A WORK IN PROGRESS
Actor opens up about his juicy role in Fear the Walking Dead
Fear the Walking Dead Sundays, AMC On the phone from his home in California, there is a hint of youthful impatience to Lorenzo James Henrie.
Specifically, the 23-year-old actor seems eager to reveal more than he should about how the second half of Season 2 will play out for young Chris Manawa in AMC’s Fear the Walking Dead. As fans know, Chris’s character arc has been one of the most intriguing aspects of the second season. In a series about dysfunctional families dealing with a zombie apocalypse, this is no small thing.
As Season 2 progressed, viewers have watched Henrie’s character, once described as “the angriest kid in town,” morph from a bitter but rather run-of-the-mill teenage child of divorce into something a little more sinister.
“Chris is at a point in this series and in the second half of the season where there is no returning back to the old ways,” says Henrie. “He is convinced of his ways. He is convinced of the new laws and nature of this universe and he feels sorry for his father because his father is still trying to hold onto the past and fix everything.”
Is many ways, Chris has come to represent some of the central themes in the Walking Dead shows. How far would you go to protect loved ones? Who gets to decide who lives or dies? How far would you go to ensure your own survival? Finally, what impact does the weight of all these questions have on your psyche?
Chris began the series simmering with resentment against his father Travis (Curtis Cliff ), who he blamed for his parents’ divorce. Since the chaos hit and the zombies arrived, Chris has watched his mother die, killed at least two people and begun to show signs of being deeply unhinged.
As the first half of Season 2 ended in May, father and son had separated themselves from the group of survivors after Travis realized Chris was in need of serious help. Things are about to come to a head, Henrie promises.
“You are going to see a very epic second half with Chris,” he says with a laugh. “You are going to see some crazy stuff happening.”
Henrie is relishing the opportunity to showcase the “crazy stuff.” He comes from a showbiz family; his older brother David is also an actor who co-starred with Selena Gomez in the Disney Channel’s Wizards of Waverly Place for four years, his mother is a talent agent and his father is a producer. But while the actor has had small roles in the past, landing a lead in Fear the Walking Dead has been his biggest role to date.
“It’s been something that I could have never imagined,” he says. “Every actor has something in their head that they want to play, a career path that they want to follow. Who doesn’t want to be like Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert Downey Jr.? Playing Chris has been fun. It’s been challenging because I’ve never done anything like this before. And also, it’s been fun playing the bad guy. The bad guy gets a lot of attention.”
Is Chris really a bad guy? And, if so, how far will he go? Obviously, Henrie can’t divulge anything about future episodes. But it’s clear that his character’s transformation is far from over.
“I think it was a slow progression,” says Henrie. “But once Chris realized that no one is going to help him and no one has accepted him, when he left and ran away I think he finally felt free. In the first seven episodes (of Season 2), Chris did things to try to help. But they didn’t help and just made him look worse.”
Fear the Walking Dead has been renewed for a third season to air in 2017. Still, as with any actor participating in AMC’s post-apocalyptic worlds, Henrie’s future on the show is far from certain. The idea that anybody can go at any time has always been a central dynamic in the Dead shows. But Henrie, who recently began a production company with his brother and father to develop his own projects, says having the series on his resume will be a long-lasting career bonus no matter what happens.
“With this genre, if the writers see potential in something that is best for the show they will take that opportunity right away,” he says. “That’s what I’ve learned the most, accepting the fact that anybody can go and you have to count your blessings and give your best performance each day. Also, it’s such an amazing platform for any actor. On the Walking Dead, you look at (actor Jon Bernthal, who played Shane Walsh for the first two seasons of Walking Dead). He is now The Punisher (on Netflix’s Daredevil). It’s such a launching platform for everyone.
“So if anyone dies,” he adds with a laugh. “They are going to be OK.”
You are going to see a very epic second half with Chris. You are going to see some crazy stuff happening.