Over its first five seasons, Fear The Walking Dead has slowly but surely started interconnecting the universes between its show and AMC’s flagship zombie series The Walking Dead. More recently, the show has made headlines bringing in two characters from the original series: Morgan and Dwight.
While the two actors, Lennie James and Austen Amelio, shared a show together previously, apparently they never actually shared a scene while they were on The Walking Dead. It took until they filmed their first scene on Fear The Walking Dead to actually speak words together on the small screen!
While at San Diego Comic-Con this year, Lennie James told the whole story, revealing,
It was surreal because it wasn’t until we were shooting Fear The Walking Dead and shooting a scene that we realized we had never actually done a scene together before. Never spoken words together. We had to leave Virginia, Atlanta and walk halfway across the country to do a scene together. It was a lot of effort, but it was well worth it. I was glad Austin was around. He was actually my first phone call when moving to Fear because he's Austin from Austin. And that's where we shoot it!
You’d think while filming with an ensemble cast, the writers would enjoy finding ways to bring different characters together, but given the constant movement and change of geographical locations on both The Walking Dead and Fear The Walking Dead, it’s actually fairly easy to see how two popular characters might not do any chit-chatting onscreen.
Luckily for both, Fear The Walking Dead has more recently prioritized bringing in characters and Easter eggs from The Walking Dead universe in order to further the “merging” of characters from both shows.
Executive producers Andrew Chambliss and Ian Goldberg also spoke out during Fear The Walking Dead’s Hall H panel about the merging of the two worlds, noting it’s been a continued focus for the series. Ian Goldberg also talked to the audience about the "cool thing" about intertwining both worlds, noting,
That's what was really exciting. As Austin says, given the mission that Dwight was on when he left The Walking Dead and the story that we told with John and June last season it was this perfect intersection of stories where they were in the perfect position to help each other. So that's the cool thing about being able to connect the worlds.
Sometimes it's hard for television shows and movies that are a part of larger franchises to figure out how to connect to the larger universe while still being unique and growing in an original direction. Fortunately, Fear The Walking Dead has been able to find that balance by incorporating the right number of characters and the right number of references. As a result, Morgan and Dwight finally sharing the same scene feels not only warranted but sensible.
You can catch both The Walking Dead and Fear The Walking Dead on AMC.
