The Fallout TV series does many things exceptionally, but one of my favorite parts of the show is how deftly it creates nuanced, well-rounded characters that immediately tug at the audience’s emotions and interest. Regardless of whether a character appears in every single scene or only just one, chances are they are captivating, through and through. One such character, who, in the hands of clumsier creators or a lesser actor, might have simply fallen by the wayside, but instead has become a series favorite, is Mr. House’s Fallout fake double, the artist also known as Bobby Apartment, played by Rafi Silver.
In the end, Silver does not play Fallout: New Vegas‘ Mr. Robert House, as originally implied by the series in its first season, but instead a look-alike designed to throw well-wishers and evil-doers alike off the scent of the real Mr. House. And, as such, Rafi Silver’s Mr. House double only has a handful of scenes in Fallout. Yet the exceptionally crafted and expertly performed character has sent the fandom into an uproar of excitement—so much so that fans have given him his own fond nickname: Bobby Apartment.
It’s not every day a character receives such an outpouring of unexpected love, but again, it’s all down to the smart creators of the Fallout series, the intent thoughtfulness of Rafi Silver, and his devotion to the role. As Fallout season two closes around us, I sat down with Rafi Silver to dive into the inner workings of one Bobby Apartment and learn more about the enigmatic figure. We chatted about everything from his relationship with Robert House to his kinship with Cooper Howard, and what might motivate his complicated choices in life. As I said before my interview with Justin Theroux about the real Robert House, strap in, kids, there’s a lot to unpack.
As we begin our journey into the depths of Bobby Apartment’s soul on Fallout, Rafi Silver tells me that he didn’t originally know that he would play Mr. House’s double on Fallout. He shares, “On my contract in season one, it said Robert House.” And even into season two, at first, whenever Silver appeared, the script read “Robert House,” only shifting to “Robert House (Rafi)” late in season two’s production. But Silver said he had some questions from the beginning, noting that his wife, who used to work in video games and had worked on Fallout: New Vegas, noted to him, “I think you’re a little young for the role.”
But, Silver recalls, “There was so much secrecy around it. So when I showed up to set for his powerful season one scene and saw that this was pre-war, that this was a flashback, I was like, ‘All right, well maybe this is how they’re portraying it.’ I didn’t realize that that scene had so many implications for quite literally the entire Fallout lore in that moment.”
It turns out that not knowing about being Mr. House’s double on Fallout season one actually made Silver’s performance sing even more. Silver notes that he wouldn’t have wanted to know the truth at that point, because “As the public-facing Robert House, that is what I need to believe about myself. I can’t have any glimmer of pretense, or a feeling that I’m putting something on, or it’s not really me. The stakes are incredibly high to be going around the world, presenting yourself as the richest man on earth, one of the most powerful people on planet earth.” And in that moment, believing himself to be Mr. House allowed Silver to play the scene to its most authentic level.
But, of course, eventually, Silver was told the truth about his character’s identity by Fallout‘s showrunners. And it was the best news he could have asked for, as a fan and an actor. Silver shares, “Geneva [Robertson-Dworet] called me and told me I was the Mr. House double, specifically. She explained, ‘This is who you are,’ and I got excited as a Fallout fan. I didn’t even think, ‘Oh, right, I get to do this as an actor.’ I was sitting in this chair, and I was on the phone, and I threw the chair down. I was jumping up. I was like, ‘Oh my God, this is such a good idea,’ because the first time you ever see Robert House, alive in his body, was in Fallout season one. And we think that Rafi, the actor, is him. And even I did. But it’s not. And what a twist.”
And, as an actor, it was the kind of role Silver dreams of, a naunced, twisted mess of identity in need of sorting out. Silver tells us, “Once I found out I was the double, I got so excited as an actor to start to figure out what the behavior of this guy is. That was so fun to explore that, and I know I’ve made the joke before, that I am the dude playing a dude disguised as another dude, but that’s literally who my character is. And I got to play with that awesome duality constantly.”
Silver’s genuine excitement to be the Mr. House fake double, Bobby Apartment, and not the real Mr. House is sincere and infectious. You can tell he has a true love of this character and of the show overall, that Silver ardently feels that the Mr. House fake double twist was a delicious one. And he’s really grateful and excited to be a part of the fun, again as an actor AND a fan. Rafi Silver’s depth of passion and intent is clear in his performance, and is one of the aspects that make his time on Fallout (so far?) so memorable. Rafi Silver puts his whole soul into Bobby Apartment, so it’s no surprise that fans are drawn to love and consider Mr. House’s Fallout double just as much as they are to the familiar figure of Mr. House.
