Rick and Peter finally came to blows in Sunday’s penultimate episode of The Walking Down and in a recent interview, Andrew Lincoln shared details about the epic fight.
Speaking to EW, Lincoln discussed the methodology behind the brawl which finally ended when his character was cold-cocked by Michonne (Danai Gurira).
That was such a physically and emotionally charged scene. How do you get yourself ready for something like that?
“It feels like the story’s been heading to this point for a few episodes. When I read the script I knew that there was a big thing that needed to be tackled with pretty much everything that I had—like you say, physically and emotionally. It’s amazing how playing this guy for five years now and also having relationships with a lot of the principal cast that go beyond the story—they’re very deep relationships with crew and cast. I mean you can feel it on set. It was funny because one of the new actresses whose joined us, she came up to me after the day and she said, “I haven’t been on a set like that. That’s a film set you’ve got going on because the crew are silent.” I think the crew is silent because they know that I’ve got to do my job, you what I mean? They know that there’s a big scene. In fact, that scene could have been, and we spoke about it, it could have been the season finale just because of what happened in the context of the story.”
What was it like working with Mike on this scene?
“Mike was really, really good in this episode. It was the first time I had the opportunity to work with Mike, but he knows me so well because he’s been looking through the camera for so long [as director of photography]. He kind of gave me a few whispered notes in between different setups—just to sort of move me in different directions and keep it fresh, because I think the difficulty with doing a scene like that is to keep it alive—to keep it real because it’s kind of like an endurance. That’s because we were doing it from countless different angles all day. I think he was really, really helpful in keeping it alive. And it changed. There’s a lot of stuff that you saw at the start that was probably too big for the actual cut maybe. I don’t know because I don’t watch the show, but it was fun to do because it’s kind of exciting to just keep pushing it into different places.”
To read the rest of the interview, visit EW.com
