Graham Wagner and Geneva Robertson-Douette are co-creators of Amazon Prime's Fallout, an adaptation of the hugely popular video game series. In an interview with Awards Daily, they detailed why their different writing approaches work perfectly for the show's masterful blend of action and comedy. They also said that their collaboration has made the show stronger, not just because of their different styles, but also because of their different personal histories with the games. Finally, they revealed that the other showrunners are very supportive when it comes to casting Matt Berry as a robot.
Awards Daily: What made you want to turn Fallout into a TV show?
Geneva Robertson-Duelette: We had been looking for something to do together for a long time. We've been friends for a long time, and I've been a fan of Graham's comedy work for years. But people didn't really understand why a film action/drama writer and a TV comedy writer would team up. Thankfully, Fallout had the perfect vibe for us to join forces. It's a world with action and drama and moral dilemmas and incredible violence. But it also has some very weird comedic beats. So when Jonathan Nolan called me in 2019 and said he was acquiring the rights to Fallout and would he be willing to develop a show and write a script for me, I was thrilled. I said yes, but it would have to be with Graham. Thankfully, Athena Wickham and Jonathan said it was OK.
Graham Wagner: It's what it is, working in two different genres for so long. You get used to what you do, but there's also a bit of a sense that the grass is always greener on the other side. I thought the Geneva piece was more inspiring and just cooler. So working on this piece allows us to combine our skill sets and be on one big lawn. There are no fences.
Awards Daily: The show is already well-known for its focus on the Fallout universe, and some of the types of characters you can play in the game. But it's not based on any specific game or character. What was the thinking behind that choice?
Graham Wagner: Every game has been similar. Every game is just a new chapter in the world. So we had the choice to either retell the chapters of the games, or to stay true to what the games have done so far and create our own chapters. In our hubris, we decided to go for the latter. One reason was that it was the most fascinating and fun space creatively. Another was, how do we fit into Fallout 1 or 2 or New Vegas? The player experience is so different that there's no point in trying.
The story I tell is that I was playing Fallout 4 and I shot my son in the face. This is my story, but if I were to adapt it for fans, a lot of fans wouldn't like it, and rightly so, because it was the wrong thing to do. I should never have shot my son in the face like that.
Geneva Robertson-Dworet: For us, this was super exciting because we had this amazing sandbox of great lore to choose from. And we got to develop our own story and our own characters. We spent 2019 and 2020 developing the outline for the pilot, figuring out what the story we most wanted to tell in this world was.
Awards Daily: You mentioned New Vegas, and it seems like Hank is heading to an area that's well known to a lot of gamers. How do you plan to address some of the well-known areas and factions found there?
Geneva Robertson-Dworet: That's hard to answer without spoilers, but needless to say, there's a lot we want to explore. It's a really great game, and the parts that we're really drawn to are really interesting.
Graham Wagner: I also consider this one of the darker films. All I can say is that time has passed since the events of New Vegas. This is the closest we can get to that without giving away any spoilers. Remember, Fallout 1 was an isometric game where you just looked down at what was going on in 1997 graphics. This is very different to being able to run around the world in first person. In New Vegas, you have people who can navigate the map blindfolded, so this time we have to adapt to a game with very specific rendering, which creates some challenges and opportunities. It's more complicated than Season 1.
Geneva Robertson-Dworet: The other thing is that place is a very central idea of our show. We are shaped by the world we come from. In season one, Lucy doesn't spend a lot of time on the surface, but the little time she does have changed her. But in the next season, she'll be moving further and further away from home, and I think that raises all sorts of interesting questions for her about whether she'll be able to remain who she was back home in that culture, or whether the wasteland will change her.
Awards Daily: One of the things I really loved about this first season is that it revealed some big mysteries, like the secrets of Vault 31 and what Moldaver's purpose was. It was resolved there, but there are new mysteries in store for the next season. Why did you decide to plot the first season that way, and are you planning to do more of the same in the future?
Geneva Robertson-Douette: I think as a viewer, I'm always drawn to shows that don't keep you waiting forever. It's so frustrating when you have too many seasons of waiting for the same questions to be answered. I remember when I was a Breaking Bad viewer, I was just amazed at how quickly they wrapped up the story. I often thought it was going to be at the end of the season, or maybe part of the next season. But two episodes later, we get there! It's amazing how they tell the story. So I personally like to reward the viewer, because as a viewer, I like to be rewarded by having enough questions answered. At the same time, it also adds new questions because this is an ever-expanding world. Fallout, which is very fortunate for us, is this huge sandbox, so we don't feel like we've run out of things to explore just because we've answered questions about some of the things we've seen.
