‘The Walking Dead’ EP Greg Nicotero Talks the Season 7 Premiere, the Kingdom, and a Possible Carol and Ezekiel Romance

As we head into the third episode of the already superintense Season 7 of The Walking Dead — you should prepare with a fresh supply of tissues at the ready — Yahoo TV talked to executive producer/director/special-effects whiz Greg Nicotero about the two dramatically different, but crucial, episodes he directed to kick off the season.

The installments, including, of course, the tragic deaths of Glenn and Abraham in the premiere, both also signify big changes ahead for the series, and certainly Rick Grimes’s group. Nicotero, who chatted with us during last weekend’s Walker Stalker Convention in Atlanta, shared why he went cold turkey on Interweb reaction to the premiere, the moments from the premiere that made him most proud of the cast, why it was important to shake things up in “The Well,” how he, too, was blown away by Khary Payton’s debut as Ezekiel, and whether or not there might be a little somethin’-somethin’ brewing between “Carekiel.”

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The Season 7 premiere was so anticipated, and so emotional. How was the week after the premiere for you?
You know, I sort of decided not to read anything on the Internet. The show is the show. We make the decisions that we feel best suit our story. After the finale last year, there were a very vocal few that I felt really tried their hardest to pollute the experience of the show. As far as I’m concerned, I didn’t really need to deal with any of that, because I knew that people would be upset. I was upset! I mean, I love both of those characters, and I love both of those actors! They’re amazing friends of mine. Steven [Yeun] and I have been through it since Day 1. It wasn’t fun, but understanding and seeing where the season goes, due to the ramifications of the events of [the premiere], it makes complete sense.

And, while the cliffhanger was frustrating, after seeing the premiere, it’s clear that the impact would have been lessened to see those deaths in the finale, and then try to jump-start that back up in the premiere.
Absolutely! That’s why our position always was, you can’t open the chapter of a book and then put the book down for five months. We felt very strongly that The Walking Dead is entering a new phase in its existence, so it wouldn’t have made sense to open that up at the end of last year. It’s been a challenging year, because we put a tremendous amount of pressure on ourselves to make sure that the season, that the show, after seven years, still feels relevant and still honors the viewers, and honors the story and the acting. You know, we haven’t stopped. We work hard, harder than on anything I’ve ever done.

What’s the moment in the premiere that you’re most proud of?
There’s a laundry list of things that I’m really proud of. It’s just an astounding piece of acting from Andy [Lincoln]. When Jeffrey [Dean Morgan] grabs his face and says, “That’s the look I’ve been waiting to see,” and the coiled menace and the power that he exudes… that moment is heartbreaking. Maggie’s approach to Glenn, and when Sasha comes over and kneels next to Rosita… you just see how destroyed these two women are. When we shot that scene, Michael [Cudlitz] was there, but not in the scene, because there was a dummy of him on the ground, and I just remember looking at him and going, “Look at what your character’s death did to these two women.” That moment is probably, for me personally, the most heartbreaking. The look on Sasha’s face and the look on Rosita’s face really puts everything 100 percent in perspective.

Then when Lauren [Cohan] turns around, which was something that she did just as pure emotion, when Chandler [Riggs] came up behind her. She’s just saying, “No, no, no.” She can’t deal with it. And she turns around and he’s there, and she just grabs him. Those moments you just pray that the camera’s in the right spot to capture, because those are notes that you can’t recreate. They come out of the sheer emotion of the actors in that moment.

But it’s been a strange week for me, because I really did choose not to read anything online. I feel like a lot of actors… like Andy doesn’t watch the show. I understand part of that now, because part of it is, you put a big piece of your heart and your soul out there, and you just have to believe in one thing — that you did the best work that you could do. It’s been very cathartic for me to just stand on the principle of what our show is and what we fought to make our show over the last seven years.

You also directed 702, “The Well,” which had a much-needed change of tone, some levity. And it’s a little extra-special that a lot of those moments come from Carol, who has been in a very dark place.
There’s some great character moments. I think getting an opportunity to see where Carol goes after the finale, where she’s ready to die. She literally says, “Oh, that’s all you got,” when the Savior’s walking away from her. You see Morgan pull the trigger, and you realize that, as much as Morgan’s been struggling with his demons, he’s not really winning. Part of it is because of his love for Carol and his love for [the Alexandrians]. Carol has the exact opposite feeling; her feeling is, “I love these people so much, I can’t be around them, because I can’t kill anyone [to protect them].”