But just WHO is Bobby Apartment? If Mr. House is a complicated array of parts that may or may not end up in the sum total of a human being, then what must the man who has signed up to be his fake double be like? Rafi Silver and I pivot into the nitty-gritty of Mr. House’s double, whom we colloquially refer to as Bobby Apartment, breaking this Fallout character down as best as we are able to.
I ask Silver where he thinks Bobby Apartment’s performative take on Mr. House came from, and he shares, “I was so excited to try to understand the behavior of this public-facing guy, especially knowing that a theme of the season was that Mr. House was under attack, potentially under the threat of being assassinated.” And adds that he drew on Mr. House’s real-life inspiration, Howard Hughes, to ground his performance. “I thought a lot about Howard Hughes and how he was scared of germs and all that stuff. And in my mind, I was thinking, well, imagine if those germs were some sort of poison that was there to kill Robert House, because if I die in public, people think Robert House dies. So it’s important that I stay alive.”
With so many potential enemies, Fallout‘s Mr. House, but really Bobby Apartment, can’t “allow people the ability to get that close to me.” But Bobby Apartment is no innocent little lamb, in Rafi Silver’s estimations, not just someone that Mr. House picked up at Central Casting. “There is kind of a danger underneath who this actor is,” Silver muses, “In my head canon, and I believe this is the way I attempt to play it, I think Bobby Apartment is like a spy. It’s as if I am undercover in some sort of spy movie, like if I were a Russian spy living in America, like that show The Americans. That’s what I treat him as because the stakes are quite literally that high for him, because people are attempting to kill him.”
Indeed, it would seem short-sighted of Mr. House to have a fake double out there in danger who couldn’t take care of himself on Fallout. In Rafi Silver’s estimations, Bobby Apartment isn’t just acting as Mr. House on a frivolous level, sitting in meetings, and going to parties; he’s dangerous in his own right. “I thought, all right, my character probably has weapons training, or he could probably defend himself.”
Silver offers, “And I thought that that was so great watching in that first scene with Justin [Theroux] as Mr. House on Fallout, where he’s like, ‘I’d like to get punched in the face and see what that feels like.’ And then he gets punched in the face like, ‘Yeah, I’m good on that.’ Whereas I feel like Bobby Apartment, he can take a punch, and he can throw one back. That’s the way I wanted to play it, where Bobby Apartment could get punched in the face, and he can still continue to move on, and you probably don’t want to punch this guy in his face because he probably knows how to kick your ass.”
And that duality of Mr. House-s really does lend itself well to a dynamic set of characterizations on Fallout season two—allowing fans to understand the clear distinctions between the two. Silver shares, “It really worked out beautifully because Justin [Theroux] plays it up here, in the head, so smart and leading with intellect. I think I’m less leading with intellect and more leading with awareness, like scoping out the place and scoping out the world and recognizing how I can do what I need to do to get what I need to get, but also maintain the presence of who I am attempting to be. And that’s really cool because I got to play both of those things in every scene.”
We have to pause to give Rafi Silver and Bobby Apartment a major round of applause here; that’s many layers to play at one time, let alone live if you’re Mr. Apartment on Fallout. And so, I wonder, what is Bobby Apartment’s sense of self like? Is he lost in being Mr. House’s fake double on Fallout? Does he retain facets of himself? Is it just “a living”? Or something more? And Silver once again has many delicious thoughts to dive into.
“If you are a person who is committing to this job, what kind of person does that?” Silver poses the question back to me as he dives into his answer, “That’s why I thought about it as a spy because if you’re committing to spying on another culture or another environment or whatever, you must have a real reason for it, a real purpose, a real dedication towards it. And it’s possible that could just be money. It could be more than ‘Who is Bobby Apartment?’ but ‘Where does he come from financially, economically?’ or ‘Who is he doing this for, putting himself in danger?’ Is it his family? Is it just self-serving?”
Silver wisely notes that the question of what you would do to move up in the world is also a big one in the Fallout universe, and also in our own world, and it could very well apply to Bobby Apartment. “What’s the amount of money that would make you leave your family? Leave your life? Change everything about who you are, why you are? What drives you to do that? And for 10 or so years, as I say in Fallout season two, those are the given circumstances of ‘Bobby Apartment.'”
In the mix of these circumstances is one truly fascinating element of Bobby Apartment’s life on Fallout. Truly, the only person Bobby Apartment has spoken to, not as Mr. House, in the last decade or so, is… well, Robert House himself. And so, I have to ask after the relationship between Bobby Apartment and Mr. House on Fallout and what it has been like during all these years of playing pretend.
