This Week’s Take Ten guest is Fallout star Walton Goggins.
In this episode, he opens up about his regrets, his favorite movies and “the best memory of his life” — a legendary party involving Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash.
That event came up when Goggins was asked for his favorite behind-the-scenes career memory. He said, “I did this movie with Robert Duvall when I was 24 years old, called The Apostle. He was doing this big tent revival scene, and the next day he was having a party at his house, and I got invited. It was a very small group of people, but there at this party was Bobby [Duvall] and June Carter Cash, who was playing Bobby’s mother in the movie, and Johnny Cash. They sat and played for four or five hours for 20 people. I was a kid, but I got to sit in that room at the feet of these icons and listen to what they had to contribute to the world, and it’s still one of the greatest memories of my life.”
Walton Goggins as The Ghoul in ‘Fallout’
Prime Video
Goggins came to the interview fresh from the Spanish shoot of his upcoming film Mister, directed by Tom Cruise’s go-to stunt coordinator and AD Wade Eastwood (Mission: Impossible, Jack Reacher, Edge of Tomorrow). Goggins says of the film, in which he stars with Chloë Grace Moretz and The Pitt star Katherine LaNasa, “I play someone who has amnesia, so I don’t remember! Just kidding, I’m so excited about it, really. It’s batsh*t crazy on the page… It’s like John Wick meets Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon meets Little Miss Sunshine, there’s something for everybody, and our director, Wade Eastwood, is one of the best action directors in the world.”
Of course, Goggins is also ramping up on Season 3 of Fallout, in which he plays The Ghoul — a radiation-mutated version of an actor named Cooper Howard — who searches a post-apocalyptic wasteland for his missing family alongside Lucy (Ella Purnell).
What has he learned through playing The Ghoul so far? Said Goggins, “He’s taught me that we all may stray sometimes a long way from who we know we are. At any point in our life, we can take an inventory, do some therapy, and be reminded that we are who we thought we always were.”
Walton Goggins as Jake Cooper in ‘Fallout’
Prime Video
He also had some thoughts on what could have happened if Rick, his character in The White Lotus, had survived the finale. “I’m glad I don’t have to think about that, because it’s nice to let old Rick go,” he said, “but I would say it all would have worked out. I think he was onto something, finding real peace. He probably would have been with his lady somewhere in Thailand or Southeast Asia, starting a clothing company.”
To watch the whole interview, including some singing from Goggins, the films he always returns to, and how he entertains himself for the many hours he spends in makeup artist Jake Garber’s chair for The Ghoul, click on the video above.
