The Walking Dead – Part 1 – SDCC 2019

By starrymag | August 1, 2019

By: Heather Tollis

 

 

Q) Since it was announced that Season 6 will be the final one, are you in the mourning process or have you just kind of pushed it out of your mind until it happens?

Speaker: Once she says you’re in “The Walking Dead” family, you’re in “The Walking Dead” family forever. And the amazing thing is we still get together. Jon Bernthal hasn’t been with us since like the second season, but will be in our lives forever.

Q) I would love for Cailey to talk a little bit about some, so she’s been there getting used to all.

Cailey: I had a lot more things to do this season. She had her sword last season.

Q) In past seasons Carol has worked a lot with children who she ended up losing. How will this affect her motherly side? Will she still be able to create connections like that?

Melissa: I’m not certain that will be explored. She’s certainly said that she wants vengeance for what was happening and it’s just a basketball.

Q) What can you tell us about Gemma?

Angela: Gamma is another Whisperer. You find out some interesting story who she is and who she is close to in camp. She’s not used to everybody else having a “name.” Thora Birch is a wonderful addition to the cast this season. So many guys are such fans of her body of work and so it’s been really great seeing her kind of rise to this strange new world.

Ryan: She’s great. She’s wonderful. I mean, we’ve just had a little bit of work together so far, but she’s phenomenal. She’s a wonderful asset.

Q) Will we be finding out other names of the Whisperers?

Angela: They actually usually don’t have names at all. It’s a very special thing that happens to be for Alpha and Gamma. Obviously, they all had names before the apocalypse.

Q) Carol and Alpha share an interesting relationship as Carol has been abused and Alpha is an abuser. Talk about their working together.

Melissa: I don’t know what I can say…

Angela: I will say that as a writer, we’ve definitely been diving into the duality of these two characters. And the way they had certain paths in life and diverged in terms of what their philosophy of the world is. But their goal is to be honorable women, who just happen to be on opposite sides of this kind of equity struggle that is happening. They are our people; animals first. So, there’s just some really cool stuff up ahead. I think Melissa is amazing so is Samantha [Morton]. So, they are formidable forces.

Q) What does it mean to you have the show so supported by the military?

Speaker 1: It’s really important to me. My cousin is serving in the navy right now. My mother’s first husband was an Airforce pilot in service in our nation. So, it’s really important to me and I really love the fact that we seem to be a show that has been embraced by our military in the u s and serving abroad and that makes us all feel really good. We’re so appreciative.

Speaker 2: My husband’s father and his grandfather were active military. Many of his cousins and uncles are military as well. So, that’s very near and dear to my heart. Veterans are amputees are common and work with us and we’re so grateful for them, for their service and also just getting to completely different contexts in their lifestyle. Definitely a cause I think many people involved in the show. I’m just one guy runs the care that they need after their service. And you certainly have had characters in the show that have had military backgrounds and it’s just something that we’ve always been interested in exploring in a community that we’re really grateful to.

Q) Danai, talk about this being your final season.

Danai: I can’t answer that, but I will say the journey that the Angela and her team constructed for Michonne I’m very, very grateful for it. I’ve said it earlier you want to lead. I haven’t put everything out there. And they were so generous to me and allowed me, that sort of thing. I’m very thankful.

Q) Danai, I was wondering what was it like developing the mother daughter relationship with an older Judith and now going into season 10 how is that changing?

Danai: I think it’s one of the most phenomenal things that, um, this show has done. I was, I was floored by the genius of introducing Cailey at the end of episode five when we just lost Rick. I was floored by the genius. And I will say my first impressions with Cailey remain the same as the current ones, which are, she’s pretty astounding. I don’t know where you found her or how, but my goodness. It was just like kind of amazing. I found it so easy because she’s such a pro! She was the last kicker. Like she just was. She had the hat, the gun and the sword and it just works. Everything just works. You know when something just works and you’re like, “Wow, that’s just magic.” You don’t want somebody to just do magic. You know, you as artists, you want to find the magic. You find 30% of the time, this was the magic. So, and that was the beauty of it is it really, it really allowed me…I mean, I don’t know why. But I’m thankful for the fact that she kind of thinks I’m cool to her. I mean, I adore her work. She was just, she said that you can’t say enough.

Q) [inaudible]

Angela: That’s probably more of a question for Scott Gimple and AMC. I’d love to think that they had then had a hopeful, hopeful world and I was wondering how can you pull that off? And I thought it was brilliant. We have a lot…We have a long way to go before we get them. The great thing about television series is that we can either jump ahead by a number of years or we could play those intervening years.

Q) Angela, we know that the human population is going down and that walkers don’t eat during certain weather. What’s going on? Are there certain aspects to them that we don’t yet know?

Angela: We’ve really followed, for the most part, the rules of walkers. We do have some shades that are a little bit different. We have shown in the past that if they aren’t actively eating they sort of do lose a little bit of interest.  although we have seen the shows past actively meeting, they sort of do lose a little bit of interest. But I do think there is a hopefulness in the discovery that there are more people out than maybe they at first who knows what else is out there in the world, but isn’t it that they’re dying? I love walker science. [laughs] We all have it. We’re all infected. Then there are more that are coming along all the time that were living in robust and then they die just from natural causes or from being knocked out or whatever. It’s sickness. Then, their walkers if they’re not put down. So that generate that our population is also consistently replenishing, increasing.

Q) Since the comic book isn’t currently being written, how much story is left to tell?

Angela: There’s still a good amount of issues left before the ending of the comic. I think what’s been really gratifying about can show all these years is that the show has, there’s that butterfly effect. Like if things in the show are not the same as in the comic. And so he’s created branching storylines that don’t exist in the comic book. Like Carol died a long time ago in the comic. So, there’s all these different roads that exist in the show itself as well as the kind of map that Kirkman has set out. He has created a series of possibilities, other roads. And so we’ve gotta work on that a season at a time. The short version is there are still a lot of stories to tell.

Q) What advice would you give to incoming characters?

Danai: Um, yeah, it’s so true that a lot of people, the young women and the women who are cast in the show or are very like a Cailey. They’re very self-possessed. And so they, that’s how, you know, they came in clear and understanding what they thought, what they had to bring. So, the conversations are more collaborative rather than passing things on and supportive, I definitely do encourage folks to, in terms of, I think we all do that in terms of figuring out, understanding your story, your character story and feeling like you can have conversations that you want to and not feeling like there’s this gap between them and going to talk to the creative team who are very collaborative and very open doored and very interested in hearing the thoughts. And that’s an encouragement because there are times that I think there are environments perhaps where that is not encouraged. And that’s not our world. That’s not who we are as a family. And I think that’s something that definitely we encourage each other to attempt to, to understand that we can come in and about and have our own, wanting to process and wanting to process with the creators and with the writers and they’re right there to do it. And that allows, I think more and more of an ownership. I can never imagine. I’ve never had a creative conversation that hasn’t been beneficial. And so that definitely up and something that we definitely encouraged, but I think maybe girls and women out there at times, we don’t feel that we can find our own ownership in our own stride in our characters and bring our thoughts and grapple with them and think about it with, with those who are our bosses, et cetera. And so that sort of an idea is something that I definitely encourage folks to embrace because that’s who we are as a show, which is, which is very special.