To me, the scene where Carol and Morgan meet Ezekiel, I specifically cut that sequence because I loved every moment of Carol looking at Morgan, and having Morgan not look at her. If you notice in that scene, Carol looks at Morgan like, “You motherf***er. You set me up here.” And Morgan’s just standing there going, “Oh my god. I can’t look at her, because I’m in big trouble.” Then he wheels her out, and she just lets him have it.

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And then there’s Jerry (Cooper Andrews), Ezekiel’s enthusiastic assistant…
Cooper just makes me laugh every time he says something… The whole thing about Ezekiel is, very much like Negan did, Ezekiel’s putting on a show. And what he explains at the end of the episode is, “Listen, people need something to believe in. And if I’m the guy to give it to them, that’s my job now.” But Jerry’s onstage with him, and every time Jerry talks, Ezekiel’s like, “Jerry, you’re screwing up my mojo here. Knock it off.” It’s a great opportunity to show some lightness. I think after everything that happened in the premiere, it’s a very much needed transition for The Walking Dead — to see something where it’s a world that’s vibrant and alive. Even when we were shooting Morgan pushing Carol through the Kingdom, there’s a gazebo with a teacher teaching kids. It’s a thriving community. They’re trying to do something. They’re doing it, and they’ve been doing it for a long time.

So as much as Carol’s looking at Morgan, going, “What have you told them?” she’s also looking around going, “How’s this place here? How is it still alive? How did they do this?” There’s enough of her being inquisitive as well as her going, “OK, I’m packing my stuff, and I’m getting out of here as quick as I can, because I’m not going to go to another community where I’m forced to kill for people that I care about.”

Is it that she’s made up her mind about this one thing, and she doesn’t want to have to rethink her stance about it again?
I don’t think it’s a matter of her rethinking it. I think it’s a matter of that’s just who she is and where her path is. She’s decided, “I should be alone. The way that I can survive and the way that I don’t have to kill people, and I don’t have to watch people that I love die, is to just forsake all of that.” And she’s OK doing it. How many times has Carol left? How many times has Carol offered to leave? Even back in Season 5, when they get to the church with Gabriel, and they’re all having that little dinner, the only reason Carol didn’t leave right then is because Daryl followed her, and they saw the car that had the cross on the back, which led them to Beth and Grady Memorial. This isn’t anything new for Carol, where she’s like, “OK, you guys, I’m just going to go outside and have a cigarette for a minute” and then never come back.

You had told me earlier this year how great Khary Payton is, and I think Ezekiel might be my favorite new character. His language, his speech, everything is so fun to watch. When you get that backstory at the end, and you find out he really is sincere with the intentions of this show he’s putting on… Khary really brings Ezekiel to life in a way that adds so much to the already eccentric character we know from the comics.
He does. Khary and I talked about it a lot. When we hire actors on the show, they have to sign NDAs, they can’t talk about anything that they’re doing. So Khary jumped on a plane, landed in Georgia. He and I went to dinner. And he literally exploded with passion and enthusiasm. He’s like, “You don’t understand. You’re the first person I’ve been able to talk about the show with.” He got the job, and he had to wait like six weeks to work. Maybe it wasn’t six weeks, but it was several weeks. So when he landed, he was so excited and so enthusiastic and so ready to just jump into it. We played around with his delivery and his dialect. The thing for me that was most important is, when he becomes Ezekiel the zookeeper and not Ezekiel the king, his affect is completely different. He talked a little bit about the people that he had mirrored Ezekiel after, family members and things.

He’s mesmerizing. I think that’s the best word I can use to describe Khary as a performer. Every ounce of that exudes out of Ezekiel. You find yourself holding on to every single word he says. He didn’t just step in and have it easy, he stepped in shooting scenes with Melissa McBride and Lennie James, two of the greatest actors I’ve had the good fortune of working with. So I think he landed going, “All right, I can’t screw this up, man.” Even on set when we were bringing in the Shiva puppets, we were doing all this stuff, I could see that childlike glee in him, like, “Oh my God, that’s Carol, that’s Carol.” He’d lean over, and I’d be like, “You know that’s Carol? There’s Morgan.” “I know, I know, I know.” He’s so excited. The actors that come on our show now are fans of our show. It started with Josh [McDermitt] and Michael Cudlitz and those guys who literally were like, “You don’t understand. There’s Rick Grimes standing right over there. I’m in Rick Grimes’s world now.” Khary had the exact same feeling. As did Jeffrey. Just like scenes with Jeffrey as Negan, Ezekiel commands the sequences. And he really does the majority of the talking in those scenes. Carol does her, “Well, if I would’ve known I was going to meet royalty…” She plays it up, while she’s smiling, and she’s looking at Morgan going, “You’re dead. I’m going to f*** you up.” It’s really a testament to [showrunner] Scott Gimple’s ability to cast amazing actors in the show over and over again.

