‘The Walking Dead’ Postmortem: EP Greg Nicotero on That Epic Zombie Slaughter
WARNING: This interview for the “Rock in the Road” episode of The Walking Dead contains spoilers.
Things are looking up for Rick Grimes and his friends after that very sad first half of Season 7, and midseason premiere director and executive producer Greg Nicotero talked to Yahoo TV about the episode, including how that crazy — and kinda romantic — car stunt came about, the scene that brought a little Seinfeld to The Walking Dead, and all the funny moments that made the show’s return such a throwback to some of the lighter adventures of seasons past.
He also hints that Morgan is going to continue to be at odds with his friends, and he reveals why the episode ends with Rick Grimes smiling the biggest smile we’ve ever seen from the Alexandria leader.
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Yahoo TV: This episode is my favorite since “The Next World,” the Butch and Sundance episode from last season. It’s the perfect way to open the second half of the season.
Greg Nicotero: I would agree. It’s the pacing of the show, and it’s the way the show really needs to be laid out. You need to lay the seeds for the show, so that they have a little bit of time to germinate. Sure, we could bring Negan on and kill him in one episode, but then what? It’s not really the way we have ever told our story, with the longer endgame in mind, which is to continue to evolve these characters. A lot of the agony that Rick and Daryl and everybody went through in the first half of the season, you feel like now they’ve overcome this obstacle, and they’re stronger for it. I’m really excited for people to see it. The midseason premiere always has that opportunity to be emotional and thrilling and funny and sad, all at the same time.
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Let’s talk about the humor of the episode first. There are so many funny moments, with the return of Jerry, Rick taking note of Shiva, Daryl popping his head out of the truck’s roof window like he’s in a limo on the way to Studio 54. What, for you, was the funniest moment of the episode?
There’s a really funny line coming up in Episode 12, which is my favorite line of the year, which we’ll talk about later. I really love when Jesus brings the group in to meet Ezekiel and Ezekiel says, “Jesus, it pleases me to see you,” then Jerry, he gets so caught up in the moment, that he’s like, “It pleases him!” Ezekiel’s like, “Jerry!” He literally channels George Costanza in that moment. When I was editing it, I actually recorded that on my phone, because that was one of the things that [showrunner] Scott [Gimple] and I really talked about. Jerry’s character really came about quite a bit because of who Cooper [Andrews] is. Cooper really has this smile that just lights a room. Every time he says a line of dialogue, whether it’s supposed to be funny or not, I always giggle. Every time Jerry opens his mouth, Ezekiel’s like, “Dude, you’re blowing my whole play here. We have a stage show going on, and we’re really trying hard here. Every time you open your mouth, you’re screwing it up.” You can’t be angry at him, though, because he’s such a lovable guy.
The tricky thing about the midseason premiere is that there’s always an expectation for the show to be grand, and we are generally checking back in with everybody. It’s always a moment where, “OK, this is where we left off.” Now, especially since Darryl is back and Rick is not going to take any s*** anymore, and he’s looking to recruit people for his army, the whole episode is filled with wins and losses. Rick goes to the Hilltop and Gregory’s being an idiot. Also another great scene. When Xander [Berkeley] says, “Rhetorical!” I was having him channel Kevin Kline from A Fish Called Wanda, when he says “Disappointed!” when they open the safe and the diamonds are gone.
This was probably the one episode where we had the most number of people breaking character and laughing. Laughing on The Walking Dead… what the f***? When did that ever happen? The first time when he goes, “Look, Ricky…” and he calls Rick “Ricky,” it’s really subtle, but when he did it, I was shooting Andy [Lincoln’s] close-up and Andy just looked at me like, “Did he just call me Ricky? That motherf***er.” The look on his face was priceless to me.
I will tell you that after seven years on the show, watching Andy Lincoln laugh in the middle of a take… I’ve never seen him do it. I swear to God. It was the scene when they go into the pantry in Alexandria and all the food is gone, and Steven Ogg is in there, and he says, “Oh, you guys had a barbecue here, and you didn’t invite us.” There was one take where Steven went, “Awwwwww,” and jumped up and down and acted like a 2-year-old, and Andy looked at him and just burst out laughing and was like, “This is the most ludicrous thing.” It was fun to see them laughing, especially after the first half of the season, how difficult the show was. How difficult it was for Andy, how difficult it was for Norman, how difficult it was for everybody. We were all back on set together, having a great time, knowing that we were making a great episode. It really had a completely different feel than the first half of the season.
But still action-packed, too. We got an amazing mass zombie kill, with Michonne and Rick cable-cutting the herd of highway walkers. It also becomes this very oddly romantic moment for Michonne … it’s the teamwork of it, and it is a win for them.
That is absolutely, 100 percent accurate. That was our big “Welcome back to The Walking Dead” popcorn popper scene, and what was interesting is, of course, we always have to be cautious about budget, you have to be cautious of how much time we have to shoot the sequence and things like that. In the first draft of the script, the wire gag wasn’t there. … It was a little homage to Robert Rodriguez and Grindhouse. It’s definitely a fun Grindhouse moment. I said, “Listen, we have the cable here. Have Rick get in one car and Michonne get in the other car, and they floor ’em…” The whole point of that scene is, Rick pushed it too far. He was like, “We need these bombs. Here, just take your time, [the walkers] aren’t here yet, keep going.” He’s pushing it, and he knows he’s pushing it, and that’s why when they get into the car afterwards, and he’s looking at Michonne. He’s like, “F***, I just put all of us into jeopardy here.”
