The actor describes the highly anticipated character as a “well put-together, well-spoken, bizarre, ingrown toenail of a man.”

Meet Robert House: Justin Theroux breaks down his explosive Fallout entrance and what it means for season 2

The actor describes the highly anticipated character as a "well put-together, well-spoken, bizarre, ingrown toenail of a man."

By Lauren Huff

Lauren Huff

Lauren Huff is an award-winning journalist and staff writer at ** with over 12 years of experience covering all facets of the entertainment industry.

EW's editorial guidelines

December 16, 2025 9:00 p.m. ET

Leave a Comment

Justin Theroux in 'Fallout,' season 2. Credit:

**This article contains spoilers for *Fallout* season 2, episode 1, "The Innovator."**

It's a Christmas miracle! Not only did *Fallout* season 2 debut early on Prime Video Tuesday evening, but the first episode wasted no time in getting to the long-awaited debut of Robert House (Justin Theroux).

In fact, the season begins with the enigmatic, all-powerful technocrat, ominously introduced via a title card that reads, "The Man Who Knew." The flashback scene begins with riots over House's company, RobCo Industries, and its innovations stealing jobs, and then cuts to a bar, where a group of angry, blue-collar workers are watching House on TV.

Only it's not Theroux's House we're watching: As in season 1, Rafi Silver plays the public-facing lookalike to House who presumably stands in for him on TV and at events. As such, when one of the men angrily says "We didn't vote for this maggot," and a delightfully sinister voice from the corner replies, "Every dollar spent is a vote cast, and that fellow right there, he has more votes than every one of those pin-headed politicians in Washington," the men have no idea it's *the* Robert House who answered.

Theroux's House further provokes the men by pointing out RobCo's inventions have been critical to their job functions, but hey, "Obsolescence... it's a hell of a thing." This enrages the men, who take House outside. House asks one of the men to hit him in the mouth, because he thinks he’d enjoy it, and the man happily obliges.

Justin Theroux as Robert House in 'Fallout' season 2.

House then decides they should all move on from the skirmish, and offers the gang 31 million dollars if they'll put a device on the back of their neck for “good ole fashioned market research." When they refuse, House takes matters into his own hands and inserts the device himself, allowing him to control one of the men, whom he instructs to get rid of his friends with a baseball bat. Apparently the device is not fully functional yet, because the man does as he's told and then promptly turns on House. When House frantically dials up the device, the man’s head explodes in a mess of gooey, gory innards.

What does all of this tell us about the legendary ruler of New Vegas? And what can we expect from him this season? ** caught up with Theroux to ask exactly that.

**: You hadn't played the *Fallout: New Vegas* game, upon which this season is based, when you were cast as Mr. House. The game and the character are iconic in *Fallout* lore, so were you daunted when you realized this is who you'd be playing?**

**JUSTIN THEROUX: **It was thankfully daunting only once my performance was in the rearview mirror. We'd done a good job of keeping it a secret, and so there wasn't any sort of reaction while we were shooting it because no one knew about it, and we had really put clamps down on it. I think, had it sort of leaked that I was doing it, then I might've been tempted to go to Reddit and be like, *Uh oh, do people like this idea or hate this idea*? But House was sort of treated almost like an Easter egg in the first season, and I've also done enough legacy things, whether that's *Beetlejuice* or *Iron Man* or whatever, to know that you have to pretty quickly forget that this is a very beloved show and just get down to the work of doing the character and trying to make the character. It wouldn't change how I would do the character if I knew how voracious the fan base was about the character. It was only afterwards that I sort of saw like, *Oh shoot, I hope they like it*.

**How would you say your take on the character differs from the one shown in the game?**

The big, most obvious difference is that he's a living person when we meet him, which he never really is in the game, he's sort of sequestered to a monitor and is sort of essentially hooked up to a psyche. So one of the big swings that the creators took was to be like, no, we're going to see him in the world walking around the world as a person. And I would say this, whether I was playing him or not, it's one of those great decisions that the creators know when to depart from the video game and give fans something that they probably don't know they want. And so that was the first little tickle of joy that I had was like, *Oh, we're going to get to see this guy behave in a way that's not just frankly on a green screen or a green computer screen*.

How Amazon's 'Fallout' brought the post-apocalyptic video games to TV

'Fallout' is an addictive post-apocalyptic adventure

**Mr. House makes quite an entrance here. What would you say we learn about him from this cold open to the season?**

I think first of all, the creators gave me a wonderful entrance to the show to give me a great piece of real estate at the beginning to set up House, just with that first cold open and then in particular where they put him, which is sort of in this bar with these roughneck construction workers or whatever you want to call 'em. And then to all of a sudden hear a voice from the back of the room and then pushing in on this sort of peacock of a guy who is speaking so down to them as if they're so beneath him, immediately places him in the hierarchy of the *Fallout* world. This is a big-deal guy. And also just incredibly odd. He's this sort of spectrum of strange, sort of well put-together, well-spoken, bizarre, ingrown toenail of a man. And I just really loved that scene. When I read it, I thought, *Oh, this is going to be a really fun scene.*

**What can we expect from House in future episodes?**

I think you can expect that piece of technology that he's holding, that he applies to that man's neck, is it's sort of that one little tendril that's thrown out in that scene that you think, *Oh, if I see this again, I should know to pay attention*. And it's that wonderful thing sometimes when you have a character that's talked about more than shown. And so you know as that episode and then the subsequent episodes proceed like, *Oh, this man has reach. This man will come back. You will see this person again. I don't know in what form or how, but this man is consequential*. I've compared him to Marlon Brando's the Godfather in *The Godfather*. It's like the movie's called *The Godfather*, and our show is called *New Vegas*, but the Godfather only shows up when it's really important to the storyline to see where his power emanates from. And so although he's not frankly present for a lot of things, he's felt almost in every corner of the show.

*This interview has been edited for length and clarity. ***

***Get your daily dose of entertainment news, celebrity updates, and what to watch with our EW Dispatch newsletter.***

- Sci-Fi & Fantasy Shows

Original Article on Source

Source: “EW Sci-Fi”