There’s no question that Fallout season two is one terrific season of television. Between its shocking reveals, carefully unfolding narrative, and smart storytelling, Fallout manages to do what so few series are able to and deliver a second chapter that’s every bit as brilliant as its first. Making this especially applause-worthy is the unique hurdle that Fallout season two faced that its first season did not: introducing a character from the source-material games. In Fallout season two, Mr. Robert House, officially played by Justin Theroux, joins the motley crew of characters that grace our screens in both the past and present timelines. Unlike the rest of Fallout‘s characters, who are all original, Mr. House has an in-game counterpart in Fallout: New Vegas, which made his introduction especially scrutinized by fans. But it’s safe to say that Justin Theroux, aided by the careful work of the incredible creators of the series, delivered a perfect performance of Mr. House, iconic in its own right.
Theroux’s performance added both a wonderful humanity to Mr. House, giving even more nuance to an already complicated character, and a delicious weirdness of his own making, one that reminded us just how odd a bird Robert House really is. As surely many others feel, we at Nerdist are captivated by Fallout season two’s Robert House, and wanted to know more about what makes this character tick. And so, it was our great pleasure to sit down with Justin Theroux for a deep, deep dive into the psyche of one Mr. Robert House. Strap in, kids, this one is an adventure.
As a consummate lover of the anti-hero, my chief question to Theroux about Mr. House is whether he thinks Robert House feels lonely. After all, he’s essentially sequestered himself in a tower for over a decade, not allowing anyone to know his true identity, except for his fake double. But Theroux doesn’t feel that’s so. “No, I don’t think so,” He shares, “I think he’s the kind of guy that makes things that keep him company, obviously, whether that’s robots or gadgets or whatever. And I think he’s one of those guys who is perfectly happy being alone, just with his thoughts, wherever he lives, which is probably why his thoughts take such dark turns at times. But I do think he’s one of those people who would be just as happy to just sit at home and think thoughts as he would to do anything else.”
In fact, Mr. House views the idea of having a double, Bobby Apartment, as we call him in fandom, as a real bonus. “I would imagine it’s a perk for him to have a proxy self.” Theroux muses, “I’m sure we could all think of times where there’s an event that we have to go to and it’d be nicer to send a facsimile of ourselves.” And indeed, that is quite a relatable feeling, one that Theroux underscores, adding, “So in that way, I think about what a relief he must feel, at times, when he doesn’t have to do that. Particularly, as we just discussed, given who he is as a person, when he has someone who could just go out and do his socializing for him, so that his time can be better spent working, that’s great for him.”
Honestly, who don’t I know that wishes that? I joke that it sounds like Robert House is just the ultimate introvert, and Theroux readily agrees, laughing.
But all that is not to say that Mr. House necessarily doesn’t enjoy his occasional excursions; he just would enjoy them less if he had to actively participate in them as himself. Theroux continues, “I think he probably really relishes the times that he gets to go out. He’s kind of invisible in a wonderful way, like when he sees Coop in the bathroom. He can go out and it’s kind of like being a celebrity where you don’t have facial recognition or people don’t have facial recognition of you. So I think it must be kind of nice to be that invisible. But yeah, all things considered, I think he spends an enormous amount of time talking to himself.”
And though we see Robert House eventually reveal himself to someone in Fallout season two, as he lets Cooper Howard, star of the silver screen, in on his secret, ultimately, the initial act of coming clean about his identity is just a pragmatic necessity to Mr. House. When asked why, after all this time, Mr. House chose to share his true identity with another person on Fallout, instead of just sending his double to communicate with the actor, or any of the other options available to him, Theroux notes that it was “the consequences of what was coming” that drove the encounter. “He was probably sitting in his apartment or his penthouse, running his calculations as he described and realized there was someone that he had to speak to. So I think it was only out of necessity.”
All of that really paints a vivid picture of one Mr. Robert House. And it seems to go hand in hand with what another complex character has to say about him in the series. In the Fallout season two finale, Hank MacLean summarizes Mr. House in a sentence: “Robert, he was a bit of a robot himself.” But is that really the truth of it? I inquire after whether Justin Theroux thinks that Robert House experiences emotions, or whether he simply understands them as concepts that exist. And Theroux doesn’t think that House is empty of emotion, but his emotions simply haven’t evolved very much throughout his life. “I think he feels emotion, but in the same way a toddler does.”
