There’s One Ridiculous ‘Walking Dead’ Moment They Cut From The Season Premiere 

There’s One Ridiculous ‘Walking Dead’ Moment They Cut From The Season Premiere

Greg Nicotero breaks down the season six premiere.

Have you caught your breath yet after that insane season premiere of “The Walking Dead?” Neither have we, but thankfully to help process all your emotions, MTV News hopped on the phone with the episode’s director, Greg Nicotero, to discuss everything that just went down in Alexandria — and outside.

Spoilers for “The Walking Dead” season premiere beyond this point.

Oh, and before we begin, if the first question looks familiar, that’s because we printed the first half on October 8 — but had to cut out the hugely spoiler-filled elements in the second half. Read on to find out what Nicotero has to say about Rick becoming Shane, premiering at Madison Square Garden, the laugh-out-loud moments… And of course, that horn at the end of the episode.

MTV News: Fans certainly spend a lot of time talking about whether Rick is the good guy or the bad guy of the show now… Certainly in the world of the show, it seems he’s been proven correct; but behind the scenes, how do you guys discuss in the writer’s room?

Greg Nicotero: I don’t know if correct is the right way to look at that because, same as Shane, they make the decisions for the right reasons — but what we’ve definitely seen in the past 5 seasons, in terms of Rick Grimes is… There is no hesitation to take a life, if it that means it protects a life in that group. And going down that dark path of last year’s theme was, how far can you go before you’re not a human being anymore?

Rick went pretty deep into it after getting out of Terminus, and then losing Beth, and losing Tyreese, and the people that they lost through the season — and then he gets to Alexandria and he’s like, “I don’t care what they say, I’m taking his place because this is where we need to stay to survive.”

So it’s a fascinating story line to basically know that this guy would do whatever it takes, and in his mind they go about it the wrong way. It’s the same with Shane, Shane [had] the same feeling in season two… He just went about it the wrong way. With Rick, he has that freak out when he’s in the middle of the street pointing the gun at everybody — he’s not wrong, those people are lambs and there are wolves outside, literally, wolves, at the end of last season — and Rick is like, “listen if you guys don’t wake up you’re dead. Somebody will come in here and they will try to slaughter you.”

He doesn’t even understand how they can’t see that. Because that’s what’s insane, that they can’t see that they have been completely shielded from everything.

Of course in the first episode, I remember asking Scott Gimple last year, “I don’t buy it man, how is this place not overrun with zombies where every other place has been?” Then we open with this quarry and you go, “oh! That’s why,” because this quarry that was to the east of Alexandria, there was just enough noise coming out of the quarry to draw walkers away from the fences of Alexandria into the quarry — and once they went in, they couldn’t get out again.

MTV: Well, let’s talk about the opening of that episode, because the scope is insane. Because of the Madison Square Garden premiere, was there an eye to making this episode as big as possible — or was it just a happy coincidence?

Nicotero: No, it was a happy coincidence. I don’t think we even knew about Madison Square Garden when the script was being written back in March. I know we were talking about the possibility of doing an hour long episode, instead of an hour and a half long episode. But it was important to all our producers, and particularly Scott and I, that we come out of the gate with a really bold way to tell this story that was unlike anything that we had done before.

I love that Scott talks about reinventing the show every eight episodes, and that the show never feels the same. The people that feel the show

feel the same don’t really understand that it does shift themes, and it does shift paths very often. We don’t stay in places too long.

If we stayed in the prison too long, Gabriel’s Church too long, Terminus too long… The story continues to morph and to grow, so I feel like this season premiere gives you that great scope and that great, epic action feel — but it also gives you the opportunity to really get into what Rick’s state of mind is, what Morgan’s state of mind is, what everybody’s state of mind is after witnessing Rick just shoot Pete in the face… And realize Deanna knows, they need Rick in his group, there’s nothing that they can do, they need them to survive.

MTV: Can you talk a little about the decision to film the episode in two parts? How difficult was it to film those two sections… And it seemed like the black and white sections were am homage to the comic books, is that accurate?

Nicotero: Yeah, I would say so. There’s a lot of homages to the graphic novel, and that material. We wanted to make sure that the non-linear storyline was visually apparent when we were shifting from one timeline to the other. It is tricky, and it is challenging, and we don’t want our audience to get confused.

In fact, what I like about the episode is, we start with the end of the episode, and as you go through you start putting the pieces together to figure out how exactly they got to that particular point. I love that idea, that our audience and viewers are dedicated enough, and they want to put the story together, they don’t want it to be so laid out for them.

We had talked about a version where the flashbacks were initially going to be desaturated, and the present day scenes were going to be over-saturated. The first test that we did, Scott and I looked at it and were like, “Wow, it’s like watching a weird version of ’The Wizard of Oz’,” because the color of the over-saturated present day scenes were so vibrant. They had so much life to them that when you were looking at a zombie horde marching along the road, they were all colorful and cheery. I thought they were going to break out into a song, it just didn’t work.

So in our first test, we played with that… Our world is never vibrant, there’s always this muted feel to “The Walking Dead,” so going to the opening shot where he pulls the trigger, we rip the color out and de-saturate it to black and white — and then go into the flashbacks. It’s a really great device to let our audience know, okay, this is what has happened, and what has got us to this point? We go right into the color and the action and you’re in the middle of it.

MTV: Not that there haven’t been moments of humor on “Walking Dead,” but this episode had actual, laugh-out-loud jokes. Dark humor, certainly, but from Carol’s lines, to Rick shutting down Father Gabriel, it was way funnier than usual. Is that something you had on your mind this season, to throw a little lightness in there?

Nicotero: As a matter of fact, there’s one thing that didn’t end up in the episode that I laughed out loud when we were shooting. It’s when Rick, Morgan and Michonne walk up to the wall, and Morgan says, “you know I had a peanut cluster back in my house and it disappeared, do you have any idea where it went?” And Michonne’s like, “nope, no idea,” and walks away. It was a funny beat, and we did one take where Morgan is standing there, and he looks up at Rick and Rick just doesn’t make eye contact and walks away. Morgan just stands there shaking his head like “motherf–kers.”

And I laughed out loud when we did it, it was this weird sort of quirkiness in the middle of these 30 thousand walkers that are headed for Alexandria. It was so outrageous, and was just a fun, light moment, you need to have those light moments. So, I shot an extra take where we actually made it even more comedic than it was written. I don’t remember why it didn’t end up in the episode, but I thought it was hilarious.

MTV: Let’s talk about the horn at the end of the episode… My guess is we’re going to jump back in time and see what’s going on with that — and it may not be exactly what we think it is.

Nicotero: There will be a little bit of shifting, in terms of, when the horn sounds at the end of one, we will back up our clock for a little bit for episode two, to get an opportunity to see what that is, and how that happens. But nothing more than what we haven’t done in previous seasons, usually a standalone episode here or there. Episode two picks up, probably half an hour before episode one ends.

Writer/Editor at MTV News. You can follow him on Twitter, but not in real life because that would be weird.