“I’m a big Shakespeare fan,” Silver explains, “So I think about it a lot as like Othello and Iago, maybe. It’s like, ‘Alright, you’ve got your trusty lieutenant who is always there with you.'” But, as Rafi Silver also notes, “How close can you actually get to that man?” And yet, Mr. House is the only person in Bobby Apartment’s life on Fallout. “The way I’ve played it, at least, is that in the relationship that I have with Robert House, I cannot connect with him intellectually. I am smart enough to be able to present to the world as Robert House, but no one can compete with Robert House intellectually.”
But though the pair can’t connect on an intellectual level necessarily, it doesn’t mean that Bobby Apartment doesn’t have some kind of intense devotion to Mr. House on Fallout, given his years-long role as his double. Sometimes, a relationship isn’t built on words of affirmation but on acts of service.
Silver adds of Bobby Apartment, “I can show Mr. House my loyalty, my love, my appreciation, my dedication to him by service, acts of service and acts of trust, showing loyalty through, ‘You tell me what to do, I got it, no questions asked.’ You tell me, ‘Go out and get cold fusion. You tell me to go out and do this, go get Coop, bring him right up.’ I go out and do that. I don’t sit there and do whatever. I am stable, steady. And it goes back to that question of, ‘Well, what’s the reason why I’m doing that?’ And I love that mystery around the reasons why he behaves the way he behaves, where does he come from, what’s his story, and why is he in this place, in this world? And it’s not just because Bobby Apartment looks like Mr. House, it’s not just that.”
But what it is, we don’t yet know. Because Silver also points out, Bobby Apartment could “be anything.” Because “who knows who Bobby Apartment’s working for? Is it Robert House? Is it the Enclave? Is it Vault-Tec? Is it himself? Is it what? Who knows?” Despite Silver’s devoted words moments ago, the door is wide open for Bobby Apartment to betray Mr. House on Fallout. After all, isn’t that what a Iago comparison might suggest? Here, I want to be clear that neither Rafi Silver nor I know the answers to these questions on Fallout; these are all thought exercises about the character, and they’re fascinating.
And, of course, things are a-changing, both for Mr. House and Bobby Apartment. As the old adage goes, two’s a company, three’s a crowd. But maybe that’s less true if there was literally only one other person in your existence, full stop, before someone else joined in. And, in Fallout season two, one new person is allowed in on the decades-long secret that both Bobby Apartment and Mr. House are keeping on Fallout: Cooper Howard.
Although Justin Theroux shares Mr. House is not very lonely, from my perspective as a viewer, and Rafi Silver’s perspective as Bobby Apartment, it seems like he might be, just a touch. Silver notes, “The way Justin [Theroux] played Mr. House, at least from my perspective, is he’s so excited to have a friend in Cooper Howard. It’s like, ‘Oh, I get to talk to somebody else. I get to talk to another human being and let them know who I am. This is a moment where I can pull the curtain back like the Wizard of Oz. And say, here I am. I get to be myself and really talk to you about my excitement and what I’m interested in and how this world is.'”
Meanwhile, between Bobby Apartment and Mr. House, it feels different. “There’s a juxtaposition between those relationships because it’s like, ‘I’m stuck with Bobby Apartment all the time.'”
But what about Bobby Apartment? Is he excited to finally have one other living and breathing soul know who he is on Fallout? “I do think so.” Silver agrees, “I think there is something between Bobby Apartment and Coop, at least, I tried to play it a little bit in the elevator. I’m standing there when he sees Victor, and he looks over back at me, and I’m just like, ‘Yeah, bro, this is really something crazy… You’ll see. Good luck.’ Yeah, it was very, ‘You’ll see, bro. You’ll see what this is going to be like.'”
Silver adds, “There’s also a knowing quality: You are now in this man’s web, and I am in it too. I don’t know how much autonomy I have or don’t have within it, but now you will find out how much autonomy you have or don’t have in it as well. So there is a kind of kinship.” Both Coop and Bobby are twined up in the gravitational pull that is Mr. House.
And even if the connection between Cooper Howard and Bobby Apartment only lasts a minute, the kind of empathy that passes between the actor and Mr. House’s double is very purposeful. “And Geneva [Robertson-Dworet] did mention that to me as well, just the idea of, ‘Hey, you’re an actor playing a person, and Cooper is also an actor. There’s something interesting in that, and there’s a lot to play with that, that we can explore or not explore, but that is subtext that’s in my mind.”
