The video game adaptation trend continues with Amazon Prime Video’s Fallout, and Walton Goggins was among the hit streaming show’s standout performers. His casting as the former Hollywood actor and mutated ghoul was pitch-perfect for the dystopic world’s atmosphere and sardonic humor.
One of the best character actors around, Goggins typically specializes in morally ambiguous or outright evil characters. Aside from Fallout, the actor has played compelling roles across film and TV over the last decade. Check out these critically praised movies and TV shows if you’re looking for more of the Fallout star’s career highlights.
Justified (2010-2015)
FX’s Justified was one of the best crime dramas of the 2010s and is best known for featuring one of Timothy Olyphant’s career-defining performances. However, Goggins played the most memorable character in the supporting cast. Created by current Silo showrunner Graham Yost, the series focuses on Olyphant’s character, U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens, who takes a harder and unorthodox stance to rooting out his community’s criminal element.
Goggins takes on the role of Boyd Crowder, a figurehead in the Harlan County, Kentucky, underbelly with a bleak past, and he’s easily one of Justified‘s most riveting personalities and complex antagonists on the show. Crowder will do anything to get ahead, and he has a past with Givens, making Goggins and Olyphant’s on-screen dynamic some of the series’ best moments.
Justified is currently available to stream on Hulu.
The Hateful Eight (2015)
Though it wasn’t his first collaboration with director Quentin Tarantino, Goggins’ role in The Hateful Eight was his most prominent. Set just after the American Civil War, the film’s plot revolves around eight morally dubious characters with mysterious motives waiting out a blizzard together in a cabin.
In a more expansive role compared to his character in Django Unchained, Goggins plays the reprehensible Sheriff Chris Mannix, bouncing perfectly off Samuel Jackson’s Major Marquis Warren and often stealing the spotlight from the stacked cast, which includes Kurt Russell, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Channing Tatum. The Hateful Eight was a bloody Tarantino spin on the Western genre, and the Sheriff was the character who made so much of its over-the-top action and darkly comedic moments land.
The Hateful Eight is currently available to stream on Netflix.
Vice Principals (2016-2017)
A co-led effort between Goggins and Danny McBride, Vice Principals stands out in HBO’s deep comedy catalog. The two-season series follows Neal Gamby (McBride), a short-tempered and widely unlikable vice principal at North Jackson High School, as he sets his sights on the principal vacancy.
However, tensions flare when the cunning and borderline sadistic co-vice principal Lee Russell shares the same ambitions. Considering the acting strengths of the show’s co-leads, Vice Principals leans into almost relentlessly grim humor, and it’s better to embrace it. The comedy in season 1 takes some time to find its identity, but season 2 is Goggins and McBride at their raunchy best. Between Gamby’s tyrannical approach as vice principal and Russell’s scheming attitude, their dynamic is consistently entertaining.
Vice Principals is currently available to stream on Max. All eight episodes of Fallout season 1 are available to stream now on Amazon Prime Video.
