The last year-plus has been life-changing for Aaron Moten. The 36-year-old actor is experiencing the biggest professional success of his career, starring as inexperienced soldier Maximus on Prime Video’s blockbuster video game adaptation Fallout. And if newfound fame wasn’t enough to adjust to, Moten, his wife and three daughters moved to Los Angeles after five years in Iceland. He misses certain aspects of his old life, but the Austin, Texas native is thankful to once again have access to his most important items. “Breakfast tacos are a way of life,” Moten says with a smile, “and this morning I ordered some, and you could never do that in Iceland.”
After attending Julliard in New York City, Moten got his start in the theater, before appearing opposite Riz Ahmed in The Night Of and Will Smith in Emancipation. But he leveled up with Fallout. The Emmy-nominated series takes place in a postapocalyptic United States, more than 200 years after a nuclear war forced many survivors to take refuge in underground bunkers. Moten’s Maximus wasn’t so lucky; instead of growing up in those cushy surroundings, he was orphaned and taken in by the Brotherhood of Steel. Initially a lowly squire, the sweet and vulnerable Maximus finds his power when his assigned knight dies and Maximus steps into the deceased’s giant armored suit.
Moten admits he wasn’t properly prepared for the challenges of wearing the massive suit in season 1, having bulked up too much for the role (maybe that’s why he offered to go fully nude for a shower scene in the penultimate episode). These days, his major concern is energy, especially after a whirlwind international press tour for season 2. We talked over Zoom about Icelandic delicacies, the role of boxing in his life and work, how he prepped for that shirtless Season 1 moment, and why he still allows himself one cigarette per month.
GQ: Wow, you beat both me and your publicist to the Zoom.
Aaron Moten: It’s the jet lag in me. If I’m still [for] too long, I’ll either get hungry or tired at the wrong time.
It seems like you guys have been traveling the globe for weeks to get the word out on season 2.
It’s an all-out blitz. It started in Sydney, and that was the toughest, because it feels like it takes two days to get there, and then you’re there working two days, and then, by the time you get back home, a week has passed, and my kids are totally different! And then we did London, São Paulo, and we sent a group to Japan, but I’m happy I’m not doing Japan. I was exhausted, and Japan is at the top of my list to travel—but not like that, from my hotel window. I want to be able to have a couple weeks to go around and see the countryside, maybe sit in a hot spring. The best thing about Japan is just experiencing a different culture that really puts the group ahead of the individual. I kind of want to take my kids just to be like, “You see how quiet everyone is? You see that you don’t have to yell?”
You’re in L.A. now after living in Iceland for a while. What made you decide to move back to the States?
The last five years I had been in Reykjavik, Iceland, and now I’m in Los Angeles because filming moved here. We’ve got three daughters, so it was easy for us to do a quick, long weekend trip to New York from Iceland. But, Iceland to Los Angeles, do I really want to be waiting until two in the morning to see my kids wake up? As amazing as FaceTime is, it just felt like too far. So we’ve been here in L.A. for almost a year. It was a culture shock for the kids.
Was there a readjustment period for you?
It really was. I always felt like I was in the future being in Iceland. I’d be leaving boxing training and then the emails would start coming in, and I’d be like, Oh, now you guys want to join the rest of us in the world! I’d grown really fond of the countryside in Iceland; it’s the cleanest nature experience you can ask for. I love fishing, so I’d go to special spots at the place that we own in northern Iceland, where it’s like an ocean-fed lake and you can eat whatever you catch. Being back in the States, it’s the land of convenience here.
Since you were deprived of breakfast tacos for years, were there Icelandic delicacies that became a big part of your diet?
One of the biggest meat changes was lamb. I’ve had it occasionally in the States, but they’ve got lots of really amazing lamb in Iceland. And we have a lovely grandmother in the family who has her hunting license in Iceland, so most Christmases we eat reindeer, which was a different experience. The main meal of Iceland is potatoes and fish, because you get so much fresh fish. Whole Foods is buying the fish from Iceland, so you get it straight from the source out there, and it’s delicious. A lot of chefs have moved there because they like what they can get.
You mentioned boxing training—is that a major part of your workout routine?
Boxing is a big one for me, because it’s so cardiovascular. Through the day, it makes me feel more capable in terms of stamina. I need to keep that type of cardio that I got from boxing, and I keep hitting the bag, but I refuse to get a new trainer. I just love my guy David in Iceland so much that I’m excited whenever I get the chance to go back and train with him again. As an actor, I’ve found that you might be going through something emotionally with your work and your work rubs off on you. I did a play in New York, and I was playing a depressed person for three hours every night who never really gets a moment to lash out or express himself, and I wish I would’ve found boxing then because it would’ve been the outlet.
Everyone needs that thing. For me, it’s pickup basketball. The downside is you never know when your body will just be done with it.
It’s so true. When I lived in New York, I was in a rec league, and man, I had to quit. I thought, Okay, if I’m doing the rec league with my buddies, we’ve got some refs there, so I’m not gonna worry about getting fouled too hard. But it was the opposite—like, people were throwing elbows, I got hit in the face a couple times and I had to go to work the next day. And I was just like, I can’t be doing this. But there were also a couple of times that you try to make that Eurostep in the lane and you feel your knee pop. You don’t hurt yourself but you feel a big tug, and then you’re just like, Oh. I’m 36 now, and the 30s are real. LeBron James, how’s this guy still going? Like, if you don’t have some hyperbaric chamber or anti-gravity dome in your background, I don’t know how you can keep your body so healthy, for what that sport asks of it.
Fallout requires a pretty physical performance from you, between being in the suit and the fighting scenes. What was your early approach and prep like?
