We haven't seen much of T-Dog lately. Where's he been? What's next for him? [Ed. note: This interview took place before last week's shocking episode.]
I had a conversation with Glen Mazarra, our showrunner, we had a long chat in his office, and he basically apologized for not expounding on T-Dog's character, but I explained to him, I'm just happy to a part of this show. I mean, this is the biggest show in basic cable history! This show's The Walking Dead, based on the comic book The Walking Dead and all the characters from the comic book. I'm the only one who's not in the comic, and I understand thatyou got to develop those characters first. There's a following for those characters. So Glen says we're gonna work our way through T-Dogif T-Dog survives, of coursewe'll find out more about his background, where he comes from, if he has a family, that type of stuff. He's on a spiritual journey, trying to figure out if he can make it through this post-apocalyptic world with his humanity intact. We'll see if that happens.
Last summer The Walking Dead went through a very well publicized showrunner shakeup; how did that affect the atmosphere on the set?
It didn't affect it much. You know, everyone dealt with it in their own personal way. We felt the energy, the energy was transferred a bit, but as far as talking about it, there wasn't much talk about it. They called us in to a meeting, the cast, and everybody came down, president and vice president of AMC, and [then-new showrunner] Glen, and just kinda put it out there, exactly what was going on, and after that, it was just business as usual: We have to put out a quality product, do our very best for our fans, continue to do work that they enjoy. So that was our focus. That's what we do, that's our job. So our job is not to get caught up in that situation.