Action: SEAL Team
Staying fashionable has never been as gory, messy and difficult as on The Walking Dead.
The Walking Dead Season 8 Mondays FOX (*125) 21:00
“I had to read all The Walking Dead graphic novels by Robert Kirkman to get my head wrapped around the world I was entering!” laughs costume designer Elaine Montalvo. We called her in Atlanta on the set of The Walking Dead (2010- current), where she has been kitting out Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) and the other characters for season 8. She worked on big-budget thriller The Bridge (2014) but says that “this show is on a whole other level! It’s scary – literally and figuratively!”
What do season 8’s costumes tell viewers? We tell a story with each and every character – and this time round it’s all-out war with Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan). At the same time, I had to make costumes that are battle friendly. I had to look at the pants, the types of jackets and even their boots. Talking about boots, for example… how many does each actor get? For Andrew (as lead character Rick), they’re one- ofa-kind. They were bought at a secondhand shop and the company who made them had stopped production. We had to call them up and ask them to make us six pairs specially… just for Andrew! They get worn a bit after every fight scene and then we have to patch them up – all six in the same spots. [Laughs] Is it the same with the clothes? More or less. There are about 12 for the main characters – we have to dye and paint them to look dirty and shred them for a scene, so we keep some in storage, just in case the original is needed again. Atlanta is hot and humid. Do you wash the outfits to at least make them smell okay for scenes? [Laughs] We try not. When we do, it’s after a few days between takes. We use an old stage trick to mask the smell – we douse some of the clothes in alcohol. But we’re so used to the heat and smell, it doesn’t bother us now.