Forty years before Fallout, Kyle McLachlan ventured to Dune as Paul Atreides. Now, in a fateful bit of timing, Dune has reemerged with a hit sequel in Dune: Part Two just as McLachlan embarks on a new franchise.
In Fallout, McLachlan stars as Vault 33 overseer Hank MacLean, a pivotal character in the new Prime Video series. Adapted from the blockbuster video game series of the same name from Todd Howard’s Bethesda Softworks, Fallout chronicles how Hank’s daughter, Lucy (Ella Purnell), emerges from her vault to the nuclear wasteland above for a personal mission connected to her father.
It’s on the scorched surface where Lucy learns first hand about the remnants of the Great War, when the U.S. was decimated in a nuclear apocalypse 219 years before.
In a recent Zoom interview to discuss Fallout, McLachlan mused about the fact that four decades after he starred as Atreides in director David Lynch’s version of author Frank Herbert’s Dune, his career is thriving more than ever.
“I must be doing something right — the sandworms haven’t gotten me yet,” McLachlan told me with a laugh. “I haven’t seen the second one yet, but I’ve seen the first and I really enjoyed it. I think it’s because I just love the book so much that Frank wrote and the world of Dune was a big part of my growing up.”
Call it fate, but less than a decade later McLachlan was stepping from what he imagined reading the pages of Dune to playing the lead in the big screen version of the sprawling tale.
I read the book when I was 15 … and it really spoke to me,” McLachlan recalled. “I carried that with me all the way through, low and behold, eight years after I read it for the first time, I’m auditioning and screen testing and ultimately cast in the role of Paul. It was mind-blowing to me coming out of Seattle with no experience on film.”
McLachlan Is Impressed With Chalamet’s Version Of Paul Atreides
Kyle McLachlan said his love for Dune continues to this day and he was thrilled to see Timothée Chalamet assume the classic role of Paul Atreides in the new big-screen iteration of Dune, which began in 2021.
“I love it so much — it was really fun to see Timothée take on the role,” McLachlan enthused. “I loved seeing the characters they came up with and I loved seeing how some scenes, word by word, were very similar to our version.”
Of course, 1984’s Dune marked McLachlan’s first collaboration with director David Lynch, whom he reteamed with on such film classics as 1986’s Blue Velvet and 1992’s Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, as well as the original Twin Peaks series from 1989-1991 and the Twin Peaks reboot in 2017.
McLachlan said one of the most interesting aspects of watching director Denis Villeneuve’s new version of Dune was seeing the different ways Lynch and Villeneuve interpreted the narrative of Frank Herbert’s original novel.
“Obviously it was different eras in which the films were made and different filmmakers,” McLachlan observed. “David is an artist, so he’s going to bring his artistic sensibility to the film and what you’re going to have is an amalgam of Frank and David Lynch. I think Denis did more of an interpretation of Frank’s book, so they’re different in their approaches.”
As such, McLachlan added, he left watching the Dune remake thinking both it and the 1984 film should be celebrated equally and not be seen as competitors. As such he’s looking forward to Dune: Part Two.
“I saw Dune and [thought], ‘These worlds can co-exist,” McLachlan said. “Both of the movies can exist and both of them are enjoyable for their own reasons. I came away feeling really good about it and I’m excited to see the second installment.”
It may take a while for McLachlan to get to the theater to see Dune: Part Two since he’s currently busy promoting Fallout.
In addition to McLachlan and Ella Purnell, Fallout also stars Walton Goggins as The Ghoul, a nuclear-irradiated cowboy of sorts who has walked Earth’s decimated landscape for more than 200 years to carry out a personal vendetta. Aaron Moten also plays a key role in Fallout as Maximus, a Brotherhood of Steel squire who at times wears the militaristic organization’s Power Armor.
All eight episodes of Fallout are streaming on Prime Video.
