“Fallout” casting director John Papsidera had heard of “Fallout” the game before he boarded the Prime Video series. But he had never played it and chose not to afterward. “I am not a gamer,” the two-time Emmy winner tells Gold Derby at our Meet the Experts: TV Casting Directors panel (watch the exclusive video interview above). “I did not dive into it and I think, in thinking about this, I try to leave myself kind of a blank slate in whatever I’ve done, which there’s been multiples of things that come before it, whether it’s reference material or other movies or other novels — whatever it is. I try and stay away from the original material … and try to remain as little bit as fresh eyes to a project because I trust that they know what they need to know what come with the baggage of that.”
In the case of “Fallout,” which is executive-produced by Papsidera’s longtime collaborators Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, it was not necessary for him to have encyclopedic knowledge of the game. The post-apocalyptic series is merely set in the world of “Fallout” but with a wholly original story and characters. Its three protagonists are the Ghoul (Walton Goggins), a former actor named Cooper Howard who turned into a ghoul from the nuclear bombs and is now a bounty hunter; Lucy McLean (Ella Purnell), a vault dweller who ventures to the irradiated wasteland to find her father, Hank (Kyle MacLachlan); and Maximus (Aaron Moten), a squire in the Brotherhood of Steel in the wasteland.
Goggins was the No. 1 choice of co-creators Graham Wagner and Geneva Robertson-Dworet. “We’d talk about lists and we’d come up with different ideas for the Ghoul, and they were extensive and long, but everybody really agreed that Walt would be phenomenal if we could get him, so that was a layup,” Papsidera says. “That was the first move we made, is to go to Walt.”
Purnell and Moten auditioned for their roles. For the upbeat, optimistic Lucy who quickly gets a taste of the harsh wasteland, the “Yellowjackets” alum’s grounded take won the team over. “It’s like in theater when somebody plays styles. The actor had to get the fact that she was in this artificial world and played a stylized version of a real human being. And I think Ella got that right, which a lot of actresses didn’t,” Papsidera shares. “They would go too far into the style or they would become too dimensional because they were playing it that way, where it felt much more like a skit or a sketch than it necessarily felt like a three-dimensional human being. And I think Ella combined those things in a real emotional way for us and we could see this world and wanted to explore this world through her eyes.”
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Moten was the last of the three to be cast and Maximus, a striver who’s been raised and bullied by the Brotherhood of Steel, was more of a search for Papsidera and his team. “He had to be young enough and vulnerable enough to believe within the story, yet he had to have an exterior and an attitude that was of a survivor in that world, and so marrying those two things, you had to find someone who could play both extremes of that character,” he says. “And Aaron was fantastic. The fact that you buy his age, you buy the relationship between [him] and Ella, yet you still feel the struggle of him wanting to be more than what he is, I think, really kind of spoke to all of us.”
While the trio makes up the main cast, the fun of “Fallout” lies with its guest stars. Every episode features at least one notable familiar face, whether in an all-important role, like Michael Emerson as Dr. Siggi Wilzig, or a bit part, like Fred Armisen as DJ Carl. Then there’s Matt Berry, who plays and/or voices three characters.
“I tried to look at it a little bit more like ‘The Wizard of Oz’ in that there’s a core group of people that interact and depend and have a different relationship with the world that they then start to explore, but that exploration of that new world was where the fun lied in a lot of ways for me,” Papsidera explains. “We all got behind the idea of them going down this trail and who do they run into? And so surprises along the way kept it really interesting. We played around with that idea a lot in trying to not only surprise ourselves about who would show up and creatively thinking about that, but also what a joy that would be. And, you know, ironically, I think, it kind of emulates what a video game is — you never know what the next section will bring. Not only was it styled in that manner, but I thought we fulfilled it because you got to the next level and you meet another character. You get to another level and you meet another character. And you leave them behind — so long, see ya! I really loved that aspect, which is really different than if you’re doing an ensemble about a group of friends or a family.”
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