It is almost serendipitous that both Jonathan Nolan and Ella Purnell’s most famous work on television informs (and perhaps, in a way, influences) their latest project on the small screen.

Fallout, a web series adaptation of the globally popular video game of the same name, depicts the aftermath of an apocalyptic nuclear exchange in an alternate history of earth. There is the rise of a retro-futuristic society and a subsequent resource war. The survivors take refuge in fallout bunkers known as Vaults, built to preserve humanity in the event of nuclear annihilation. About 219 years later, a young woman named Lucy (played by Purnell) leaves her home in Vault 33 to venture out into the dangerously brutal, hostile, savage and unforgiving wasteland of a devastated Los Angeles.

Westworld, Nolan’s highly acclaimed series that ran for six successful years and is credited with evolving the paradigm of sci-fi television, takes place at the intersection of the near future and the reimagined past where an amusement park named Westworld provides a getaway for rich vacationers until the robots managing it go rogue. In many ways, the themes and tone of Westworld find reflection in Fallout, slated to premiere on Prime Video on April 11.

Similarly, the global hit series Yellowjackets, starring Ella, throws her character in an alien environment — pretty much like what happens to her Lucy in Fallout — when her plane crashes in the Ontario wilderness. Then begins, much like what happens in her latest series, a critical game of survival.

Fallout, simmering under for a few years, and backed by both budget and resources, is perhaps bigger than anything that has come out in recent times. Nolan, who has co-created the series with wife Lisa Joy and also directs a few episodes, was recently in Mumbai to promote Fallout. The man — who with his elder brother and modern-day auteur Christopher Nolan has created films like Memento, The Prestige, The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Rises and Interstellar — chatted with t2oS, along with Ella Purnell, at Novotel Juhu in Mumbai.

EPIC & INTIMATE

Ella Purnell and Jonathan Nolan at the special screening of Fallout in Mumbai last month

Having watched a few episodes of Fallout, the sheer scale of the gigantic enterprise hits you at the get-go, but what one also takes back from it is the human element. That is a Jonathan Nolan trademark, something that I pointed out to the writer-director in our conversation.

“One of the things that was so striking to me about the games is that they have that feeling of these massive worlds that you can explore... huge vistas of these ruins of civilisation. But as you explore them, you can pick up and examine every artefact in that world. You can read every book you find. And so we wanted to bring that feeling for the audience coming to it, even those who had never played the games before... that collision of the vast and the intimate. I came in, mostly, as a fan of the game,” explained Nolan, having navigated a trip around the world to get to India but looking none the worse for it.

Nolan’s familiarity with the world of Fallout made him imagine a screen adaptation for it “almost immediately” but Ella Purnell wasn’t familiar with that world. She did attempt to play it though, but found “watching other people play the game more helpful”. “Jonah (Nolan) said I didn’t have to play the game, but I am an excellent student and I went above and beyond,” laughed the British actress, her striking red puckers balanced by her denim-on-denim OOTD.

Ella understood the ethos of the world of Fallout on set, she said. “When we started shooting, just to be able to walk on stage and truly feel the weight of that moment was phenomenal. Seeing the Vault replicated so truthfully and so faithfully to the game, putting on the Vault suit and realising what a big deal that was. It just makes it more fun,” she told us.

BALANCE & RELEVANCE

Despite its seemingly dark themes, Team Fallout insists that the series is a “light watch” that balances several diverse genres. “This is probably the most comedic thing I have done. I do a lot of dark things. Yes, Fallout is about the end of the world, but it is light. It is a great balance between comedy... and some slightly depressing things,” she laughed, tongue in cheek. “I loved the character. She starts in a good place. And then she goes on to the wasteland and then things happen.”

For Jonathan, Fallout’s essence, quite interestingly, evolved — and perhaps even changed — from the time he started working on adapting it to the time it came into fruition.

The Covid-19 pandemic, which changed the world as we knew it, much like what happens in Fallout, influenced how he went about approaching the project.

“When the pandemic started, I thought ‘Oh, well, this is interesting relevance’. And then, as the world continued to fall apart, I thought I wanted it to be a little less relevant. I was like: ‘No, that is not okay. We can’t go back to the way the world was before’,” he said.