Scott was like, “That’s perfect,” because what he wanted was an opportunity for Rick and Michonne to have a win together. Exactly what you said. They crawl into the cars, they hot-wire them, they get in, and I used every trick in my book. Kudos again and always to the amazing production team on The Walking Dead, because it was 110 degrees on the freeway. We shot that on the same freeway where we shot Season 2 when they find all the walkers and they hide under the cars, but I just wanted to make sure that it felt a little bit different. We dressed it a little differently. We had a drone there to shoot the overhead shots, and I had storyboarded the whole thing. I’m really proud of it. I think it’s fun. It’s different. It’s a little outrageous, which I feel the show has warranted based on how heavy everything has been in the first half of the season. I don’t think it’s bad to remind the audience, “Hey, you know, we still haven’t exhausted our ways to kill zombies yet.”
As you said, there are some heavier moments, some sadder moments. Rosita and Daryl are both incredibly angry. They want to fight everybody and anybody at this point. Is that something they’re going to be able to channel?
You’ll notice as we get deeper into the second half of the season that a lot of people are still harboring a lot of emotion and guilt about what happened to Glenn, about what happened to Abraham, and I think now that they’re back together again, it is, in a way, reopening some of these old wounds. I don’t know if Darryl could even make eye contact with Maggie. There’s a lot of raw emotion there and with Rosita. I think she’s on the same boat as Rick. When they get to the Kingdom and they see people jogging and people training, Rick looks at that like, “OK. This is an army. We have an army here.” Then Ezekiel says, “No,” and they’re back to square one again. That’s why the last moment of the episode, when they get surrounded and Rick has that ear-to-ear smile, all he sees is, “Here’s my army.” That’s exactly what he’s looking at. Rosita’s in the exact same boat. Daryl wants to fight, Darryl’s ready to get in there and do what he needs to do, it’s just that he’s also sensible.
There’s so many great things, like with Sasha. Sasha’s motivated. Aaron is motivated. They were all motivated by different things that happened. Aaron got beaten up, and Rosita’s action caused the death of Olivia. Each one of them have had Negan take something away from them. They’re pissed about it.
And we’re also reminded that the losses of their friends are going to continue to resonate throughout the rest of the series, but especially this season. When they go to the Kingdom and they tell Morgan what happened with Glenn and Abe … we’ve sort of forgotten there are people who still don’t know. You realize Carol still doesn’t know. She was with Glenn since the beginning. That’s going to be crushing when she finds out. Will Daryl be the one to break that news?
I think what you hit on the head that was important was Morgan’s reaction to it. Morgan didn’t know, and when they stand there and they say, “They killed Glenn. They killed Abraham. They killed Spencer. They killed Olivia…” Their people are dying. What I find fascinating about that scene is Morgan is now counsel to the king. He’s still like, “Maybe we shouldn’t go to war.” Morgan is really, really struggling, as we saw at the end of last season, when he had to shoot that Savior to save Carol, and how he’s back to a place of peace. He’s been training Benjamin. He’s walking around the Kingdom like, “Man, why didn’t I find this place before, because this place has the same philosophy that I have, that there is a way to survive and live in the world in a nonviolent capacity?” The fact that he finds out that his friends have been killed, that’s a slap in the face.
There’s a scene in the middle of the episode where a bunch of teens are practicing archery. Is your son one of them?
My son and my daughter are inhabitants of the Kingdom for that episode. I think one of the funniest things about shooting that day was knowing that they were going to see who was on set and who wasn’t on set, because the premiere hadn’t aired yet. My wife and my kids, they don’t know. They maybe see it a week before everybody else, but generally speaking, I don’t tell them what’s going to happen, because they love the experience of watching it. They don’t want anything spoiled. They don’t want to read anything, they want to experience it. Even if I was the best storyteller, what I always say to everybody is, “I could never do it justice, for me to say in a sentence what would be much more colorful if you saw it.” They had a blast. They’ve been on set since Season 1. I have a picture of my daughter standing next to the horse that gets torn apart and my son sitting on the tank that Rick crawls under. For them, they’ve been here since day one. I looked at the schedule and said, “Hey, you know, there’s a scene that you guys could potentially be a part of and you don’t have to be zombies,” because they were like, “Oh, we don’t want to wear the contact lenses.” They had a good time, and they love the show.
The episode is dedicated at the end to James Heltibridle. Would you tell us about him?
James was a props person on the show. Two seasons ago, he was our apprentice in makeup effects. He was a young kid, really sweet kid, just wanted to get into the movie business and work his tail off to do some great work. And he was killed in a car accident in November, I believe while we were shooting Episode 16. I spoke to his father and I spoke to his mom, and it was heartbreaking, because he was a wonderful kid, and he had literally just gotten his first job as a prop master. He had left The Walking Dead that week to go work on another show and was killed in a car accident. As the show, we felt it was important to pay tribute to him. He was a really great kid.
The Walking Dead airs Sundays at 9 p.m. on AMC
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