‘Breaking Through’: How Aaron Moten of 'Fallout' Nailed a Role's Ambiguity
WATCH: A lead of the Prime Video hit sits down for our new video series about creative performance
Welcome to Breaking Through, The Ankler’s new video series highlighting the hard-earned wins and unexpected turns that transform an artist’s confidence, creative scope and career. In our second episode: Aaron Moten, the star of Prime Video’s Fallout.
“As an actor, there are times in my life that I really want to be struck by lightning,” says Aaron Moten, one of three stars at the center of Fallout, Prime Video’s post-apocalyptic drama adapted from the popular video-game franchise. Moten plays Maximus, a squire who schemes his way into knighthood in the power-suited paramilitary order, the Brotherhood of Steel.
“You really don’t ever know what Maximus is going to do,” says Moten, 35, who grew up in Austin, Tex., and now lives in Iceland with his wife and three daughters. “It’s important for us to have an ambiguity with him, that we get to see his potential in a heroic sense, but we also see that he's got tendencies to listen to — maybe it’s the devil on his shoulder.” Director Jonathan Nolan, who’s also an EP on the series, helped draw out those contradictions. “Jonah saw exactly what I saw and understood what I was going for.”
Finding the character’s “rhythm” was a breakthrough moment for the Juilliard-trained actor, whose credits include Prime Video’s Mozart in the Jungle and features like Emancipation and Father Stu. “Maximus is often running headfirst into a wall,” Moten says. “Especially when he's emotionally attached to something, he's just going to charge forward without a plan. And Jonah, he helped really teach me about that kind of a tempo and how to work at that sort of a speed.”
Watch Moten discuss his breakthroughs on Fallout and the exciting journey he sees ahead for Maximus in season two. After “a lot of harsh lessons learned at the end of season one,” he says, “I don’t think he’ll be the same person.”