Christmas came early on Prime Video with the premiere of “Fallout” Season 2 on Tuesday, which brought viewers back into the Wasteland as the Ghoul/Cooper Howard and Lucy MacLean set off on a journey to find Hank MacLean in New Vegas.
In addition to Lucy’s quest to hold her father accountable after learning about his role at Vault-Tec and their involvement in the bombing of Shady Sands at the end of Season 1, Howard is also looking for answers on what happened to his wife Barb and daughter Janey.
“The Ghoul is, of course, a character who’s willing to do anything to find his family, cross any moral line. Lucy’s trying to find her father, but she is still that Vault Dweller. She has it in her to be a noble person, to find the good on the surface and she’s trying very hard not to cross moral boundaries, but the Wasteland is increasingly forcing her to do that,” showrunner Geneva Robertson-Dworet teased in an interview with TheWrap. “So it’s very much a question of, will the Ghoul rub off on Lucy or will Lucy rub off on the Ghoul? We thought that was a juicy character dynamic to build our season around.”
When asked about Lucy and the Ghoul’s dynamic in Season 2, Ella Purnell told TheWrap that it’s “still tense” but “very different” compared to Season 1.
“She’s no longer his prisoner. So that’s an improvement. I would say it’s very fun to watch them, at times like an old married couple who are bickering and just so infuriated with each other,” Purnell said. “But then they’re this very unlikely duo on this road trip together. They both want to be seen. They both want to be heard. They both can’t stand the other and want the other person to see things their way and do what they want to do and be in the right.”
“They bring out the worst in each other at the start. She gets far more short tempered. He’s far more short tempered. She gets up on her moral high ground and wants to lecture him all the time, which is probably not the best way to get through to the Ghoul and he just stonewalls her,” she continued. “But all the experiences that the Wasteland throws at them is actually the thing that helps their relationship improve and move along. It’s certainly not a linear journey, but I would say they may start to find some common ground at some point.”
In addition to Lucy and the Ghoul’s relationship remaining at the show’s core, Goggins teased that Season 2 would also continue to explore the past, peeling back more of the layers of who Cooper Howard is, what the world was like before the bombing and how it all dovetails into the show’s present day.
“The way that we leave him in Season 1, his world has shifted in an instant. Everything that he thought he knew isn’t true. He was living a life that only saw the tip of the iceberg and everything else is underneath the water,” Goggins told TheWrap. “He is trying to do the right thing, but he’s also trying to figure out who the f—ck he is in a world that is changing, and why everything around him is changing and the hysteria of the world and the chaos in this moment, and trying to make sense of it.”
While Season 2 is bringing viewers to a new locale from the Bethesda video game franchise in New Vegas, it also marked a change for the show’s cast and crew: moving filming from New York, Namibia and Utah to Los Angeles. Executive producer Jonathan Nolan told TheWrap the move was as much a storytelling decision as it was a logistical decision.
“With every Fallout iteration, whether it’s the game or the series, the first question is where? Each of the games are defined by the location that they’re in, whether it’s DC or Boston or Vegas,” Nolan explained. “We were committed to shooting the first season in New York, but it wound up being set in the way that these things always work out in Los Angeles, where we all live full time.”
Nolan noted that the many members of the crew on “Fallout” already had worked with him on “Westworld,” which shot both in New York and Los Angeles over the course of its four-season run on HBO.
“Given Fallout Season 2 was set in LA, and that we had had such amazing luck and such an amazing experience shooting with LA-based crews, we decided it would be wise if you’re showing the Mojave to be a lot closer to the Mojave,” Nolan said.
Also helping sway their decision was California’s tax credit program, which doled out $25 million for Season 2. Newsom has since expanded the tax credit program from a total of $330 million to $750 million as it looks to keep productions from seeking cheaper incentives elsewhere in the U.S. and overseas.
Fallout, which was renewed for Season 3 back in May, already received a $42 million credit to keep shooting in L.A., with the show expected to contribute $166.3 million in qualified spending and $89.5 million in qualified wages to the state — a 21% increase in spending compared to its previous season.
“Jonah and his company Kilter Films did more than pretty much anyone to help make sure that bill got passed,” Robertson-Dworet said. “He organized folks to come down from Sacramento to visit our sets, see how many hundreds if not thousands of people are working on our set in a single day. And we were very honored that our production could be part of helping our wider community of filmmakers here in Los Angeles.”
“We’re hopeful that with with the new credit and the amazing work of the state legislators and the unions and the MPA that the new revamped credit here in California will hopefully be significant boon in bringing production back here,” Nolan added.
Filming Season 2 in Los Angeles wasn’t without its challenges, however, as the show was shooting in the midst of this year’s wildfires in California. Nolan said that ten of its crew members lost their homes in the disaster, while many more were displaced for days.
“We shut down for, I think it was a week or so, which is very difficult and when you’re in the middle of it, very expensive. Amazon was incredibly supportive throughout that and continued to pay the crew even as we were shut down and went above and beyond and supporting our crew and their families. And with the incredible hard work on behalf of our producer Margo Lulick and the rest of our production team, we were able to work in record time,” Nolan recalled. “For weeks after that, we’d have these moments where suddenly several crew members would have to leave to go secure their homes because there’s another fire coming out.”
Despite the hardship, Nolan praised Fallout’s cast and crew for their dedication and hard work in finishing Season 2.
“It was genuinely an incredibly challenging environment for our crew, for our cast, to shoot it, but they did amazing work,” Nolan said. “We’re incredibly resilient and we have a beautiful season to show for.”
The premiere of Fallout Season 2 is available now. New episodes stream Wednesdays through Feb. 4.
The post ‘Fallout’ Star Ella Purnell Unpacks Lucy’s ‘Still Tense’ but ‘Very Different’ Dynamic With the Ghoul in Season 2 appeared first on TheWrap.
