Hilarie Burton was worried she would make a ‘bad zombie’ over the walking dead

‘The Walking Dead’ gave viewers a deep dive into Negan’s backstory on Sunday’s final season 10, an episode that gave Jeffrey Dean Morgan some time to really shine and his real wife, actress Hilarie Burton, to play his other half on screen.

While pieces from his past in previous episodes, ‘Here’s Negan’, are all set out in a series of flashbacks highlighting his relationship with Burton’s Lucille, the namesake of his trusted bat.

The apocalypse of pre-zombie, the two did not lead a happy life: Negan was fired from his coaching job in high school after a bar fight with a student’s father – and was rather there for her when Lucille was diagnosed with cancer is. , he was too busy sleeping with her best friend to answer her calls. Yes, not great.

But as she battled cancer as she hid from the walking dead, he became a new man and a better man – one who would do anything to make sure she still got her treatments. Unfortunately, she died while trying to get her last doses of chemotherapy, and after burning down their house with her revised body inside the ground, Negan put on his leather jacket, picked up the barbed wire baseball bat and killed the men who delayed his return.

As an original story, it remained fairly close to the source material, but having Morgan’s real wife by his side definitely brought even more emotion into the storyline. TooFab caught up with Burton after watching the episode, where she joined her biggest fears in her husband’s program, praised Morgan’s work ethic and revealed what it was like to live in Rick Grimes’ house during the filming.

Whose wonderful idea was it that you were playing your husband’s wife on screen, and were you worried about collaborating on something like that?

Jeff has been saying this for years and fans will say it on Twitter and social media, and I will always act very territorial, like, ‘You’re straight, I’m playing Lucille! No one else will make him cry, that’s my job! ‘

When we got the phone call from Angela Kang and Scott Gimple late last summer, oh man, you know if you’re asking for something and you have all that bravado – like, of course, I can do it – and then you’ll get it. Oh no, now I have to show up! The script was so good, it’s the best text I could ever do, and I really wanted it to be great. Luckily, my husband is just such a good playmate. We like to surprise each other, we like to try new things and we both really want to show up prepared and go to work, to find that we have a similar version on the set – we do not like it too seriously, there is no point in acting like a drama queen if the camera is not rolling – it was a pleasure.

We had a really nice time and celebrated each other at the end of the day and went home and cooked dinner.

How was it for the two of you to film serious and emotional scenes? We find out that he cheated on Lucille before she started dying of cancer. This is not exactly light material for a couple to tackle.

We filmed it in October, after which we would all be in quarantine for a very long time. There were so many emotional things in the news and in all our lifestyles everyone was excited. Being able to utilize emotion was not necessarily difficult. For me, it was harder to control because Lucille is supposed to be, she’s the rock. She is the solid one. And the first time we took from the scene where Negan says, ‘We never give up,’ baby, they could not use my coverage on the recording because I had a mess. As he looked at me, I was like, ‘I never want you to look at me like that in real life.’ It was heartbreaking. But you also feel so proud at the moment, because you’re like, ‘Look at my baby, he’s so good!’

Can you talk a little bit about your zombie makeover? How was that process for you and how was your husband’s reaction when he saw that you all finished first?

I loved it. I loved it so much and I’m so little about it. I could not wait. I wanted them to do camera tests, I wanted them to do it like three or four different times, and they kept saying ‘calm down Hilarie, we do it every day.’ They gave me some zombie lessons and Jeff did not see me. He wanted me to hide from him, so the reaction you see on camera is his real reaction.

It put pressure on me. I was so scared he would pull the bag off my head and if I was a bad zombie I would run out. If I was not a good zombie, I would not want to destroy the emotion he has been working on all day. But you know, he delivered such a beautiful, layered performance. To testify to that, as the person who loves him the most, was awesome.

I saw your Instagram posts, did you and your family really live on the set while filming this episode?

I feel that the production was right, what can we do to ensure that they are safely in quarantine and that they do not have to handle transport to and from the set? So the natural decision was: let’s just put it up in Alexandria in one of the houses they used on the set. Eventually we lived in Rick Grimes’ house. Paola [Lázaro, AKA Princess] lived next door, other actors had a few houses. There are only 2 or 3 inhabited houses in the whole neighborhood. It was this strange summer camp atmosphere, where at night, after the crew went home, it would still be light outside – you would walk around with the dogs in the empty streets, everywhere in the trash, the apocalypse around us, 20 foot walls around the community. It was one of the most surreal experiences ever, but definitely one for the books.

Like taking quarantine to the next level.

It was so meta. We are in the real life apocalypse, we are filming the beginning of an apocalypse in this episode and we are living in an apocalyptic set. It’s whimsical, man!

They did not realize – no one had ever lived in the houses – that the shutters in Rick Grimes’ house had deteriorated and fallen apart over the years. It’s a hurricane season in October, and the wind that blows at night sounds like someone is hitting a drum against the house every night. how would anyone know that no one ever lived there, we were the guinea pigs.

In an interview with Forbes, you mention that your husband, as a person, has been insulted since he started playing Negan. How did you see people struggle with the line between actor and character … and do you think this episode can help humanize him?

The people who love Negan are going to love him even more and the people who hate him will have a hard time hating him. I’ve said it a few times, Jeffrey said it, a lot of people said it, if you followed Negan from the beginning like you followed Rick, all his decisions would make sense, it would be justified. But because he swung him halfway through the bat, it was very difficult to like him.

We took our kids to dig shows, car shows and stuff, people come up and they have to say something and wave a finger at him. I like all three versions of Negan we see in this episode because they are very different and I think it’s a testament to my husband’s talent. I’m really proud of how he was able to pick it up.

There are some bad guys in real life who play very good bad guys on TV, but it takes a very talented actor to be a kitten in real life and play a real bastard – and he is so good in it!

What is one thing you would like to know about fans, about how he approaches his work? Especially now that you’ve seen it first hand.

I’ve been able to see him prepare for work for the past twelve years, but I’ve never been with him. It was an experience I … you know when something really wonderful is happening right now and you’re like, ‘Oh my god, I’m going to remember this forever’? This is how it felt. He’s a very generous playmate and likes to make people feel good about themselves, and I enjoyed working with him. I’m not just saying it’s a good selling point, but he’s really a lot of fun. Hopefully we will do it again one day.

What wig did you wear?

Honey, I loved that rainbow wig! My daughter is definitely a daddy’s girl, it’s daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy – but when I got home in the rainbow wig, she thought I was amazing. So I play for my daughter, this is where I appeal to the rainbow wig.

Finally, how do you think you as a family would fare in a real zombie apocalypse?

I’m a prepper. I am prepared for the worst case at all times. I was a kid growing up after Red Dawn. Oh man, we must prepare for the invasion! So I feel that we are doing well. I do not want to brag about it, but Jeff and I, we can fist strangers or whatever we have to do. It will go well with us!

Season 11 of “The Waling Dead” will premiere in the summer of 2021.