The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live
The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live: In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Andrew Lincoln and Danai Gurira discuss how their TV spinoff, which debuted in the fall, adapted one of the most shocking scenes from Robert Kirkman’s original comic book series.
All fans of The Walking Dead can instantly recall a handful of legendary moments. Something like Negan showing up with a bloody baseball bat, or the jail crumbling. One of the major comic book events was Rick Grimes losing his hand, which was severed during his first meeting with The Governor. However, people who just watch the AMC TV series and never read the comic books by Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard missed out on this significant event.
Andrew Lincoln, who was last seen seemingly dead in action (but actually alive, if not well, in a chopper flying toward the unknown), triumphantly returns in the first moments of The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live as Rick Grimes. In his first on-screen appearance since a fleeting cameo in the Walking Dead main finale, what will Rick do? In a desperate move, he severed his own hand, giving comic book fans a big wink in the process.
Lincoln co-stars with Danai Gurira as Michonne, and the two of them serve as active executive producers (pardon the clumsy word choice). When they first started talking to series architect Scott M. Gimple about how to carry on Rick and Michonne’s narrative, they decided to remove Rick’s hand from the table.
Lincoln tells The Hollywood Reporter, “I’ve been banging on about this for years.” “My goal has been to have my hand severed!”
The storyline unfolds several years after Rick’s departure from The Walking Dead, where he, the former Alexandria leader, finds himself reluctantly enlisted as a soldier for the Civic Republic Military (CRM). The CRM stands as one of the final strongholds of human civilization. However, a significant issue arises – the CRM is somewhat malevolent. They display a willingness to harm innocent individuals if it ensures the safeguarding of their society’s secrets, which they aim to nurture and expand for the prosperity of future generations of humanity.
Early in the first episode, viewers are introduced to Rick just after he starts his forced servitude and finds himself trying to elude capture as an operation is underway. Unfortunately, the tracking device is attached to his hand, and the only way he can escape is to remove the gadget, which means removing the hand. And so he does just that, cutting off his own hand, cauterizing the wound in a blazing zombie’s hollow, and coming close to fleeing.
“When we gathered around two years ago,” Lincoln recalls, “we discussed how to approach this. Danai rightly pointed out that we have these two characters who left the main show in search of each other. If we’re returning, what elements do we want to incorporate?”
Lincoln, on his part, had advocated for removing Rick’s hand several years back. Had the AMC series adhered more closely to the source material, this alteration would have occurred in season three, particularly during Rick’s initial encounter with David Morrissey’s Governor. Previously, Robert Kirkman expressed regret about the decision to amputate Rick’s hand in the comics. However, with only six episodes of “The Ones Who Live” in the pipeline and an uncertain future beyond that, Lincoln and Gurira felt that the time was ripe to bring this narrative change to fruition.
This isn’t simply a simple nod. It’s preserving the legacy,” Lincoln explains. It is Kirkman’s action. It is the character of the world in which we find ourselves. Superheroes are not these people. They are people in dire circumstances who resort to terrible measures to preserve their own and those around them’s lives. These actions can range from the clever to the horrifying. I was therefore eager to take on this challenge and, ideally, have a very unexpected opening act that leaves audiences thinking, “Well, we’re in for a bit of a ride here.” This is not like that. This is serious peril.
However, there were some reservations on set regarding the propriety of carrying out Rick’s behanding even in the run-up to the pivotal decision. In fact, Lincoln outperformed fellow Love Actually graduate Bill Nighy, one of his close pals. “Not the science guy,” Lincoln snaps to attention. “What do you think about me taking my hand off?” I asked him. He said, “What a brilliant idea!” In the comics, he pulled it off! And when I told him it was in the first episode, he replied, “Well, that’s a terrible idea.”
Prior to the sequence, Lincoln and his crew had a difficult first night of filming in the bitter cold, where no notion was too ridiculous to make an amusing film. Lincoln laughs as he recalls, “If you’re half the method actor you pretend to be, and half the producer, you might do it for real, it saves a lot of time.” Jokes aside, though, there were grave concerns—that is until his co-star and executive producer Gurira intervened and offered a sobering assessment.
Gurira identifies himself as Rick Grimes to THR. It’s been eight or nine years since he left. We are aware of him as a man who would stop at nothing to reunite with his loved ones. In actuality, this is the most obvious, character-specific explanation for why he hasn’t completed the task yet. It effectively re-connects Rick and the audience. He would go to any lengths to reunite with Michonne. He would go to any lengths to reunite with his family.
Any last-minute misgivings Lincoln had vanished quickly after discussing it with Gurira. It’s really character-driven, he claims. “It makes the time apart acceptable. The choice is an emotional one. It’s not about [shock], it’s about wanting to get back to your heart.
So, how does Rick’s life unfold with just one hand? Firstly, he’s equipped with a sophisticated new prosthesis, enhanced to the maximum by the CRM. This ensures that Rick’s action scenes not only remain intact but may even see an improvement. Lincoln tantalizingly hints at what lies ahead for Rick’s newly severed limb, teasing, “I don’t want to spoil anything, but there’s a moment later on in the other episodes… no, I can’t.”
Furthermore, the bulk of the series unfolds years after Rick’s impactful decisions, and he finds himself more deeply entwined with the CRM than either he or the audience might anticipate. Whatever unfolds beyond his reunion with Michonne, the actors express no regrets about paying homage to one of the most iconic moments from “The Walking Dead” comic books.
“Forgive me, Mr. Kirkman,” Gurira adds, “but I actually think this was better than the comic books!”
The six-episode season of “The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live” releases new episodes on Sundays at 9 p.m. on AMC and AMC+. For a quick recap of Rick and Michonne’s story, you can refer to this link.
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