David Morrissey

0:00Yeah, it feels like a new season. There's been quite a bit of a break. Does it feel like one for you as well? I guess doing press for a second run in this kind of thing? It does. It feels like all starting up again, you know, here I am in LA. I hope to interview you today and I was in New York last week. So it does give that to me. Although it doesn't feel like that one was filming it, we film it without a break. So it's full on. But it does feel like you get too bright. It's great, but I also feel like you've been in the world. So it's also, you know, it's a great time to take stock and people are enjoying the show. So it's great to get back to feedback as we're going along. Yeah, when did you wrap shooting? It must have been a while ago then. Yeah, we wrapped in Lake October earlier in November. I think. Well, it's not too long ago. Okay.

0:49So you were almost, you were still shooting while the first run was going on. Yeah, the first two I think. Maybe I was going, I think it was, I was supposed to be shooting. Oh, so that's like, that would be like network TV. That's interesting. I didn't realize cable did that as well. Yeah, we do. Yeah. That's a 16 episode. So yeah, right. Well, let's just get into it because I know you've been directing lately and I'm always curious when I talk to someone who's been behind the camera and how that's changed their sensibility when they're in front of the camera has has being behind and directing shifted the way maybe you approach acting or vice versa. Yeah, very much so. I mean, I mean, I've been working for a while now and when I started, it was very much for me. I love working with

1:35actors. But it also, it made me a better actor. I think that you understand what everybody's job is on that. Not to do. Do you see you're much more used to seeing what the TV show as a whole thing, the whole creates and your path to them, what you're doing and your responsibility. So it made me aware of the whole machine and that's no bad thing. You know, the other people I've worked to do with that, they're there to get their machine rights. And I don't know. I'm also from a post-production point of view. I'd certainly learned why a director was asking for and why they were asking for it and why they needed certain angles and certain shops. And there's a more of a gaming more than understanding if it's possible for

2:25the whole thing. And that's no bad thing to have got any acting to have. Does it take you almost out of the scene when you're trying to play the scene, even when you're not directing, but just thinking about all the other stuff? Has it changed the way you maybe know? No, I mean, the great thing about it is when you're directing, you have to think about everything. You just have to think about everything at all, aren't you? That matters very, I love it. I mean, I love every aspect of it. But what's great about having directed coming back to acting, you realize that you only have one responsibility because you're there. And that gives you a concentration. So, you know, when I like being having directed, I know that it's not none of my business to go over and talk about acting, none of my business. Like that fact,

3:13that's not me. All I have to do is look at it. I have appreciation for those roles, but it's not my, I'm really just playing the string, you know, it's that thing, that's my. And now it's very liberating actually having been on the other side of the camera. Is there something you prefer at this point in your life that you see a trajectory going? I really enjoy working with writers. I enjoy or, you know, the thing about being an actor is that you come into the process way. You go, you know, the script is written usually and the sets have been chosen and your wife has been cast. You know, sometimes all those things have already done. And you also leave the process

3:58early, you know, you go away and then they edited both music on it. So what I like about directing is your, you see a project through from A to Z, you know, you're absolutely there at the beginning because I produce as well. So, you know, you know, I'm doing as working with writers or buying books and then getting scripts out of that, you know, from a blank page, then casting in myself and, you know, getting the sets myself and, you know, casting and, you know, getting people to sort of do that for me and my vision. And then you go off and you edit it and understand that it's so you're seeing something right at the beginning to the end. And I like that journey that you make creatively, it's much more creatively satisfying that journey for me. And, you know, I love acting.

4:50I am an acting, I am an acting, I feel like the enormity of that journey. Well, talking about the enormity, I mean, the way I hear you rehearse for a role and prepare for a role is extremely meticulous and there's a lot of preparation. And I love that because it's almost the way I prepare for an interview. I go into a lot of preparation before I talk with someone to get to know who they are. And it seems like you worked that way a lot before choosing a character. I do because it gives me more options. It gives me, you know, the more I sort of do research and be back story and sort of find out psychological profile of characters I'm playing and find out some sort of, you know, I try to put my characters on some sort of character and ask

5:40questions of them about their past and what their froyables are. That gives me more options as I'm playing and I mean that as I'm playing and I get to know when I'm doing something wrong, I don't feel like when I'm being asked to do something, I think I still can feel my character wouldn't be understood. And that's important for me that I know energy is and what his froyables are. The things that you're frightened of, I wouldn't necessarily be frightened of, like you make me laugh, but people are attracted to, I might be attracted to. So there's a, you know, what you're trying to do is where does that come from, particularly in something like the Walking Dead, which it all comes here. It's a world of fear and it's a world of very delicate,

6:29big, down of people, you know, that they're living in a very dangerous world and that can have a really challenging effect on them and about who survives. And not necessarily all the time, you know, if you look at a peaceful situation, you might think, God, I want to be with that guy when the chips come down. He's such a leader, he's such a great viper. When the chips come down, he might be the first guy who runs like hell. And there'll be another guy who you think, God, I didn't think he'd step up. And you don't know until you're challenged in those situations. You'll see someone in the head and head, and head, tennis ball, and they're fantastic. You put them out in front of the crown, they can't hit a thing. And another guy who's okay on

7:18the practice court, when you get a bit of the challenging situation of, you know, he's at match point, he's got the balls to bring it through. And you can't really set and guess character and tell you a test that the map to the thing for me is making sure I have all the psychological breakdown of my character's guide. Now what will happen? And that means for me, it's not too rigid, but actually what it does is it gives me more surprises. It surprises me because it's giving me more options rather than less, you know, more colors, I think. That's the important thing, is it makes me more treatment. Do you think we'll see more of the governor's back story from the actual novel in the second half of the season? You won't see it, but I think

