Don’t believe everything you see.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: My first question to you, Matt: Have you ever dabbled in ventriloquism?
MATT NEGRETE:You know what’s funny?
AMC
As a kid, as a Christmas gift, I got this Emmett Kelly ventriloquist dummy.
And I wasn’t good at it.
It was like this sad clown with the little kind of puppet mouth and you pulled the string.
As a kid, I actually kind of enjoyed it.
I was terrible at it.
My lips moved relentlessly, but yeah, it’s a funny question because I actually have.
Well, there you go.
And it was really about what are these characters ultimately going to bring to our characters moving forward?
And it’s not something we’ve really seen inThe Walking Deaduniverse before.
So, that’s something that we’ve really liked about them.
And we also loved the idea of, especially the older one, Tony, being kind of gregarious.
And he can be serious when he needs to be, obviously.
He’s a survivor in the apocalypse.
But he has some fun with it.
And how did Scott Adsit, who plays Tony, end up in the mix?
Obviously, a huge comedic background at Second City and 30 Rock, among other things.
How did he end up with you guys?
I was going through these auditions.
And his came up and I was like, “What the hell?
I’ll just stop right here.
I don’t need to see anybody else.
Let’s hire this guy immediately.”
And the great thing about him is his amazing sense of comic timing and his charisma.
And he just has this essence to him that you just want to keep watching him.
And that’s exactly what we wanted for the character.
So, it was an utter no-brainer to say, let’s bring him on as Tony.
How did you guys come up with a grift?
This is a pretty complex scheme that Percy and Tony have come up with.
So, how didyouall come up with it?
I got to hand it to the writers.
While they were coming up with a version of the grift, I was in Richmond on set.
And so I just kind of tasked them with the assignment of: These are con men.
Obviously, we want them to con our characters.
And then the writers came up with the idea of, they’ve got this truck.
And we did want to have them tied potentially in some way to the CRM.
And so they use the truck to that end.
And the writers came up with it.
And they pitched it to me and I thought it was great.
Are those actual shadow puppets or done with computers?
That was all done practically.
There are maybe I think three shots that had some augmentation to it that were via effects.
And that was just to kind of fill in some blanks in the show itself.
But I would say that 95 percent of what was on screen was practical.
And we went out to this gentleman Jim Napolitano that was put on our radar who loved shadow puppets.
This needed to seem like something that could pull off.
And so we really wanted to be kind of elegant, but simplistic at the same time.
And I’m really happy with how it came out.
And that wasn’t planned.
Hope has that moment where she thinks about telling Elton about his mother, but then thinks twice.
How much longer is she going to carry this around?
We’ll see fairly soon.
She’s not going to be able to keep it to herself.
It’s really eating her up.And what she’s kind of doing in a way is torturing herself.
She feels guilt for what she did.
So, we’ll see.
It won’t be much longer before she at least comes clean this to someone.
And I won’t say who that is, but we’ll know very soon.
Let’s talk about the post-credit scene.
This scientist, Dr. Bellshaw, answers the phone.
It seems like Elizabeth Kublek is on the other line.
Why’s she calling her, Matt?
Yeah, it’s a little vague, but it definitely seems like there is something in the works.
And yeah, then she gets this call from Elizabeth Kublek.
We’re basically tying some things together.
All these elements and bits of this greater world are going to start coming together.
And what I can say now is that something is afoot.
So, there will be more to come for sure.
Let me ask about a few specific points of what she says here.
She says, “It’ll be taken care of by the time they arrive.”
Is this scientist in New York?
We don’t know that for sure, but I would not rule that out.
This scientist could very well be in New York.
Oh, I can’t answer that.
But obviously she is expecting someone and Elizabeth is very, very interested in these someones.
Why will Dr. Bennett not be a problem?
And it seems like he’s an asset to the CRM.
So, it’s a very good question you’re asking why it might be a problem.
It might be, is he causing some problems there?
Has he already caused some problems?
Is it that he is not on board with what they’re planning?
Or can’t know?
Or does he know?
Okay, what can you say about what’s coming up next?
Coming up next, things are going to get very real, very fast coming off of episode six.
And they also have access to fuel.
Really, what we’re doing is we’re promising some future entanglements with the CRM.
And we’re going to be shot out of a cannon pretty soon.
So, things are going to get very real, very quickly.