Well, I gotta tell you, I did some things incorrectly my first year. I had never been in the suit, I had just imagined it, and I was doing a lot of heavy lifting, a nice bulk. I’m so job-oriented when it comes to changing my body, and I had just come off of doing a film and pushed up to 195 for it, and I’m 5’ 11”, so it was a lot for my frame. So I was doing this weird shred, but heavy, heavy lifting still, because I thought that this is what this sort of world feels like. Let’s be thick still, don’t drop back down to 170, and so I came in around 185. I put that suit on…and I was dying. The first time I ever put it on, the first 15 minutes, I was dancing. I thought, How cool this is? And then we were sitting on set, there was some type of technical issue so we were waiting for it to be fixed, and with the weight on your shoulders, you realize, Oh, I can’t breathe. And then having to yell, “Are we ready? Can we get this?” [Laughs.] And then that’s take two of 16. It was really rough.
So what I learned for season 2 was to be more specific in my training. It’s like push days, pull days, making sure that I was getting a lean muscle that was able to maybe withstand it for a bit more time. So it was better in the second season, but I do think that most of that is due in part to the suit training me. We had Walton Goggins step into the suit this year, and it was just too funny, he called me the day after, “[Goggins voice] I don’t know how you do it. That was the worst six minutes I’ve ever had.” He had the same panic attack and freakout.
No spoilers, but season 2 features you getting to use your boxing skills, and even gives Maximus that outlet that you said you wished you had during that play.
It’s so fun to get to play someone who needs an outlet. It helps me empathize with the character so much, because I feel like there’s a lot of young men these days going through stuff like that. We have so few what I would call “rites of passage.” We don’t go to war anymore and come back as men. You might have a kid, but kids have kids. So it’s like, how do you persevere toward whatever that thing is, and one day the world starts viewing you as that thing?
I never get bored with this job, to do one that’s so active, so physical, especially while I can. Later in my career, I wouldn’t be able to do all of this stuff. I would be like, “Nah, no wires for me. Please don’t throw me against a mat again.” It gets really exciting. I mean, at my age, I do still wake up bent over thinking I gotta stretch to start my day. You just don’t recover as quickly.
I’ve started skipping the gym some mornings to just spend an hour stretching at home.
It’s just as useful, just as important. I have these cool-down days at the gym sometimes where I’ll do one thing, test where we are and chill out. Let me deadlift and try and max out and see if I can hit three reps there, and then I’ll look at everything else and be like, No, I’m just gonna stretch, hit the sauna. Because I can’t risk injury, and when you lift regularly, you can be really beating yourself up.
You spend so much time in the suit, but you finally got to show off your body when Maximus makes it to the vault late in season 1.
We had him shirtless for the shower. I made an argument to [producer] Jonathan Nolan, “This is this guy’s first hot shower ever, how are we gonna shoot this?” Because I kind of wanted to be fully nude. Jonathan sat down on the step and looked at me, “I think we could figure that out.” And then different people had different opinions. But it was really cute, someone came up to me, “If you really want to be naked…” I was like, “No, no, no. I’m not just trying to be naked on camera. I just thought, given the circumstances, what’s gonna tell the story best? I’m good if you’re happy with what we shot.” They were like, “Do you wanna revisit it? We can reshoot the scene.” And I was like, this is ridiculous, you’re asking me to charge us all so much money for an extra day just so I can be naked. No, that’s never what this was.
Knowing you’d at least have your shirt off, were you dieting harder than normal in the days leading up?
For a week, I was eating sweet potatoes and spinach for lunch, breakfast was just eggs, you’re trying to let some of the water flush outta your body. On set, people are passing out warm chocolate chip cookies, and you’re just like, “No, thank you. No, I’m fine, thanks.” Before I left that day, I ordered a pizza to my apartment, wanting to know what’s waiting for me at home.
With this being the first huge hit of your career where you’re one of the leads, how have you dealt with the good and bad that comes with the attention?
It’s been a huge, huge change. Thankfully, for the most part, people don’t really bother me when I’m out with my kids. That really is their time with their father. I’m just extremely thankful mostly that I have good friends in Walton and Ella [Purnell], and we’re going through it together. But it all is just an indication of the success that you do ask for, being in this industry. To me, you have to make a choice about, when you’re engaging in it, engage in it fully, and when you’re not, you’re not.
This is also probably happening at the healthiest time for you, having put in plenty of work to get here and being grounded by a wife and three daughters.
Yeah, you’re right. My wife would probably be the first one to joke, “You’d be dead if this had happened to you sooner.” You grow as a person. I remember myself in college being such a brooding artist and so emotionally connected to everything, and then wanting to go outside and have a cigarette. I understand now that I look forward to that one cigarette a month. Like I’ll go out for a beer with a friend and he’s smoking, so, ah, okay, we’ll just have one. That one a month does something horrible for my body, but it’s also so good for my mentality. You can have that kind of discipline with yourself, because, otherwise, you look at people and you don’t envy them when they get something like this and they’re not ready to know how to take care of themselves. We’re all running a marathon of life, and can’t be too precious, even about this moment that I’m in. I’m really enjoying it for what it is, and there’s also gonna be the next, and the next, and the next. But I do think this is happening at the time where I could enjoy it and see the fragility of it.
Moving forward, is there anything you’d like to improve about your health journey?
I did it for the first time when I was 22, but I’d really like to make a habit of a yearly silent retreat. Living in Iceland, I maybe got it just by circumstance, but, once a year, take two or three days and go to a monastery somewhere and just be silent. Put the phone away and really check back in with how I organize my thoughts. We have to be able to take that type of inventory on our own minds and not be stuck in some type of pattern that might be unhelpful to our future success.
With three young kids, I’m sure silence is something lacking in your life.
Absolutely none. Even when they are supposed to go to bed, you’re like, “Why are you still up? Why are you still talking?”