Walton Goggins Answers The Internet's Best Questions

I'm Walton Goggins,

and this is the Wired Complete Interview.

[western music]

Okay, here it is. True story.

Never told it on camera before.

[music continues]

Here we go.

DaleGribble2024 asks,

why did they make the ghoul so sexy?

Why Dale, are you single?

Just kidding. I'm married.

So why did they make the ghoul so sexy?

Well, you know, that's, it is actually a great question.

We had these conversations kind of right out of the gate,

and the thing that we didn't want to happen was for people

to be turned off by his physical appearance, right?

We wanted people to lean into the experience,

and to really watch his face.

Dumb [censored] ideas about how

they going to save the world.

And for his face to be a, a roadmap, if you will, of pain.

And his time traversing the wasteland for 200 years.

We, we wanted it to be its own character

in another part of the story.

And by virtue of that, I think maybe, you know,

we just leaned into sexy.

Or maybe that's just the guy under the mask.

Okay, swiping.

koli12801.

Anyone know what it's like on a Tarantino film set?

I do.

Yeah, as a matter of fact, I do.

It is...wow.

It is, it is one of the most extraordinary experiences

I've ever had in my life.

I'm sitting here telling you this

because I'm the one being interviewed,

but any person who's ever been on a Tarantino set

would sit here and tell you the same thing.

There is a, a love for this industry,

for this medium of, of storytelling by Quentin,

that is so effusive that every single day you show up

and you go to work and you realize

just how lucky you are to be telling a story at all.

And everyone on that set, both in front of

and behind the camera have that same feeling.

There's no hierarchy on a Tarantino set,

meaning that we're all the same.

There's a lot of sets,

but not nothing quite like a Tarantino set.

And everybody is there showing up every day,

putting everything that they have into it,

knowing how special it is, that storytelling is a privilege.

It's not a right.

Next one.

Walton Goggins High School senior 1989,

what would this guy want?

What does this guy need to hear?

So this guy in 1989,

Lithia Springs Comprehensive High School,

with all of my buddies voted runner up

for most friendliest mind you, didn't win.

Bullshit. Still angry about that.

Like actually really pissed off about it, Tracy Wallace.

But that being said, this guy wanted to see the world.

He wanted to know how the world thought.

He wanted to have a passport filled with stamps

from all over.

That's what he wanted more than anything in the world.

Not running away from his hometown, mind you,

but running towards a bigger life.

And he got that.

So what does this guy need to hear?

This is the important one.

This guy needed to hear that you were worthy

of dreaming bigger than your circumstances would allow.

That's all he needed to hear.

He just needed to be given permission to, to dream big.

And he got that permission.

You know, it, it happened for me a little bit later

along in my process.

And, and, and a lot of that involved me, you know,

falling in love with myself, you know,

meaning that I actually like me.

And I think that's the journey for all of us

to kind of get to that point.

But I did give myself permission to dream big,

and I'm all the better for it.

And that's one piece of advice I would give to anyone-

that you are not defined by your circumstances.

Okay, next question.

From Movie-Connoisseur.

Oh, I'll be the judge of that.

Is it normal for the emotions you felt within the scene

to affect you for a while afterwards?

Oh, wow. Okay, Movie-Connoisseur. You know what?

I give you your kudos. That's a great question.

I, I think, yeah, you know, it, it does for a lot

of people that I, I look up to, you know,

I've had lengthy conversations with, with people about,

you know, the process of becoming someone

in order to tell a story, and then letting that go.

Over the course of my career I've,

I've had the good fortune of playing some

morally complex people and um, and,

and they have all had a big come down, if you will.

There was a lot of, when I say trauma around letting them go

because you, you become so close to them

that you don't want to let them go.

And some of the things that they're going through

affect you in ways that you don't anticipate.

For everything that I've done, really, you know,

including The White Lotus, which I just finished,

Fallout for sure, that's happened.

There was a, a season of Justified the, the last season.

And I was sitting with my wife in the kitchen in LA,

and I just started going through all the people

that I love in this world,

literally saying to her, you know what?

I don't like that person.

I don't, I don't trust that person.

You know what? I don't wanna hang out with him anymore.

Yeah, I don't, I'm not, I don't,

I'm not friends with that person anymore.

