‘Fallout’s Walton Goggins & EPs Talk Mixing Humor With A “Darker Place” In Post-Apocalyptic Series – Contenders TV: The Nominees

“I’ve always felt throughout my career that you can always get the audience to a slightly darker place if you tell them a couple of jokes along the way,” says Fallout executive producer/director Jonathan Nolan about the approach and tone the multi-Emmy-nominated Prime Video drama has taken in its debut season.

Joined by fellow EP and co-showrunner Graham Wagner and star Walton Goggins, Nolan was speaking at Deadline’s virtual Contenders Television: The Nominees event.

Portlandia alum Wagner agrees with Nolan’s POV on mixed-genre storytelling.

“I think that good drama has humor, and it always has,” the showrunner says. “As we’ve sort of seen in the last 20 years, great calamities can happen, and humans are still going to be idiosyncratic, weird and a little, I don’t love the word quirky, but little quirky.”

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Created by Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Wagner, Prime Video’s Fallout received 17 Emmy nominations last month including for Outstanding Drama Series and an Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series for Goggins, the latte for his dual role as mutant bounty hunter the Ghoul and the pre-apocalypse Hollywood Western actor Cooper Howard.

With its first season watched by nearly 100 million viewers worldwide since its April 10 debut, the series based on the Bethesda Game Studios’ hit video game series was given a second-season renewal, which came 10 days after a second season of Fallout was allocated a $25 million tax incentive from the state of California and will be relocating to the Golden State for its sophomore season.

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Professionally and personally, Justified, Righteous Gemstones and Hateful Eight vet Goggins admits the two versions of the same character spread out over 200 years in Fallout’s timeline was a lesson for him. “It was, you know, just a rare opportunity to understand how far as someone has fallen really and … what being exposed to the worst that humanity has to offer can do to the psychology of a human being,” says Goggins, who also starred in Prime Video’s I’m a Virgo last year.

Along with Goggins, Fallout stars Ella Purnell, Aaron Moten. Kyle MacLachlan, Moisés Arias and Sarita Choudhury. Michael Emerson, Leslie Uggams, Frances Turner, Dave Register, Zach Cherry, Johnny Pemberton, Rodrigo Luzzi, Annabel O’Hagan and Xelia Mendes-Jones also appear.

Robertson-Dworet and Wagner serve as Fallout EPs, writers and co-showrunners. Nolan and Lisa Joy executive produce via Kilter Films under their Amazon overall deal. Athena Wickham of Kilter Films also executive produces along with Todd Howard for Bethesda Game Studios and James Altman for Bethesda Softworks. Amazon and Kilter Films produce in association with Bethesda Game Studios and Bethesda Softworks. Nolan directed the first three episodes of the epic series.

Check out the panel video above.