BIG INTV: Fallout Director Jonathan Nolan Says He's Still a Techno-Optimist
Uncanny Valley | WIRED
WIRED
4.1 • 570 Ratings
🗓️ 3 February 2026
⏱️ 51 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Katie sits down with the Westworld showrunner, Jonah Nolan for a wide ranging conversation about what keeps him coming back to sci-fi storytelling about technology and human nature. After decades of writing about Ai, Nolan explains why Ai may be good for burgeoning filmmakers, but won’t replace Hollywood as we know it.
Nolan’s past work includes Memento, The Prestige, The Dark Knight, Interstellar and Westworld.
Join WIRED’s best and brightest on Uncanny Valley as they dissect the collision of tech, politics, finance, and business, from Alexis Ohanian's newest tech venture to the effects of inaccurate information from artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots on social protests.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | From Wired, this is The Big Interview. I'm Katie Drummond. |
| 0:08.0 | I'll admit, I don't have a ton of time for TV binging, but recently I've gone all in on Fallout. |
| 0:14.0 | It's based on a series of video games, of course, and is set in post-apocalyptic Los Angeles, |
| 0:20.0 | where citizens are forced to live underground. |
| 0:22.9 | Fallout is among a series of projects that director, writer, and producer Jonathan Nolan has |
| 0:27.6 | helmed or worked on. His IMDB is a list of some of the most prescient representations of where |
| 0:33.5 | we may be headed, from Memento to Interstellar, from Westworld to now fallout. |
| 0:39.3 | Jonah is one of few creatives in Hollywood who consistently evolves how tech, science, and |
| 0:44.3 | AI are portrayed in film and TV. |
| 0:47.3 | Despite, or maybe because of all this, the Oscar and Emmy-nominated multi-hyphenate tells me he's still a techno-optimist, although he will never use AI to write for him. |
| 0:58.1 | Here's our conversation. |
| 1:05.1 | Jonathan Nolan, welcome to the big interview. |
| 1:07.5 | Thank you for having me. |
| 1:08.8 | Delighted that you're here and here in person. We're sitting |
| 1:12.2 | It's very cold. If you can't tell if you're listening, it is, you're in New York right now, you're not always here. Yeah. It's like, and I'm from Canada, so my barometer is a little off. I'm from Chicago. Oh, yeah, you are from Chicago. I tend to think of New York as wimpy cold, but this is real cold. No, no, This is real. And also the older I get, the weaker and more frail. |
| 1:28.1 | Yeah. |
| 1:28.4 | So I just, I can't tolerate. |
| 1:29.7 | Well, I've been in L.A. for 25 years. |
| 1:31.3 | Oh. This wouldn't be cold, but this is real cold. No, no, this is real. And also the older I get, the weaker and more frail. |
| 1:28.0 | Yeah. |
| 1:28.4 | So I just, I can't tolerate. |
| 1:29.7 | I've been in L.A. for 25 years, so I'm completely useless. So we're both totally useless. It's going to be a great conversation. And we always like to start these conversations. Actually, this might help today of all days with some very fast questions. so like a warm up for your brain. |
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