I don't, I don't trust them.

And she said, yes, you fucking do!

What are you talking about, man?

We had dinner with them last night!

You know, the reason why you're feeling this way is

because Boyd Crowder can't trust anyone that's around him.

And I, I realized that she was right, you know,

I was just experiencing what Boyd was experiencing,

and it was gonna be a, a big day on Monday morning.

And, and I don't like to let things go until long after,

sometimes too long after a job ends.

So, great question. And the answer is, yeah.

Next question is from Bub-1974.

Is that when you were born, bub? I was born in 1971.

Describe Danny McBride's sense of humor in three words.

Wow. Okay.

I wish I would've looked at this question before we started.

Intelligent. Brilliant.

And no filter. Filterless. Three words, right?

Intelligent, brilliant, filterless.

Next question. Love you Danny McBride.

From PaulG, how do you approach performances

as an unlikable character?

I don't look at them as an unlikable character, right?

I just kind of keep them, I, I have empathy for them.

I look at them as real human beings in the world,

and I try not to think of them as a character.

I try to, when I say become them, pretend right?

Going back to that first question, I just play pretend,

and I feel like I, I am them and I,

and I try to humanize 'em as, as much as I, I possibly can.

Next question bybrandonwhite.

Watching Fallout rn.

Rn, what is, what is rn mean?

It means right now. Right? Right Now?

what? It could also mean like a nurse, couldn't it?

I mean, rn is a nurse, but okay, sure.

Maybe he means nurse, and maybe you think it's right now.

Watching Fallout right now.

Oh, I think you're right. It's right now.

How do actors manage to get human emotion

through a full mask?

Wow. Okay. That's a great, what a great question.

I I, I'm just gonna answer for myself

since I wear a full mask.

We, we worked very, very hard with Vincent Van Dyke,

who is the person who made these pieces.

To make them as thin as we possibly could,

so I wouldn't disappear behind all of this latex, right?

And by making them thin,

and by cutting the piece up into like seven,

I think seven or eight or nine pieces,

in order for Jake Garber, who is one of the best

special effects makeup artists in the world,

he's a good friend of mine and he applies it,

but we, we did it that way so that there would be

very little barrier between my,

my skin and the piece itself.

So that I, I, I could emote, if you will.

I don't even know how to do that, but I,

but people could see what's going on in, in my head.

I was deeply insecure about it when we started,

and so much so that I, I would ask Jonathan Nolan,

who directed, you know, a lot of season one,

and certainly the first two episodes, if,

if he's reading any, any of this, and he said, you're fine.

I got it. I got it all.

You know what I have? What do you have?

He said, your eyes. And your eyes say everything.

And so I've just leaned on my eyes.

What am I thinking right now?

You can't tell because you're looking in my eyes?

Okay, next question.

Swiping up.

DaleGribble2024 asks another question. Okay.

Why do you think Cooper rarely uses

his lever action on his back?

Did he dump all his points into Gunslinger?

Oh, that's a, what, that's a great question.

Well, I do like drawing from the hip.

I've, I've carried a gun,

and a number of things that I've done over the years.

One of the real reasons we don't, we don't use this gun so,

so much is because it's very hard to get to [laughing],

it's so hard to get to.

And, and the, the real gun is very, very heavy,

which is not a problem.

But because of the prosthetics and its position on my back,

we have to trick the audience,

and it has to be kind of pulled halfway out.

So I can't really walk with it so much,

but I take this as a, a question from someone

who wants to see this back kind of action a little bit more.

So I'm gonna incorporate that into season three,

'cause we're picked up for one. Next question.

PowerPad asks, what's the best line in the show?

I'm gonna give it to this, from episode three, The Head.

Thou shalt get sidetracked by bullshit every goddamn time.

It doesn't come out the same without the prosthetics on,

does it?

Thou shalt get sidetracked by bullshit every goddamn time.

Thou shalt get sidetracked by bullshit every goddamn time!

It's a little over the top, isn't it? Anyway, I agree.

I think it's a great line. Okay, next question.

Walton Goggins? I didn't ask this question.

Oh, oh, maybe it's just a thing that I said.

Oh, that's interesting. Okay.

