Norman Reedus talks ‘Walking Dead’
The concept of a zombie apocalypse caused by a virus seems a little less outlandish these days.
But at least one lead star of “The Walking Dead” — which returned Sunday for a bonus batch of season 10 episodes — thinks being on the run from the undead is a walk in the park compared to the real-life pandemic we’re going through.
“The thing about the show is, it’s people coming together to get through something,” Norman Reedus, who plays long-haired loner Daryl Dixon on the hit postapocalyptic horror show, told the Daily News. “The only way you could do it during a pandemic is do it by phone or by Zoom or text message. You’re not really seeing people now, so it’s very isolating. It’s different.”
The extra six episodes of season 10, which air at 9 p.m. Sundays on AMC, were the show’s first that were filmed during the pandemic. Season 10 s initial 16 episodes wrapped up in October, when the last one aired after COVID-19-related production delays.
Melissa McBride, who plays Carol, Daryl’s best friend among their group of survivors, sees some similarities between the coronavirus pandemic and the fictional lives of the show’s protagonists.
It’s not lost on her that the toilet paper and paper towel shortages brought on by stay-at-home orders put shoppers in a similar position to the series characters making “runs” for hard-tofind food and supplies while constantly dodging “Walkers” and living villains.
“My mind goes to worst case scenario all the time,” McBride said. “I think, ‘What if there’s larger pocket outbreaks and then there’s a kink in the supply chain,’ which happened in a few places. Then it’s, ‘Where am I going to get my information from? I want to know what’s going on. I want to know what the statistics are, I want to know what the guidelines are. What if we’re unable to get information?’
“‘If I have to get out and make that one run, what am I gonna get? What’s most important that I can get in a hurry?’ There was a lot of equating in the beginning, people saying, ‘I feel like I’m going on a run.’ But it’s interesting, and you can’t not think about it,” she added.
The friction between Carol and Daryl will come to a head in the upcoming episodes. The pair has always been tight, with some fans even wishing they were romantically involved, but their relationship has been strained since Carol’s quest for vengeance led to the disappearance of Connie, a deaf survivor who Daryl was also close to.
“He definitely blames her for that but always thinks, ‘I bet I could have done something to stop it,’” said Reedus, 52. “He’s that type of a guy that, ‘If I’d just went a little extra inch, maybe I could have stopped it.’ He just doesn’t give up, that guy. So, it’s definitely her fault, but there’s a little bit of blame somewhere in there, which is also super sad.”
McBride, 55, said Carol believes she is “justified for what she did and realized that there were consequences, and she’s just determined to make things OK somehow, some way.”
The upcoming episodes come on the heels of the action-packed battle between Daryl and Carol’s group and The Whisperers, survivors who sported the skins of zombies to blend in with the undead hordes to carry out the commands of their evil leader, Alpha. Now that The Whisperers are out of the picture, there’s more time for character development.
“The episodes came out very intimate, which was a good break from the craziness of the Whisperer war,” Reedus said. “We kind of get into everyone’s head a little bit.”