But the Kingdom… it’s like shooting a pilot for a new show. And there’s not a lot of walker stuff in it. We did that on purpose. We played a lot of the contrast. In post-production, I kicked up the saturation in the Kingdom so it feels vibrant. Then when you’re outside in the dead world, we took it down a little, because we wanted the audience to go, “Wow. This place is life. This is life.” And I think that’s why Carol has such a hard time with it, because it is alive, and it’s bustling and hustling. And she doesn’t understand what that feeling is anymore.

Related: Walking Dead Ahead: Will King Ezekiel’s Big Mouth Doom Them All?

That makes it so powerful when he says to her at the end, “I’m sorry for what you’ve experienced. The bad things that you’ve experienced.” She doesn’t expect him to say that. Then that final scene… she’s alone. She thinks she finally has what she wants. But he knocks on the door, and she hears Shiva growl. She looks superannoyed at first, but then there’s a smile. Potential romance there? Potential for “Carekial”?
I think she admires him tremendously, because he has found his role in this world. His role is to provide a place for people to live. And she respects and admires that. Plus, I think she knows that he’s a bit tenacious about it, and he’s not really going to give up. So it’s the knock on the door and you hear the little growl. She’s like, “Motherf***er.” It was funny, because even when I read the script, I pitched to Scott a version where you hear the knock and Carol turns around with the gun, and you hear the growl, and you just cut. You don’t even need to see him in the door, just because you know that it’s Shiva and Ezekiel. But he shows up, it’s like, “Pomegranate?”

That’s a nice callback.
It is. Yeah, absolutely. It’s funny and it’s light. It’s really bringing Carol back to life again, but on her terms. Morgan spent all of last year going, “You can’t do that.” He said it to her over and over again. That’s the beauty of his transition in this episode. When he’s talking to Benjamin in the dining hall and he was like, “I’ve got to go talk to somebody,” he suddenly realizes, “I was trying to make Carol into something that she wasn’t willing to be. And it was my fault, not her fault, that I couldn’t.” So in the end, when they’re on the horses together, they land, and it’s like, “Oh, I’m sorry I hit you in the face.” “Yeah. Sorry I almost killed you.” It’s funny. I love that little reconciliation scene where they’re both like, “Sorry I wanted to kill you.” “Yeah, sorry I wanted to kill you. But, you know, I’m here now.” It’s really such a great opportunity to express that kind of sentiment in a show where you don’t get, especially after the premiere, an opportunity to express that kind of feeling.

Given how intense and emotional the season has been already, was the interaction with fans at Walker Stalker Con kind of a boon for everyone involved with the show to see how much fans do love the show?
It’s always great to be able to celebrate, because the fans keep the show alive. I had nothing but people saying how much they hated me and loved me at the same moment for what I did. But the truth of the matter is that it’s so hard to comprehend what this show is. People say, “Oh yeah, it’s the No. 1 show on television. Biggest show in the world.” I’m like, “I can’t comprehend that.” I’m still sort of humbled by all of it. And I’m still just happy to be here. To me, being able to go to work and work with Andy and Norman [Reedus] and Melissa and Lennie and everybody… I consider this the greatest gift in the world.

When I meet young people who want to be special-effects makeup artists, and people tell me that I inspire them… I’m sort of rendered a little speechless by those sentiments, because they’re so pure and so beautiful, and it’s the ultimate compliment. The greatest thing anyone can ever tell you is that what you do affects who they want to be. To me, [Walker Stalker Con] is about that, because that’s how I got into it. I met Tom Savini and George Romero, and I was like, “I want to do what you do.” So to have somebody say, “I want to do what you do” to me, I’m like, “I know that feeling. And I understand that feeling. Because I was there.”

The Walking Dead airs Sundays at 9 p.m. on AMC.