FX master Greg Nicotero has gone from testing the waters as a director in The Walking Dead's second season to the series' go-to director for major episodes. That continues in Season 6, where he directed the first episode and I recently caught up with Greg Nicotero to talk about the making of the walker-filled episode, as well as what's to come.
The Walking Dead Season 6 premiere had more walkers than we've ever seen in a single episode. What can you tell me about the making of this episode?
Greg Nicotero: This is one of those instances where having a makeup effects background certainly worked in my favor. I've spent upwards of 20 years designing visual effects sequences to add scale and scope to everything that we've done for other directors. In this instance, it really was about me sort of breaking down the quarry sequence and saying: "How can we make this sequence feel gigantic and huge?"
I designed shots and I designed sequences, but I use the analogy of going to a lion's cage and fighting a lion. I remember going into the cage and I remember coming out of the cage with a bunch of scratches and scrapes and kind of bloody, but I don't remember the actual fight. It was really just relentless because we shot that entire episode in 11 days. I think we have two days in the quarry and had a couple of days at Alexandria.
Andy Lincoln and I described this episode as a monster movie where the monster is this walker horde that forces everyone to bond against their common enemy and fight. The first analogy when Andy and I started talking about this episode was, "This is a monster movie. This is Jaws. You're going in to fight the shark and you guys need to ban together and fight it or you're all going to die."
I thought Ethan Embry did such a great job in this episode. It's a shame he had to go so soon.
Greg Nicotero: On set with Andy Lincoln, we were shooting the confrontation with Ethan Embry. You can always tell when Andy is excited because when he'll say, "You know, he really is a fine actor. I think we should keep him. I don't think we should kill him." I said, "Well, Andy, that's absolutely unfortunate because we already shot his death scene."
As a fan of the comic book series, how excited are you to be able to tackle some of the new characters and locations that are coming up?
Greg Nicotero: We want Alexandria to be looked at as an oasis in the middle of this giant dead world. In the last shot of 601, where the camera cranes up and up and up and we're just seeing more and more and more and more zombies, you just realize that that Alexandria is a little island in the world outside. The threats continue to come. How are they going to survive it?
What's fun for me is every episode I've directed is completely different than the previous episode. Last season, I have the big action escape from Terminus. Then I had this episode with Tyreese that was very sort of surrealistic and very gentle, and then Alexandria. I'm constantly delighted at the scripts that I get from the writers and the performances that I get from the actors. It's just never ceases to be a great learning experience for me and fun to do.
How many episodes are you directing this season?
Greg Nicotero: I've done three episodes so far and I'm directing the finale. I generally direct four episodes per season and, by the end of this year, I think I will have directed almost an entire season worth of The Walking Dead.
Thanks, as always for chatting with me. Before we go, can you give our readers a little tease of what's next?
Greg Nicotero: This season is relentless. The first episode wasn't just, "It's going to be a big, giant epic episode and then you're going to get a chance to catch your breath." There's not really much opportunity this season to catch your breath. The punches keep coming over and over again. I'm really excited to see how people respond to it.
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