Theroux points to one of my favorite moments from the series, where Mr. House confesses some of his secrets to Cooper Howard, only to be met with dubiousness and stubbornness from the other man. “He has one sort of, I guess, high-key moment where he’s yelling at Cooper Howard, and I think it’s something that overtakes him like a tantrum. I don’t think it’s something that he can design. So when he’s not getting what he wants, I think, like a toddler, all the toys get thrown out of the pram, and he goes berserk.”
But it’s not really a very deep moment for Robert House on Fallout. It’s just “someone’s not doing what he wants, and someone’s not listening to him. And that often happens to people who don’t feel heard, they have trouble self-regulating emotionally.” And Mr. House is not a character who is very used to not being heard, “I think in his own mind, he’s sort of a character in his own movie and likes to think that he can sort of control everything. He has control over so much, so when he doesn’t have control over one little thing, I’m sure he goes nuts.”
We both agree, though, that we very much “enjoy when he loses his shit.” And to me, there’s something almost sweet about the way Theroux notes, “I think he thinks he’s being intimidating. It’s sort of the short guy who freaks out at the tall guy, but he’s still just short. There’s nothing he can do.”
From emotions, which Mr. House does have, we shift to something similar, but a little different, empathy. Does Fallout‘s Robert House have empathy, I wonder? And if he doesn’t, does he have an interest in acquiring it? “No and no,” says Justin Theroux. “I think he doesn’t feel empathy. He’s so removed from the world that he doesn’t interface with people, in a way. It’s kind of like people that are wildly famous or for actors or athletes or whatever, they stop feeling friction in their lives. And when you stop hearing the word ‘no,’ you’re really shocked when it shows up.”
And that lack of friction and challenge has eaten away at Mr. House’s empathy, if it ever existed to begin with. Justin Theroux continues, “You’re out of touch with reality, and the air where you live is so thin. So I think Robert House doesn’t have empathy. I think the only comparison that I can think of is people who plan wars or people who, in real life, say, “Okay, well, if we bomb this, we’ll probably kill upwards of 2,000 people.” And then they think of them as bodies as opposed to human beings. And I think he’s in that class of people, the Robert McNamaras, who go, ‘Maybe if we bomb Cambodia instead of Vietnam…’ It’s just mathematics to them as opposed to anything with faces behind it.” So, a point in the robot category for Mr. House on Fallout.
But when we discuss morality, there might be a glimmer of something on the table after all. I point out that when Mr. House calls Cooper Howard in the Fallout season two finale, he tells him, “There are far worse people than I.” It’s a line I found interesting because it seems to reflect the idea that Robert House knows two things: one, that there are good and bad ends of the moral spectrum, and two, that he isn’t on the heroic side of it, all things considered (though there are people who are worse).
Theroux ponders this and offers, “I think one of the things this show does well is that everyone has some kind of a concept of where their conscience is. Even Cooper or The Goul thinks of himself as a bad man, or he understands that he’s perceived as a bad man, even though, I think, in his heart, he thinks he’s a good man. Again, getting back to that lack of friction, when you don’t have friction in your life, or you have people telling you that you’re smart, you’re intelligent, you’re handsome, whatever it is, you start to believe it, and then you can inevitably see yourself as just and right. But I don’t know. I don’t know where he puts himself on the scale of that. I think he understands, kind of, that bad things have to happen in order for good things to happen. But I think his moral compass is so skewed and demagnetized that he doesn’t know which way he really turns.” But, at least the word, “good things,” was somewhere in there.
Still, although Mr. House might have some concept of morality, and some vision of trying to do good, mostly, it’s incidental, born of a selfishness that centers on himself. “He’s thinking, ‘Well, if I do this, I can save this.’ But really, he’s just saving himself. I mean, he protected his own little patch and devil may care what happens to anyone else.” Even calling Coop to warn him of the coming trouble in Fallout season two’s finale was mostly “a self-preservation thing,” for Robert House. “He had to do it in order to preserve the relationship. I mean, he had the foresight to do that, to go, ‘At some point I’m going to need you, so I just want you know, that…'” Theroux meanders off, and I supply the following, which Theroux laughs and agrees with: “Don’t be mad at me.”
Speaking of Coop, I wonder if Mr. House has watched Cooper Howard’s movies. Even though he proclaims he doesn’t like fiction in Fallout season two, it seems possible, given Robert House’s intense study of the other, that he might have done so, for science! And Justin Theroux agrees, and then some, calling the bluff of his character in the series. “I think he watches movies. I do think he watches movies, but I think he watches movies to learn how actual human beings interact and behave. I think he studies them the same way you or I might study mathematics and go like, ‘How does that work?’ Or ponder chemistry and just go like, ‘I don’t understand how that functions…’ Mr. House goes, ‘Well, I guess that’s how people behave.’ Because he never struck me as someone who is particularly charismatic. He’s well-schooled, but he has little life experience in interfacing.”