I can tell you that I thought season one was extraordinary,

comma, personally, comma, I was very pleased with it.

Period. This blows it out of the water, period.

Exclamation point. Yes, I did say that.

I've been around for a really long time,

and I've been very fortunate over the course of my career.

In, in television, not in movies is something different,

but in, in television to have done a, a season one

of a show that began to build a critical mass, right?

And what I've learned over my experience doing this

is that if you are so lucky to have that happen,

then in season two you have an, an opportunity

to do something extraordinary and transcendent really.

You can either play it safe,

or you can just put all your chips on red and go for it.

And luckily, the showrunners and the people in charge

of our show decided to put it all on red and go for it.

And everybody felt like they were flexing in this season,

from Howard Cummings to the sets that he designed

to Dana Pink, our new costume designer,

and everything that she did, all of our cameramen,

all of the puppeteers,

because this is an analog kind of tactile world

that Jonah wanted to create that we live in.

Everybody across the board showed up every single day

and gave it everything that they had.

It became big, not because we were trying

to make something bigger, right?

But because that's where the story

just kind of naturally went.

And, and I'm, and I'm very proud of it,

and that's all I have to go off of. So I love it.

And, and we love it and we hope that, that you love it.

Okay, next question.

Scrolling.

ResponsibilityWise74 asks,

what's the weirdest coincidence you've ever experienced?

Okay, here it is. True story.

Never told it on camera before.

I bought a house in the Hudson Valley

with my wife and my son.

I was so far over my skis,

I thought I had made the worst decision of my life.

Once we got into it, this was gonna cost everything

that I had worked my entire life for.

And being the poor kid, not loving himself at that moment,

I thought, you're a failure.

You're not gonna do it. You can't pull this off.

This is too big for you, idiot.

And I exhaled. Said, no, you got this one day at a time.

The very first thing that we tore apart in the house,

'cause we had to redo it, was the kitchen sink.

I wasn't there at the time, but the person tore it off,

and there was a piece of fabric inside the sink, you know,

just like a, you know,

the things that they kind of put around,

it was built in 1922.

And on this piece of fabric, he sent me a picture,

and it's a true story, was a potato sack.

And on this potato sack, it said, this:

Walton-proof battleship. True story.

And I looked at that as a sign

that I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be.

Everything is gonna be okay.

Okay, next question.

PapaMilli66, what's your most prized possession?

My phone.

I'm joking! Can you imagine if I really said that?

If I really said that? What an asshole.

What is my most prized possession?

Meaning that, okay, take my family out of it.

My most prized possession.

I'm gonna say a watch that I purchased for myself

almost 18 years ago.

Not having a child at the time,

but once I knew that we were having a child,

I realized that I didn't buy this watch for myself.

I actually bought it to give to my child.

And so, yeah, that is, that's very, very, very

important to me because I think about it on his wrist

after I'm no longer here.

This is a depressing interview, isn't it?

It's okay. It happens. Life, mortality. Think about it.

That's what I did with Rick Hatchett.

Next question. Ooh, thereforyouandme asks,

what's the most important thing you've learned

in acting slash theater class?

Ooh, wow. Okay. Great question thereforyouandme.

I, I, I, my teacher was a man by the name

of Harry Master George,

and he taught me everything that he needed to teach me

the very first time I met him.

That was his intro, that was his bit, if you will.

And it was three things, as I remember it.

It was, you turn yourself over to an imaginary set

of circumstances. You read the script 250 times,

and it's a child's game.

That's it. And he said, that's all I will ever teach you.

You can leave right now

and never have to pay for an acting class ever.

I said, okay, really? And he said, not really.

You need to pay here because you need to hear that

over and over again for the next eight years of your life

in order to, for it to really penetrate.

So that's, that's what I did.

But it was just those three things.

Thank you very, very much at Wired,

one of my favorite places to sit and, and talk to myself,

and to you watching this,

it's been an extraordinary experience

that I wasn't looking forward to, but I'm glad I did it.

Fantastical. Right on, man.

Thank you so much! Wait, wait a minute.

No, I'm actually the first person to do this,

and I'm telling every other person they reach out to, do it!

because Wired Complete Interview is amazing!

Chiao chiao.

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