I have my noses, my nose, and they paint

44:20

white dots on it. Oh, okay. Yeah.

44:22

It would be better if it was ping pong balls, though, right? I

44:25

don't think so. No? It wouldn't? No. Okay.

44:27

It would distract the person that I'm working with. I

44:29

thought of you this morning as I was preparing for

44:31

this interview because I was cruising around

44:34

on Reddit, and I ran into this

44:36

question in this – there's a subreddit

44:38

called Ask Los Angeles. Oh. And

44:41

I wanted to put this question to you because I thought you

44:43

would have a unique perspective on it. Oh,

44:45

interesting. Okay. Am I still

44:47

supposed to tip the valet, guys, if my

44:49

hotel charge is $60 a night for mandatory

44:51

valet parking, or does the high fee mean

44:53

they get paid enough as is and won't

44:56

be angry if I don't tip? You

44:58

tip the valet parker. They

45:00

don't get any of that money. You

45:03

tip them because they're working hard. Yeah.

45:06

Now we're talking. Take it from former

45:08

valet parker. From a pro. Former

45:11

valet parking entrepreneur, Walton

45:14

Goggins. Exactly. Tip your

45:16

valet. That's right. Walton,

45:18

I sure appreciate the time that you took to talk to me.

45:21

It was really nice to get to talk to you. It's a

45:23

total dream. We've been hoping to have you on the show for

45:25

years, and we're really glad you came in. I'm

45:27

so very much for the time, man.

45:29

Really enjoyed his conversation immensely. Walton

45:32

Goggins. Catch him in Fallout. That's

45:35

on Prime. He's currently shooting the next season

45:37

of White Lotus as well. We've

45:40

all been waiting for Goggins in Paradise. That's

45:47

the end of another episode of Bullseye. Bullseye

45:49

is created from the homes of me and the

45:51

staff of Maximum Fun in and around Greater

45:53

Los Angeles, California. Here

45:55

in LA, we all piled into Richard

45:58

Roby's car, drove to LA-est. for

46:00

a live interview with Paul Scheer that you'll hear

46:02

coming up on the show. Our thanks to

46:05

the folks at LAist, KPCC, and

46:07

Pasadena, California for hosting us at

46:09

their Crawford Family Forum. Our

46:12

show is produced by Speaking Into Microphones.

46:14

Our senior producer is Kevin Ferguson. Our

46:16

producers are Jesus Amrosio and Richard Roby,

46:18

our production fellow at Maximum Fun, Danielle

46:20

Huisias. We get booking help

46:22

from Mara Davis. Our interstitial music is

46:25

by DJW, also known as Dan Wale.

46:27

Our theme song is called Huddle Formation,

46:30

written and recorded by the Go Team thanks

46:32

to them, thanks to their label Memphis Industries.

46:34

Bullseye is on Instagram, at Bullseye

46:36

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46:39

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