The Breakout Role Of One Of 2024's Best Actors Only Happened After The Showrunner Fought Executives To Keep Him

Long before Fallout made him one of 2024's best actors, Walton Goggins had a breakout show that only happened because one executive fought to keep him on. Goggins has steadily been one of the most underrated actors working in Hollywood for the past two decades, starring in a number of fantastic TV shows over that period of time, including Justified, The Righteous Gemstones, Invincible, and Vice Principals. Goggins also has some incredible movies to his name, with The Hateful Eight and Django: Unchained being standouts.

Given the success of Fallout, it feels like Walton Goggins is becoming a household name, but he has already done that, having his first breakout role over 20 years before he stepped into the Wasteland. Now that Walton Goggins has seemingly confirmed that Fallout season 2 has started filming, fans hopefully won't have to wait much longer to see him return to the screen as everyone's new favorite bad guy (and antihero).

Walton Goggins Was One Of 2024's Best Actors

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2024 was a fantastic year for television with some truly astonishing acting performances all around. Perhaps one of the best performances of the year comes from Walton Goggins for his role in Fallout, Amazon Prime's series adaptation of the iconic video game franchise of the same name. Goggins kind of pulls double duty in Fallout, portraying Cooper Howard in the substantial flashbacks throughout the season, and The Ghoul, the nuclear-radiated being that Cooper mutated into due to the bombings.

Fallout won Best Video Game Adaption at the 2025 Game Awards.

While everyone in Fallout is doing a stellar job, Walter Goggins is a clear standout here, particularly in every scene as The Ghoul. Given that much of his performance is masked somewhat by the impressive makeup he wears, the physicality that Goggins brings to the character is inspiring and elevates the entire thing that much more. Fallout is already a fantastic adaptation, one of the best video game adaptations of all time, but it is made even better by Walter Goggins' presence, which makes the idea that his first big break two decades before almost not happening all the more baffling.

Goggins' First Great Role Was In The Shield, And It Almost Didn't Happen

Over two decades before Fallout, Walton Goggins' first great role was in The Shield, an American crime drama that ran for 7 seasons, from 2002 through 2008. Although Goggins appeared in various TV shows and films throughout the 90s, it wasn't until The Shield that he had a substantial role, which would actually become his breakout role. Goggins appeared in 87/88 episodes of the series, portraying police detective, Shane Vendrell. Despite being such an integral part of the show, there was a time when studio executives wanted Walton Goggins cut early on.

Related "This Is Real": Walton Goggins Reflects On Reality Check Of Filming The Shield After Being Scolded By Police Officer Walton Goggins reflects on a reality check he received while filming The Shield after being scolded by a police officer in Los Angeles.

Looking back on it now, it's wild that Walton Goggins could have been cut from The Shield, given that he played such an important role, but it was the show's creator, Shawn Ryan, who pushed back on that idea, altering the trajectory of the show for the better. In Entertainment Weekly's Oral History of The Shield, Goggins opened up about learning he was almost cut after the pilot, stating:

Shane has, like, two lines in the pilot, but I felt it could be special — and I knew Shane was part of the original sin. Little did I know, after that pilot, the executives wanted to fire me. Shawn didn't tell me until the end of season 1 during a DVD commentary recording, and I said, "How?! I had two lines!" He said to them, "I know what this guy's capable of, let me prove it," and he focused the second episode on Shane.

Walton Goggins is a tremendous talent, but if Ryan hadn't pushed back the way he did, his entire career could have looked very different. Thankfully, Goggins was able to portray his character for the entirety of The Shield, and really begin his impressive career, and in 2024, he showed that he is one of the best actors working at the moment.