Fallout Star Walton Goggins Personally Arranged That Mini Justified Reunion
This post contains spoilers for "Fallout" season 1, as well as "Justified" and "Justified: City Primeval."
If you watched "Fallout" this weekend and half-expected Deputy U.S. Marshall Raylan Givens himself to stroll across the show's post-apocalyptic wasteland, you're not alone. Despite not actually sharing a casting director with the FX neo-Western "Justified," the first few episodes of the new Prime Video series feature not just one or two but four different actors who previously appeared on the Kentucky-set drama. That's a whole lot of Harlan for one video game adaptation.
Walton Goggins, who stars in "Fallout" as the actor-turned-undead gunslinger known primarily as the Ghoul, is the most obvious connection between the two shows. On "Justified" and its recent follow-up series "Justified: City Primeval," Goggins played smooth-talking man in black Boyd Crowder, who spent most of the original show's six seasons at odds with Timothy Olyphant's lawman. Goggins' "Fallout" role capitalizes on the Western antihero appeal he built up over the course of "Justified," but it also brings him face to face with an actor he's worked with before: Mykelti Williamson, who played butcher and season 3 bad guy Ellstin Limehouse on "Justified."
Ellstin Limehouse, as I live and breathe!
Williamson appears at the end of the "Fallout" premiere as Honcho, the leader of a trio of rogue cowboy-types who dig up Goggins' Ghoul in hopes of recruiting him to track down Michael Emerson's Dr. Wilzig and his doggy companion. Their proposition goes south quickly and the Ghoul ends up throwing Honcho in an open grave, dispatching his backup, and heading out on his own.
According to an interview Goggins did with IndieWire, this brief reunion was no accident: "This role was coming up and they asked me point blank if I knew someone," Goggins told the outlet. "I said, 'I know the perfect guy: Mykelti. He would be incredible in this. I can give him a call if you think that it's a reality.'"
According to Goggins, the team behind "Fallout" called back and said they loved Williamson for the role, so Goggins was able to give him the news about his casting personally. "I called him and he said, 'Yeah, man, I'll get on a plane. I'll come out there,'" Goggins recalled. The actor said the two have "remained really good friends" since co-starring in the third season of "Justified" together, which is no surprise given how much fun they look like they're having in their dramatic and darkly funny "Fallout" scene. The sequence takes place almost entirely in the dark, but Missouri-born actor Williamson is instantly recognizable thanks to his character's familiar Southern drawl. "I love him," Goggins added. "He's a great man."
The Justified to Fallout pipeline is real
While Goggins put Williamson's name in the running for Honcho, there's no word yet on whether or not other "Justified" alumni were cast coincidentally. The show's second episode features controversial actor Michael Rapaport, who played Florida gator farmer Daryl Crowe Jr. in the middling fifth season of "Justified." Rapaport shows up briefly in "Fallout" playing Knight Titus, the member of the Brotherhood of Steel whose identity Maximus (Aaron Moten) steals after he lets the jerk get mauled by a mutant bear. In the same episode, prolific character actor Dale Dickey pops up as Ma June, the Filly shop owner who attempts to give Ella Purnell's naive Vault Dweller Lucy a reality check (she also 'fixes' Wilzig's leg by basically putting it through a meat grinder).
Dickey had a key role in "Justified" too, though her character didn't cross paths with Goggins' Boyd. Ahe played season 5's Judith, an exploitative smuggler and religious mentor inside Kentucky State Women's Prison who ends up at odds with Ava Crowder (Joelle Carter). Aside from Goggins, she's probably the only "Justified" actor we could reasonably expect to see again, as Ma June is a scrapper who makes it out of her showdown with the Ghoul alive. Personally, I think "Fallout" could've crammed even more "Justified" actors into season 1 (I could see Jeremy Davies as that guy who was, um, accosting chickens), but that's all the more reason to renew the show.
For now, all episodes of "Fallout" season 1 are available to stream on Prime Video.