Ron Perlman says he did the Fallout intro for $40 and a sandwich, he’s never played it, and he’s not interested in trying: ‘The whole Fallout thing is a mystery to me’

Walton Goggins, star of the Fallout TV series on Prime, has never played Fallout and doesn’t want to. You know who else has never played Fallout and doesn’t want to? Ron Perlman. In an interview on the Joe Vulpis Podcast last week, Perlman made it clear: He doesn’t know, he doesn’t care, he just wants his 40 bucks and his sandwich.

Perlman is a very well known actor, with dozens of television and movie credits going back to the 1970s, but he’s also very prolific as a voice actor in animation and videogames. Mobygames lists 33 titles with a Ron Perlman appearance, including Icewind Dale: Heart of Winter, The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay, Halo 3, Call of Duty: Black Ops 3, and of course the Fallout games.

His turns in Fallout are especially interesting because they’re his most iconic videogame work, and yet it’s only four simple words: “War. War never changes.” The intro to each Fallout game spins off differently from there, but those four words are an essential pillar of the series, every bit as thematically foundational as power armor or Nuka Cola.

Here’s the very first:

Perlman lent his voice to those famous four words in every Fallout game from the original to New Vegas and Fallout 76 (Bethesda had the player voice actors do the line in Fallout 4, for some reason). But has he ever thought about playing any of them? He has not. And he’s not going to.

“I’m not a gamer,” Perlman says in the interview. “I wouldn’t know how to put a game—I wouldn’t know which game goes into which piece of hardware. I’ve never played any of the games. The whole Fallout thing is a mystery to me.”

It’s a mystery Perlman’s had plenty of time to ponder: Fallout’s come a long way from its humble beginnings nearly 30 years ago, from an oddball isometric RPG to a hit series on Amazon. It’s just that, well, he doesn’t seem to care.

“They invited me to do the very first Fallout back in the ’90s, I think. They gave me $40 and a sandwich. And a year and a half later, I get a call: ‘Hey, you remember Fallout?'”

“‘No.'”

“‘Well, there’s a second one.’ I go, ‘Why?’ ‘Because the first one went through the fucking roof.’ I go, ‘Really? Cool.’ Do the second one, and then a year later the third, fourth, and now it’s like a whole brand. I didn’t see that coming.”

As for why Perlman wasn’t given a bigger role in the games despite being called back to do the intro for every succeeding release, especially after the series became a major hit, he doesn’t know about that either: “I’ve never been in the game. I just did a couple lines and, you know, got my $40 and my sandwich and went home.”

Now, is Perlman joking about his payment for Fallout? Quite possibly. He was already a well-known face (and voice) when he did Fallout, which came the same year he starred in films including Alien: Resurrection and Prince Valiant, which was apparently not great but had a very cool cast.

Be that as it may, I very much enjoy the mental image of ’90s-era Ron Perlman walking out of the Interplay offices with two 20s, a ham-on-rye, and a smile on his face. I find it very believable, too. I know better than to lionize celebrities, but I feel very strongly that if there’s any Hollywood movie star willing to read a couple lines of text in exchange for 40 bucks and lunch, it’s Ron Perlman.

Perlman also offers a bit of insight into his voice-acting process during the interview, and it is not exactly method: “I don’t have a booth at my house. You want me? Give me the address. Make sure everything is right. Music stand at this height. I come in, I rip it, I get out.”

The full hour-long interview covers a lot of ground, including the struggles of his early career, his love of acting, and how he first connected with director Guillermo del Toro. He also makes clear, somewhat more seriously, that he takes his long-running career as a voice actor very seriously: “I learned early on that some of the most talented people in the entire business are voiceover actors and animation artists, producers, directors, painters. So you’re in there with a pretty elite group of people, which also tends to make you want to be at your best. You know, game recognizes game. You walk in the door and you’re in the room with with people who know what the fuck they’re doing—you say to yourself, ‘I can’t phone this in’.”