If you’re going to steal, steal from the best – even if he is your brother.
At a recent Fallout FYC Emmys panel, director Christopher Nolan interviewed "baby brother" Jonathan Nolan – executive producer and director on the Prime Video series – about his time on the show and the tricks he swiped from his elder sibling.
"The exciting thing for me with this project was knowing that we needed showrunners to carry the story forward," Jonathan Nolan said (H/T Deadline) about Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Graham Wagner.
"I thought there was an opportunity for me to contribute as a sort of a producing director, for lack of a better term, to come in and try to figure out how we would bring this to life on screen. The answer was to steal a bunch of shit I learned from you."
One such sticky-fingered moment involved the "love scene-slash-murder scene" featuring Ella Purnell’s Lucy butchering her new groom in Vault 33 during the premiere episode.
"That was probably the third day we were working together. We really built a relationship in the course of that day. We ran a completely closed set… a trick I stole from you," Jonathan told his brother Christopher.
"It was very intimate. Very safe. No phones, no nonsense. Just a very limited group of people who are actually in that kind of inner sanctum. I think Ella realized very quickly that we were creating respect and safety in this environment. She was able to kind of go for it."
Jonathan Nolan even found time to briefly tease Fallout season 2, but even Christopher Nolan wasn’t privy to the secrets of the wasteland.
"We had an early conversation about the creatures that we’re going to build in the next six months," Jonathan Nolan said, adding that fans will be "very, very excited." Deathclaws, it seems, might not be the only monsters on the way.
For more from Fallout, be sure to dive into our cast interviews, spoiler breakdowns, and explainers below:
- Fallout season 1 review: "A big Vault Boy-style thumbs up"
- Is the Fallout TV show canon? Here’s what Bethesda’s Todd Howard and the showrunners have to say
- When does the Fallout TV show take place on the series timeline?
- The Fallout TV show went the extra mile – by creating a real-life Pip-Boy for its cast to use
- Fallout TV show stars and creators on working with Todd Howard: "It means a lot to get his approval"
- Fallout TV show star Walton Goggins intentionally chose not to play Fallout, even after getting the job
- Fallout cast watched Twitch and YouTube streams of the games before filming: "Watching people play was vital"
- The Fallout TV show just revealed the canon origins of Vault Boy's signature thumbs up
- All of the Fallout Easter eggs we spotted in the TV show
- Fallout’s finale may have just answered the centuries-old mystery behind who started the nuclear apocalypse