8:08things will be revealed. I mean, I know we've been working the world of flashback. So there won't be any sort of, you know, there are no scenes that certainly perpetuate you back into a time before the event and anything like that. But I think you see more of him, more of the reason why he is like he is, you know, and I think that's important to me, of seeing a man and the reason why he is behaving in the way he is. Sure. And one of those, I guess, touching scenes was you after the loss of your daughter. We watched the episode this morning just in preparation for this. And it's such a different side to that character than we had seen up until that point, this caring man who loves his daughter but doesn't know what to do. Can you

8:58talk about preparing for a scene like that? Yeah, I mean, you know, for me, it was always that seemed just was the heart and soul of them really. I think what's interesting about the governor is that he he lost his wife before there's a way of apocalypse who lost his wife died in a car crash. And so, you know, I'd imagine that when that happened to this man, any father would have to sit down with his child and try to explain that, try to explain that loss and get through that loss with his child. And I can imagine someone saying at that point, you know, it's you and I know though, I get to you and me, it's just you and me and that he's going to look after me, nothing bad is going to happen to you, you know, that we can help each other and that she can help and at a time

9:48of grief and he can help that. But then there's a bonding between father and child because of that tragedy, which is total. So that when this terrible thing happens to becomes a worker, he's not going to give her up. She's still great promises to this girl. He's made, you know, he wants, he's talked about the future with her and promised that he will never let her go. The promise he's trying to fulfill when he's coming her hair or singing her lullabies for him. So that when she's absolutely taken away from him, then he's in trauma and I think part of where we're going in the season is we're seeing a man who is really listening and a little bit of humanity that he

10:39has is closing down very rapidly. He is angry at the world and wants revenge from the psychological point of view that really makes sense to me and we see that a lot, you know, and that is a very dangerous person. The most dangerous person, the most dangerous person is someone who has nothing to lose and I feel that the government is, if Andrea and Wilson, yeah. And, well, I lost his eye for that matter. How was I was getting used to acting with an eye patch on? Yeah, that was

11:26quite strange. I mean, like talking about surprise, I just thought, okay, that'll be fine. You have to do that. And then what it does is it's sort of a if you had a completely different chain, you lose your depth of field, but if you're different, living in the middle of Badby Hill, so he's not going to get some nice eye surgeries to make it all scarred, nice and sort of, you know, choose colors of glass eyes and stuff. He's going to wear that scarf. So he's a marked man. And I think, you know, it's something he's carrying as a badge of honor. You know, there's something that that's who he is. The world has done this to me. This is who I am. And

12:14I find it's a medieval thing, you know, that you wear your scarf as proudly you wear your scarf when you're two, you are a star. You know, a scar isn't there. It's not going to be, it's going to miss about it. And this world is about being alive or being dead. And, you know, he is still very important. I know you still like the person to attack. So we'll see some vengeance, I guess, towards her. Is there going to be a showdown? I guess there's going to have to be with Rick and the other group as well. I think, you know, there's definitely the stars that are allowing for

13:03these two communities to come onto some sort of collision course. But I think how you get those very surprising, I think that it's really good about the see the similarities between Rick and the Vietnam, you know, the Beijing order to kill him, that, morally, was the like thing. Where's in season three, he killed someone about the, you know, in the blink of an army very quickly. He just throws him out into the walkers as soon as he arrives at the prison. It's a different man. We're seeing the world is brutalizing these people. And it's about, it's about that then. And when Michonne turns up at the prison, you know, Rick doesn't

13:54know, he doesn't open the gate to make a couple puffy, you know, he absolutely beat the ship out of him and wants to know what's going on. He's a product of the world he lives in. And so, there's an element that nice guys come second, you know, and it's, I think the idea that these two communities are on a collision course, they play with it. And we play with it in the second half of season is quite surprising rather than sort of, you know, let go to war. There's another, other level to it to be played out of technique. Given the way the comic book goes, now granted the show was kind of

14:45feised off into its own realm. But knowing likely at some point you're going to get that script that says, okay, this is the end for you. What's that like as an actor knowing, like you've gone into the role knowing eventually it's going to, and don't say whether or not, you know, this happens in the second half of the season or not. But I think what's great about the show, I think one of the great things about the show is that no one is safe. No, it's not a show that's frightened of killing off its big characters. You see that with Shane and Ryan's. And you know, it's not, we never, it's not a show where you have the Star Trek moments of, you know, through the lead actors being down. And there's one guy you've never seen before and you think, I don't think he's going to make it back to the end. You know, people we know and we love them with seeing and they're on leading actors on the show, leading characters, and they get it.

15:34And that gives it the free sound I can be hearing, you know, from an obvious point of view is that never miss it. And I mean, I love the show. I think it's a breakthrough and I love being, I never want to, you know, I want to live as long as possible. But all the actors, all of us, are aware like life, but they're taking part in the family, you know, the next script that gets delivered, we might be the one. And I think that gives it particularly from an audience point of view, it gives it a reality and a show that is pitch is such a heightened world. The reality that they go through is very strong. One of those realities is the fact that no one is safe. You can't look at anything or would not want to kill him off because they might. Or how, or whatever. And that's,

16:21I think that's, that gives you the choice on the building. Would you do what? Madam, Madam, sorry, Madam, can you make that the last question? Absolutely. Thank you. So we do some call five questions, five quick questions, one word answers. Yes. Hitchcock or Kubrick? Hitchcock. Leonard or McCartney? Leonard. Your biggest influence as an actor. Yeah, everybody. Yeah. Roll your mo roll your most proud of. I'm back. And in one word, the walking dead. Oh, that's a good one. Amazing. Thank you so much, this. I really appreciate it.

17:19No, thank you.