Andrew Lincoln on Shooting That Big Reunion Scene in 'The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live'
The British actor also talked about how he got back into Rick's shoes (and dialect)
[Spoiler alert: Only read ahead if you have watched the premiere episode of The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live. Plot points discussed in the following interview.]
The long-awaited reunion between Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) and his wife Michonne Grimes (Danai Gurira) finally happened in the premiere episode of the new Walking Dead spin-off The Ones Who Live. Before that happened, however, we had to catch up to where Rick is, which is unexpected given his prior time on the show when he was typically in charge.
“It was remarkably easy putting the cowboy boots back on,” Lincoln said while onstage with co-star Gurira and executive producer Scott Gimple during the panel for the show at the Television Critics Association winter press tour in Pasadena, California earlier this month. “But I think in the writers’ room there was a real intention to place Rick in an environment and in a mindset that he'd not been in before…it was a new adventure, and that made it very, very exciting and appealing. ” [Lincoln, Gurira and Gimple are co-creators and executive producers of this series.]
I grabbed time with the British actor later that day at an AMC press mixer to chat a bit more about the new series, promising this would run after the first episodes aired.
Just seeing how you and Danai and how you two come back together at the end of the first episode is so compelling since we’ve wanted it for so long. What did you think when you saw how the story was going to play out? Andrew Lincoln: Well, we wanted to tell a different story. Always. The thing that kept me doing the show for so long was pulling and pushing this man in different directions and Scott Gimple was the chief architect of that. Each season we would say, ‘look, what's the tone? What are the themes? Where are we putting Rick?’ And I think what we did with this series was ‘where have we not seen him before?’ To be dismantled in that first episode and put in a place where he's kind of given up. We thoiught that's a really interesting place for him to start.
Seeing Rick so not in charge of his situation, that must’ve been fun to play for you. It was a great, and also that's largely the trajectory of the series is the redemption. Are Rick and Michonne still the same? Can they still be the same people they once were and will their love redeem this? That was seriously fun.
How did you refresh yourself just to get back in Rick's shoes? Was it anything you had to work at or was it pretty easy? It was weird being a producer and then having this accent and then talking to all of these people that we'd sort of employed and got together and then suddenly I was like, ‘when do I go into Rick mode?’ I thought, I better get doing it. And then suddenly I started talking in dialects and people were like, ‘Who's this guy?’ [laughs] And then they went, and then all the people that the old guard that were in heads of department, they just went, ‘just leave him to it. ‘He goes a bit mad now.’ And Danai was great. She went, he's just being ripped. Just leave it. He goes a bit crazy.
In the first episode, there are a lot of quick flashes of the past. It made me think about all those big moments from the series. I wouldn't have been surprised if we'd seen Carl's (Chandler Riggs) face or any of those faces from Rick’s memory. It's great that you identified that because that's the sort of motif that we use because we wanted to celebrate the loss of memory of who they were and then also hopefully reclaim it.
What do you hope people take from the show? We hope that they're surprised that [Rick and Michonne] go on this rollercoaster of a love story. We hope that they're uplifted. I always hope that. It's a great escapist show that is based on love and I want people to be moved and to hopefully maybe shed a tear and punch the air.
The end of the episode when Michonne is about to kill Rick and then his mask comes off and they both stop. That hit me emotionally because you know how much that moment of being finally reunited means to them. Was that one of your first scenes you and Danai shot? No, the first thing that we shot was the dream, which was so cool. It was crazy to do this version without the apocalypse, if they'd met.
And in that dream, they’re both so clean. I know! [Lincoln laughs]
You guys are never clean on the show! We walked on set, it was the first day, and in fact, I think it was a test camera day that we did pre-production so we did it earlier on and people were like, ‘everybody looks very awesome. They look very good!"‘
What did you think of the first episode of the new series? Are you back into the Walking Dead universe or are you someone who never left? Share your thoughts via the survey below.
Here’s the trailer for the premiere of The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live
The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live airs Sundays at 9/8c on AMC and AMC+.