“One of the themes of the Fallout video game and the social criticism it faces is this idea of the people who were lucky enough to sit out the apocalypse in a luxurious underground Vault but everyone else was facing it on the ravaged surface above. This is a painful lesson that a lot of countries around the world, including America and India, had to face during the pandemic,” he pointed out.

A moment from RRR

The ever-widening chasm between the haves and the have-nots forms the foundation of Fallout and is relevant in every age, era and civilisation.

“In America, we call them the essential and inessential people, the people who got to sit home and the people who had to continue working, respectively. That, along with so many other distinctions and divisions in our society, was made painfully clear during the pandemic.

“I was at a talk with the amazing Stewart Brand (writer) a few months ago where he said that the world ends all the time and it is all about rebuilding it. For us, with Fallout, though it is about the end of the world, there is an odd thread of optimism through it,” Nolan told t2oS, drawing the parallel between real and reel pretty succinctly.

For Ella, playing Lucy came from a place of naivete and wanting to work for the greater good, and that is what informed her portrayal of the character. “Lucy truly, honestly, fundamentally believes in the Golden Rule. She fundamentally believes in doing the right thing. And that results in a lot of privilege and naivete, the downside of innocence. So, that is the place I was starting at. I wasn’t thinking too politically then or about the implications of the pandemic,” she said.

JOYSTICK TO REMOTE

Over the last decade or so, Hollywood has flirted quite a bit with video game adaptations, with mixed results. What is it about the world of gaming that piques the interest of filmmakers today, I asked Nolan.

“When we first had the conversation with Todd Howard (director and executive producer at Bethesda Game Studios, where he has led the development of the Fallout and The Elder Scrolls series) about adapting these games, there were very few adaptations you could point to that had worked. I think in the early days, filmmakers got stuck on grammar. They got stuck on the idea that they would have to shoot it in the first person because that’s how games look. For us, it was about looking past the format and the medium and looking at storytelling and saying: ‘What about these stories surprised you? What about these stories says something fresh about the world around us?’” he said.

“Video games, in the late 2000s, started to become politically minded, to become sophisticated and levelled up. Frankly, filmmaking kind of stepped away from it a little bit. Filmmaking is an expensive, difficult endeavour. If the audience already has an emotional relationship with the material (by way of the video game), it is always helpful. The audience for these games is enormous and the emotional relationship that they have with these stories is pretty vast as well,” Nolan pointed out.

For Nolan, having been responsible for writing and co-creating some of the most genre-bending (and mind-bending) films in recent times, the story is always paramount, no matter what the medium is. “I just think good storytelling is good storytelling. We were excited to bring one of these brilliant video games to life on screen.”

THE WRITTEN WORD

The writers’ strike, with the threat of Artificial Intelligence looming large, derailed Hollywood last year, but Nolan is optimistic about the future of writers.

“We now have the division of the shorter stories being on the bigger screen and the bigger or longer stories being on the smaller screens. That has been exciting, whether you are talking about video games or film or television. The ability of human writers, for the human pen, to tell provocative exciting stories is huge. That was one of the most exciting things about the advent of streaming. The opportunity to tell stories without compromise. With the support of Prime Video, we have been able to tell our version of Fallout in a way that feels very uncompromised, provocative, funny and dark... all these different flavours just like the games. It is an extraordinary moment to be making film or television,” he said.

When asked to name an extraordinary piece of writing that they had seen in each others’ filmographies, it came as no surprise that both Ella and Jonathan named the titles this story had started with.

“I loved Westworld and I rewatched the pilot as a sort of prep before we started Fallout. It is the kind of work that still holds up. It is so good,” smiled Ella.

For Jonathan, Ella’s “best work” is in Yellowjackets. I thought it was an incredible performance on her part and spoke a little bit about that fish-out-of-water experience. How you are living your life and all of a sudden you are transported to a very different moment and a very different environment. In a show with a terrific cast, Ella was a real standout.”

INDIA AHOY!

For Nolan, being in Mumbai, he claimed, was “a humbling experience”. “We think of ourselves as a big deal in Hollywood, but to come to a town where they make more movies and bigger movies... it is humbling. I want to stick around and try to sneak on to some of the film sets,” he smiled.

And, of course, the man is an RRR fan! “RRR has the kind of action set pieces I am very jealous about! It has an emotional hook as well, and an extraordinary story, but the practical stunt work is always something that I get very excited about and RRR (directed by SS Rajamouli) aced it!”