He’s the first major pre-existing character to be added to the show—beyond cameos, at least— which feels like an appropriately Vegas-sized gamble. House is a deliciously dense character ripe for exploration, but get him wrong, and you’ll piss off a whole horde of Fallout fans. “Since we were doing New Vegas, to some extent, [House] is synonymous with Vegas, and in many ways, controls the city,” co-showrunner Geneva Robertson-Dworet tells GQ over Zoom, where we’re also joined by executive producer Jonathan Nolan. “So it felt like it was the only right way to do an adaptation,” she continues.
“But also, he’s just an unbelievably interesting character. There’s interesting questions in protecting Vegas… And is that purely for his own ends, or is there any kind of greater good that he might be after? There’s so many echoes to the technocrats of our modern day.”
“It was irresistible to spend some time with these characters. And House, to me, is the most memorable character [in New Vegas],” Nolan says. He also points to the character’s particular relevance in 2025. “Unfortunately, we are once again in a moment in which very wealthy technocrats have undue influence in the world. So, from a thematic perspective—again, irresistible.” (Sorry, game fans, but Nolan and Robertson-Dworet remain zip-lipped as to whether any other familiar faces from New Vegas will make it to season two: “Stay tuned and find out for yourself,” Nolan teases.)
“Walton [Goggins] and I are friends,” Theroux explains to GQ over Zoom about his new co-star, who plays Cooper Howard, aka The Ghoul. “I think Jonah [Nolan] had said, ‘Why don’t you call him and offer him the part?’ So I just got a cold call from Walton going, ‘Hey man…’”
The actor hadn’t actually seen the show, nor played the game, when Goggins got him on the phone. Usually, when he gets these kinds of calls, it’s for a bit part or a cameo that would take a day to shoot. “But, he was like, ‘No, it’s a guy I’m gonna be facing off with a lot.’” Once Theroux signed up, he caught up with Mr. House lore by watching gameplay videos on YouTube, trying to absorb as much as he could of what “House says and does”. (In Fallout: New Vegas, the character was voiced by the late actor René Auberjonois.)
Why did Theroux feel like the guy to play House in live-action? “Justin’s an actor that we have long admired, and is just brilliant,” Nolan says. “Like so many in our cast, so fluent in both drama and comedy, and there aren’t a lot of actors who are equally comfortable in both.”
“We find [House] in a place preparing to save Vegas from the coming apocalypse, which he has predicted within, I think, minutes or days,” Theroux explains, a plot point established by dialogue in New Vegas, but never directly explored in the games—nor live-action. “Whatever algorithm he has run has told him exactly when the apocalypse is going to happen, and how it’s going to happen,” he continues. “I’ll say nothing else other than there’s a fly in the ointment, and he has to call in Cooper Howard to help him figure out what that fly is.”