But despite this nascent connection, Mr. House’s double remains loyal to Mr. House above all else, for now. “I played it intentionally where I’m between Cooper Howard and the elevator, and so is Victor.” Silver notes, “So Cooper could turn around and try to run, but there are two lieutenants, one’s a robot, and then there’s a human standing there as well. And, again, I attempt to play it like you kind of don’t want to fuck with that human either. So there’s danger for Cooper,” but also a bond.
We touch on a few other topics, including how brilliant the showrunners for this series are, preternaturally knowledgeable and full of answers to every question Silver might have about the lore. And he tells me that in his preparation for the role of Mr. House’s double, he looked into Howard Hughes’ double and what his motivations might be, but there wasn’t too much information available.
But ultimately, Rafi Silver believes that Bobby Apartment, however complicated and wild a character Mr. House’s double may be, is insanely relatable. That, truly, he’s a universal character that speaks to something that exists in all of us as human beings, to the human experience itself. “I think we can all relate to Bobby Apartment. Because we’re different people at different times. When we’re professionals, we’re different people; when we’re at home, we’re different people. We’re different people with our friends, and we wear different clothes, different costumes depending on what we’re doing. We believe different things given different circumstances. And that’s what an actor is doing in general.” Bobby Apartment, Silver shares, “is doing that, but when the stakes are incredibly high.”
For Silver, as we touched on earlier, considering “what his motivation is to be able to do such a thing” to such an intense degree is the ultimate question to dive into. “Coming from the Buddhist lens,” Silver is a devoted Buddhist in his everyday life, “which is exactly what I do on the other end of my life, where I teach mindfulness, I teach Buddhism, I teach all this stuff in relationship to performance and all that stuff. That question is really exciting for me because it’s like, ‘Who is the person that we present to the world, and what is the purpose of it? What’s the purpose of presenting this to the world, and how do you do it?’ And the more intentional you are, the more interesting it is.”
For now, the central questions of Bobby Apartment have not been answered in Fallout. But even without them, there’s an endless amount to explore in the Mr. House double. “There’s so much to play with about how to answer that question. And so far, every time the writers talk to me about it, Geneva [Robertson-Dworet] or anybody, they are so on point with it. In terms of what I, as an actor, what I get to do. I get so excited. It’s such a nuanced character. And it’s very layered. It’s not, ‘Oh, you’re just some double, and who cares? You’re doing it for this.’ No, it’s rich and complicated.”
And though Rafi Silver can’t tell us if Bobby Apartment will return in Fallout season 3, “That’s above my pay grade,” he laughs, we can only hope that he will. How many other characters do you know that are so incredibly textured, with so much depth? We NEED answers. We need to know more about Fallout‘s Bobby Apartment.
As we conclude the conversation, true to the Fallout way, we find a mixture of levity and tragedy. If Mr. House’s catchphrase is “The House always wins,” what is Bobby Apartment’s go-to motto, I ask Rafi Silver. And he laughs, “The fans have come up with so many. One of the funniest ones that I’ve heard is ‘Bobby Apartment always breaks even.'” We both agree that it feels just right.
Levity.
But in our final thoughts, we muse on how it’s part of the human experience to want to be seen by those around us and what a beauty it is to see them right back. I share with Silver something someone left on one of my Mr. House-oriented posts, that Mr. House and his double are two sides of the same coin, “opposite sides of the same lie.” And that really struck me. Silver agrees and notes that “neither one of them is being seen,” and there’s “a great tragedy in that,” in that loss of human connection that can’t be filled or replaced, not by money or security or whatever the prize in Bobby Apartment’s case, nor by technology and work in Mr. House’s.
Silver shares that Bobby Apartment feels like “when I get into the elevator and go up to the penthouse, I think ‘Okay, I can loosen my tie a little bit, I can get on my smoke break, I’m safe up here, at least for the time being.’ Then I got to go back outside, be with my models, be with the fancy world, deal with the crowd, and not really give them too much, not really be anything.” And that’s a true punch to the gut, in my opinion.
A true tragedy.
Tragedy, levity. The Fallout way.
But what is not a tragedy nor a comedy, but a truly brilliant creation, is Rafi Silver’s incredible performance on Fallout so far, which is hopefully only the tip of the iceberg of what we’ll see from Mr. House’s double, a.k.a. Bobby Apartment. Bobby Apartment may just break even, but Fallout has won big by casting Rafi Silver.
Fallout season two is now streaming on Prime Video.