We’ve had the pleasure of spending this morning with 9 members of The Walking Dead cast alongside Creative Director Greg Nicotero who has also directed 18 of the episodes over the course of the seven seasons. The cast are currently on their European Tour with different members heading to different places to promote the fantastic zombie show which has to be up there as one of the best shows currently on TV.

We’ll detail some of the highlights from the interviews over the course of the next three posts which will be going live as soon as we can get them typed up!

Obviously this will contain spoilers if you aren’t you to date so you have been warned! We start with Greg Nicotero, Norman Reedus (Daryl) with much of the interview focusing on the demise of Glenn (Steven Yeun) and Abraham (Michael Cudlitz) at the start of season 7.

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Can we talk about the zombie designs and how they’ve changed over the course of the last seven series?

Greg: It’s definitely something that keeps myself and my team busy. Any artist, that is given the chance to revisit their art form, they’ll look at something they like about what they did and they’ll look at something like watching your performance and think ‘maybe I’ll try this or this. Every season on The Walking Dead I get to refine a zombie and see what I think worked and what I think didn’t work and I get a new stab at it.

Even after season one I remember thinking the blood is a little bright so every season I get to revisit these characters and make them better. I have the same makeup team that I started the show with you may think they get a little tired of doing 8000 zombie makeups but the same level of freedom that I try to give to my actors when were shooting I try to give to my artists. I say ‘treat every person who comes into the trailer like a canvas and it allows them to be creative. It’s exciting for me.

Scott (Gimple) and I are always dialled in terms of coming up with great gags like the two cars driving along the freeway with the cable on it to chop all the zombies in half!

Norman – That was awesome!

Greg: That was an idea that I had, it wasn’t even in the original script, I read the script and it said ‘the two cars are on the freeway with the cable and two bombs strung on it’. I was like ‘you have it!  you set the gag up’. I just said ‘I’m gonna take this idea you had and take it a little further’.

It’s a show that I have a tremendous amount of freedom on and I have a voice on.

How do you decide when too much gore is too much gore?

Greg: There’s never too much!

Norman you’ve been in the show since the beginning, do you have a favourite Daryl moment?

Norman: It wasn’t in the first half of this season, I’ll tell you that! I really liked handing Rick back his gun and getting back together with the group. I liked when he and I were sitting by the car after he bit the other’s throat out. I like a lot of the Carol stuff, I liked a lot of the Beth stuff.

What do you make of Daryl and Carol’s relationship?

There’s a lot of Norman and Melissa in those scenes. There’s definitely a special relationship there. Once you throw someone against a tree in the moonlight and do it, it’s done forever! Anyone could do that, it’s playing out exactly how it’s supposed to play out.

What about the rumours between Daryl and Jesus?

Norman – You know who’s saying that, Tom Payne! He’ll say anything to get more Instagram followers! There was a time on the show when Frank (Darabont) was going to have me be gay on the show but he won’t admit it. If he admits it to you he’s going to kill you. Frank referred to it as ‘prison gay’. I remember going to David O’Russell’s Oscar party for The Fighter where he said ‘we’ll do it’ but it never happened. I’m not against it and if it happened I’d be down for it and i would try and kick ass at it but I don’t know that that’s where the story’s going. It hasn’t come up other than some fans wanting it and then Tom joking about it.

Were you expecting such a strong fan reaction to Glenn’s death?

Norman – I feel like those two actors were so good at their job and so many people fell in love with them that when that happened it was like ‘NOOOO i love that guys’, it wasn’t the shock factor, it was like ‘you took that from me’ which is how we were supposed to feel.

I think Scott (Gimple) and Greg (Nicotero) really wanted the audience to feel the same feelings that we were feeling on our knees.

I think because Jeffrey (Dean Morgan) (jokingly) said on The Talking Dead that ‘It’s Daryl’s fault’ because that was a joke that we had in the van on the way there and I said ‘I wonder if I’m going to get any sh*t for this’ I didn’t even think about it before and he said ‘I’m just going to tell them it’s your fault!’ He’s new on the show, he wants people to like him and he’s just maybe f*cking with me! And he said it on TV so people may believe him or take it in their heads. I only really felt  ‘I hope Maggie forgives me’ so I never really thought about it like fans are going to point their figures at me but I don’t write it, I just act in it.

Greg – It’s a tribute to the show and to the actors that people had such a strong reaction to it. A reaction isn’t always going to illicit a positive response. What’s most shocking about that episode is the morning afterwards when the smoke clears.

I remember sitting at a table at Comic Con with Steven (Yeun) next to me seeing the issue for the first time and opening the page and seeing that close-up of [Glenn’s] eye hanging out. (writer Robert) Kirkman was to my left and Steven was to my right. We’d just started shooing the show and Steven was already seeing his death. I remember being haunted by that image. Same as when you see in the comic book Laurie being shot and holding the baby. There’s iconic panels in the comic book that haunt you and that was one of them. Then Scott said this is the episode where Glenn’s going to die and you have to shoot it. The irony was (and I’ve not told this story before) that earlier that day Michael Cudlitz came to my office and said ‘This is the best f*cking job I’ve ever had. I love every day on it’ and i just said ‘Dude you’re a f*cking rockstar, you’re not going anywhere this is going to be great’.  Then two hours later Scott (Gimple)  goes ‘OK so Abrham dies’ and i was like ‘Mother f*cker, I literally just told him how great he is!!’. I couldn’t tell him because the story was till being …. so every time i saw him I was like ‘Hey Mike good to see you, I’ve got to go over there!’.

Norman – And this is how cool Steven is, Steven insisted that he had that death. He was like ‘that’s the comic book people, they know that death’ and he wouldn’t let anyone ever have it.

Was there ever a script that Glenn didn’t die?

Greg – No, it was always intended. Obviously the Abraham part of it was to throw the audience off and also to really establish that that moment did do a lot to propel other characters into the future – everything that happens after Abraham dies really does have a lot to do with where the shows goes. We did what served the story and I didn’t really read anything on the internet.

Norman – It was rough, we’re so close as cast it’s crazy. It’s so real life like you really feel like you have more time with people. When they die you’re like ‘f*ck!’. Although I talked to Steven yesterday  (!), it really feels like you’re losing someone.

I mean Andy (Andrew Lincoln) we were in Costa Rica when he proposed! ‘You going to do it tonight?! You going to do it tonight?!’ They disappeared for a while and Andy and I sat in their room waiting for them to come back freaking out! We’re really really tight.

Greg – I would attribute that to the people as well. If we shot the show in LA in would be different. I’ve done a sh*t load of movies and shows and this is not normal. The show evolves and we’re been lucky enough to have Christian (Serratos) and Jeffrey Dean Morgan that come on the show that continue to make all of us aware of how much of a special thing this is.

Norman – Jeffrey has done sh*t load of TV. He’s was doing that first episode. The camera is on him and the whole cast is really balling. He’s like ‘wow, usually it’s a tennis ball’.  There’s an homage to everyone who were here before us. There’s one room on set with all the people who have died on the show and you go there and there’s a memorial to everyone on the show.

 

The Walking Dead season 7 part B is currently on-air. It premieres on Mondays at 9pm on FOX. The season finale will take place on 3rd April.