Awards Daily: The game has a lot of lore and is set in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, so there are lots of opportunities for story and character development. Are there any concepts or general ideas for games that you guys would like to bring to life one day?
Graham Wagner: One element we touched on in season 1 that we definitely want to return to in season 2 is the sectarianism and tribalism that a divided America finds itself in. This is increasingly relevant to the world we live in. In season 1, there was a little bit of an argument about the timeline, but in the real world, people don't even agree on the last election. I mean, it's very hard to come to agreement in a world that's so divided and doesn't communicate with each other. We're going to amplify those divisions quite a bit in season 2.
Awards Daily: There's a line that was teased for next season that we hear from Ghoul in the finale: “When I look out across this wasteland, it may seem like chaos, but there's always someone at the helm.” Is this a sense that Vault-Tec, while its vaults have been breached, still wields great influence in other ways?
Graham Wagner: This might be a spoiler, but I think you're onto something. What do you think? It might end the show if we continue like this. But we're interested in that.
Geneva Robertson-Dworet: I think it also ties into what Graham was talking about, the factionism. That's something we're hoping to explore more in Season 2. Of course, our point of view character, Lucy, is new to the Wasteland, so she doesn't experience as many factions in Season 1. But the common instinct of all the factions, both in the real world and in the Fallout world, is that they want to take control of the world – to write the future. The ads for Vault 31, Bud's Buds, and Vault-Tec make it clearer than anyone that basically all the factions want to control the Wasteland.
Graham Wagner: They're less malicious, but they try to help in ways that they think are helpful. Everyone has an inner logic and they think they're the right faction. Some of the worst people in the history of humanity have that mindset. It's horrifying to see what they'll do to achieve what they think is helpful.
Awards Daily: You've talked about the origin story of the famous Vault Boys. Why did you decide to do that?
Graham Wagner: You can adapt a universe, but you can also expand it. So part of the fun is not just blindly following what you've adapted, but enriching it a little more. There was a moment in the X-Men movies where they casually mentioned that JFK was a mutant. I was so happy about that, so I want to do as much of that as possible in the show. I remember when we heard that in the theater, everybody said, “oooohhhh,” with delight. If we can get people to say that, then we're doing a good job.
Awards Daily: Will we see more scenes with Matt Berry as a robot?
Geneva Robertson-Dworet: I don't want to give away any spoilers, but we're huge Matt Berry fans.
Awards Daily: I was very pleasantly surprised watching the show.
Geneva Robertson-Dworet: Great!
Graham Wagner: I was pleasantly surprised that he agreed, and had the pleasure of borrowing him from our friends in Geneva for What We Do in the Shadows.
Geneva Robertson-Dworet: Yes, our showrunner, Paul Sims, was kind enough to rearrange his schedule so we could get Matt Berry in. We weren't going to be able to get him in, so we were very grateful to have another showrunner rescue us in that way.
Awards Daily: Given the complexity of the characters and story, what was the biggest challenge in producing this show?
Geneva Robertson-Dworet: I'm not a game nerd, unlike Graham, who's been playing since 1998. My biggest concern (and I've been really happy with the reaction) was that non-gamers would feel like the world was too expensive, too detailed, and get lost in it. So Graham and I wrote a pretty detailed outline for the season and the pilot to try to figure out how to hold the non-gamer's hand and not be like, What are Yao Guai? Why do I care? Get me out of here. So it means a lot to me that people who are new to the Fallout universe are enjoying the show.
Graham Wagner: But then the millions of people who play the game don't deserve as much hand-holding, and they're the only ones guaranteed to watch the show. So it was an interesting challenge to create a show that was effective and accessible to both groups.
Geneva Robertson-Dworet: I think that's what's really unique about our collaboration. We joined forces on this project because we felt it had a unique feel and that we needed both an action writer and a comedy writer. But we were also fortunate that our collaboration gave us two perspectives on the gaming world. I'm a bit of an outsider, but Graham is a gamer who's been following the world for 25 years. So we hope that we create a show that will appeal to a broader audience, not just hardcore gamers.
Graham Wagner: The big question for me about this show is this weird Venn diagram of Jonathan Nolan, Geneva, and me. And if there's one thing that all three of our voices have in common, what is it? I think the discovery was that if Geneva likes it, if Jonathan likes it, if I like it, a lot of other people are going to like it too. That's been proven numerically, and it was a pleasant surprise. It's harder when you know your ideas aren't going to be to everyone's liking. But it forces you to stretch yourself a little bit, and all three of us try things outside of our comfort zones.
Fallout is available exclusively on Amazon Prime.
