It’s in the name: Fallout‘s Power Armor is meant to make you feel powerful. But the fantasies of roaming around a video game wasteland blasting irradiated monsters in a giant suit of metal and the realities of translating that to a TV show adaptation don’t necessarily mean the fantasies always come to life.
“It was the most claustrophobic thing I’ve ever done in my life. The people that put that rig on—Aaron Moten, Johnny Pemberton, and the stunt guys that wear that—I thought they had it easy,” Fallout star Walton Goggins recently reflected with Polygon about having to don a suit of Power Armor for the show’s sophomore season. Thankfully, the star didn’t also have to put his Ghoul makeup on before getting inside too: Goggins will briefly wear a suit of Fallout‘s classic T-45 Power Armor in season 2 for flashbacks to the Ghoul’s time in military service in his old life as Cooper Howard. Cooper wearing the armor is briefly brought up in the climax of season 1, where his knowledge of its shoddy construction in the past lets the Ghoul mow down a few Power-Armor-clad Brotherhood members in the present.
But Goggins would rather face hours being transformed into the noseless, skin-sloughed Ghoul via prosthetics than have to get into a suit of armor again. “I thought I had it hard by wearing these prosthetics. I really thought that, until I put that power armor on. I’m not lying to you when I say I had it on for about 30 minutes and then I had a panic attack. I had to get it off,” the actor continued. “It’s like, ‘I got to get out of this, please. I got to move my arms, please.’ It’s really a thing. Maybe it’s just a thing for me, but I found it so constricting and so difficult that it was not an enjoyable experience at all.”
Not all of his co-stars necessarily agree that it’s a nightmare, though. Or rather that, at least the nightmare is worth enduring for the feeling of empowerment.
“The first season, it was fine and the second season, I think they put more weight on it so it got really heavy. Or maybe it’s just because I’m older. It’s the most fun. It’s crazy,” Kyle MacLachlan, who got to suit up in Power Armor at the end of Fallout‘s first season, added in defense of the costume. “They literally bolt you into this thing. No chance to go to the bathroom. But it’s really fun. When you have this thing on you do feel, as you would imagine, pretty powerful. … If I need to itch my nose, I have to ask someone to do it. So it’s a little bit claustrophobic. Not bad. Definitely worth wearing.”
It’s not exactly a ringing endorsement, but it’s not like we’ll get to try it ourselves outside of the games any time soon. So who are we to judge?
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