And to me, that’s fairly interesting, because it does betray some desire to understand the human experience in the way Robert House’s nascent emotions, lack of empathy, and questionable morality don’t necessarily point to. And, it’s possible there is one small chink in Mr. House’s robot shell, and that’s Cooper Howard. Given this notion that Mr. House has watched Cooper Howard’s movies, I ask after my favorite pet Fallout theory, whether the most sentient robot that Robert House has created to keep himself company, Victor the Securitron, is based on Cooper Howard’s many kind cinematic cowboys. And Justin Theroux… also likes that idea!
“I think so.” He agrees, “This is what makes me think that House is a movie fan or a movie buff, and I think his whole world… He definitely has a performative element to him. So I think Victor, he had to model him after something.” And adds, delightfully, “I have a theory that House really wants to be Cooper Howard in a way or fancies himself a different version or a Clark Gable or something like that. So I think he pays attention to popular culture. He just doesn’t understand it at all.”
Between Cooper Howard and Mr. House, there exists a complicated relationship on Fallout, one that is incredibly compelling. Justin Theroux muses, “I don’t think he would’ve given Coop a second thought had he not become important to the end of the world.” And right away, Cooper Howard doesn’t play nice with Robert House the way House always expects people to act. “Coop had boundaries at the very beginning of their first interaction. Mr. House says, ‘Come down here,’ and Coop won’t. So he already knows that he’s playing with someone who won’t behave in the way that people would normally behave around him.” And at first, that frustrates Robert House into rage. But that rage abates pretty quickly, leading to the call between them in the season two finale… And, of course, eventually into their interactions in the future timeline on Fallout.
Even though Mr. House isn’t lonely on Fallout, alongside the litany of things we discussed, I ask Theroux if he thinks Robert House considers Cooper Howard to be his friend, or as close to it as Mr. House can have. And Justin Theroux gives me this one. “I’d like to think that,” He says, “They did go on a little bit of a road trip at the end. One of my questions while filming that was… It’s one thing to have your consciousness downloaded and sort of available for questions in an AI way, but it’s another thing to be sentient and feeling. And we went back and forth. I remember thinking, I just wanted to know when House reappears, is he feeling things as he’s talking to Cooper Howard/The Ghoul? And I sort of had to split the difference a little because I wasn’t quite sure. If he’s just an algorithm, then that’s boring. So I’d like to think that even then, meaning now, meaning the future, that the technology had sort of evolved so that he could feel emotional pain.” And hopefully some emotional happiness, as well. Hopefully, friendship.
As for what’s come in the past or awaits in the future for Mr. House on Fallout, Justin Theroux doesn’t yet know. As far as Robert House’s quite tragic backstory, Theroux shares that he hasn’t been given any directive beyond what we already know from the Fallout games. And when it comes to the future of Mr. House on the Fallout series, Theroux doesn’t know what’s in store either. He has “no clue” what awaits Robert House, but trusts the “incredible writers of the series” to cook up something good.
As the conversation concludes, we turn to a Mr. House line that we both found fascinating in the Fallout season two finale. “If you find your family, I’ll be happy for you.” Robert House tells Cooper Howard/The Ghoul. And I share that, for me, among many scenes, this line in-specific is what drove me to ask about Mr. House’s empathy, or potential desire for it, his capacity to feel emotions, and his friendship with Cooper Howard/The Ghoul. And although Justin Theroux has been quite tough on Mr. House’s humanity in Fallout, he agrees with me here.
“You know, that’s funny,” He tells me, “I keyed in on exactly that line. That literal line. I was like, ‘Is he happy for him? Would he be happy for him? Can he feel happy?’ Because I think there was one point where the line might’ve been like, ‘I’ll be gratified if you can find your family.’ And I think we might’ve tweaked it a little. I can’t remember, though.” We agree that regardless, the intention of “happy” does strike a chord. And maybe, just maybe, despite it all, there’s a little glimmer of human connection in the cards (dice or poker table) for Mr. House.
One thing’s for sure, though. The House always wins. And we can all agree that Fallout has won with Justin Theroux’s portrayal of Mr. Robert House.