Jonathan Nolan's post-apocalyptic sci-fi saga Fallout is a major win for Prime Video. Having garnered all-round praise, the show adapted from the video game of the same name and frontlined by Ella Purnell, has already been greenlit for Season 2, having scored massive viewership ratings globally.

Over a cross-continental video call, t2 chatted with Ella, who plays the central protagonist Lucy, and Aaron Moten (who essays the part of Lucy's ally Maximus) about their series, now streaming on the platform.

Though Fallout the series is a separate story in the canon, were you familiar with the eponymous video game before you started working on the project?

Aaron Moten: None of us are experts on the video game but we were familiar with it. It is a fun world to adapt to a television series.

Ella Purnell: We both did a lot of research on the Fallout world. There is so much law behind it that made it even more fun for me to film it. Recognising all the props and the set, being able to film in the Vault which was replicated so precisely and was so true to the game, was a big deal. I think fans of the game are going to feel happy when they watch the show, they will like picking up all of these Easter eggs and be able to delve even more deeply into something they already love.

What was it like being part of this world?

Ella: For me, the biggest challenge was getting into the action element of it. I hadn't done that many stunts before and it was something that I found a little daunting because I don't think of myself as an athletic person. But by the time we finished, I felt super comfortable.

Aaron: I didn't know she was so good at action! The challenge of this project, for me, was bringing that human element to a world that is epic. All members of the audience want to feel connected to the world even if, you know, a monster is chasing them. It is not something we see every day but we want to see ourselves in something like that.

Ella, are you confident enough to do an out-and-out action film after Fallout?

Ella: Bring it on! Why not? I am down for anything. I like a challenge. I like doing new things. I don't know how good I would be but we can try.

I want to add that my stunt double and the entire stunt team were incredible. My stunt double, Hannah, is an angel. She empowered me and made me feel really confident but she took the brunt of the heavy lifting. I am, by no means, diminishing her work.

What for the two of you were the biggest creative highs of being part of a project of the scale of Fallout?

Ella: To film the project itself was amazing. Every day presented something different and challenging. No two days were the same. Jonathan Nolan likes to move at a very quick pace. It is very exciting and we were putting ourselves in these situations like what would I feel if my partner broke up with me? Or how would I feel if I witnessed a murder? In Fallout, it is mad! It is like: 'Okay, so how would I feel if I saw a two-headed cow?!' You are trying to dig into the depths of human experience to make these things relatable.

Aaron: I subscribe to the thinking that the best artistes are the best question askers. It is not about answering questions, it is about asking good questions, continuing that process and getting to not just work with Jonathan but watch him work throughout the series.

Even while working within an epical world, Fallout touches upon themes which are immediate and urgent. Which ones feel most relevant to you?

Aaron: The relevance that I am always falling to with the series is that if something did happen to drastically change our world — by that I mean the things that we have already been experiencing as a global society, over the last few years, and even the things following after it — how do we continue living. That is a good relevance of the show.

I love the humour in Fallout because I think it's about people recognising something that they could actually see today. To see a world that is beyond repair, seemingly, becomes humorous.

Ella: It is similar in a way to Lucy's (her character) experience because she has lived underground for her entire life. Until she goes up, she thinks there is nothing above the surface. Her existence is similar to all of us when we retreat, hibernate, isolate, quarantine.... And when you come out, the world is different, but it still survives. People still survive. They come together, they band together, they create.... The universe of Fallout is a little different from how we came together after the pandemic. But I think the basic principle remains the same.

Do you agree that adapting a video game which is already popular is half the battle won because of the ready fan base it comes with?

Ella: I have done a few video game adaptions (Ella is part of Arcane, another blockbuster video game-to-screen adaptation) and for an actor, it is amazing to have so much context and law and world-building to lean into. You are taking something that is already so rich, so built-up and so beloved. It is a huge responsibility. You want to be true to the fans of the game and you want to make sure you don't make any mistakes.

It is one thing building a character completely from scratch and making these huge choices. It is another thing working within the constraints that you already have in a way that allows creativity, more freedom and more autonomy as an actor. I like that research. I like being able to feed into that.

Aaron: I agree. The process of adaptation always will lend itself to you taking something that someone else has created and holding a bit more of a magnifying glass to it to refocus. Even before we showed up to work on Fallout, we had a whole world to explore, to pick and choose the types of things that we could build within our backstories and how our characters get into the moment where they are currently.