You may recognize him from The Boondock Saints, but his latest undertaking is a little something you’d find a hard time escaping these days: AMC’s The Walking Dead. Norman Reedus plays Daryl, one of the remaining Atlanta survivors. We had a chance to chat with Reedus during New York Comic Con about his character’s past, the series after creator Frank Darabont’s departure and what we can expect in Season 2.
First, we’re likely to see a bit more to Daryl than the fact that he’s a skilled hunter who’s rough around the edges. Reedus said, “He’s kind of a side-winder snake. He doesn’t come directly at you. He kind of weasels past in sort of an S pattern and then strikes…I kind of play him like that because he’s an antsy, perturbed, emotionally-challenged dude.” But why is he like that? We have very little explanation of Daryl’s character available to us since he was created just for the series (unlike most of the characters who were born out of Robert Kirkman’s comic books); apparently, Season Two will uncover some of that mystery.
“You’re going to see some things revealed about Daryl’s childhood, about what sort of relationships he had that are really depressing,” said Reedus. He also mentioned that his attachment to his unpleasant (and still at-large) older brother Merle will be explained as well as “some elements of abuse he had growing up that he’s dealing with.”
In the first episode of Season Two, we can already see a somewhat softer side of Daryl compared to last season; his gruff exterior and grudges fall by the wayside a bit when he saves T Dogg and throws such vigor into finding young Sophia. Reedus said there’s a reason for that, “I think what’s happening is as the group is showing that they value him and they rely on him too, he’s starting to feel a sense of self-worth…his attitude is changing a bit in the fact that he feels wanted, when he didn’t feel wanted before – probably even when he was hanging out with his brother [Merle].”
And it seems that Reedus character is in-demand in the real world too. He shared a story about picking his son up from school shortly after Season One began airing: “I go to pick him up from school and he has this huge smile on his face…He said some of the big kids from the upper grade came up to him and said, ‘Hey, is your dad Daryl on The Walking Dead?’ And he goes, ‘Yeah,’ and they go, ‘Sweet! So cool! We really love Daryl!’” Reedus proudly stated that his son now has credit with “the big kids at school,” but other than that Reedus seems fairly nonplussed by the incredible response audiences have to his character – he said he’s just incredibly grateful for the opportunity to play Daryl.
And moving into the second season, his character isn’t the only thing shifting. We’re headed for ground-breaking zombies, like one that Reedus found particularly disgusting. “I can’t really tell you what that zombie is other than that is was extra-large and it was wet [Laughs]. That’s all I can tell you, but it had parts on it that moved in ways it shouldn’t be moving. Pretty disgusting.” I can’t even imagine what he could be talking about, but it seems that producer and zombie makeup guru Greg Nicotero doesn’t plan on slowing down his zombie rampage anytime soon, and that’s good news if you ask me.
Though Season Two is “always moving about 200 miles an hour, even when we’re standing still,” the production did hit a bit of a snag when it lost the man who started it all. With Darabont out of the picture, a new showrunner, Glen Mazzara, stepped in. Reedus assured us that the show isn’t suffering, and won’t suffer, the consequences. In fact, the shakeup may have yielded positive results for the group – which is a steep claim, so bear with me. Reedus said, “Glen didn’t just pop out of thin air, we’d already known him.” He says that Mazzara was very collaborative with the cast from the start, asking for their input constantly. “I’ll probably never know what really happened, but the result of it just made us all form a tighter circle…We never really slowed down to be honest. We sort of picked up speed and it’s been that way ever since,” he said.
We may not have Papa Frank on the team anymore, but if Reedus’ characterization is accurate (and we’re guessing it is) the team of actors, writers, crewmembers and zombie enthusiasts on the show are so dedicated to the series and Darabont’s original vision, that we’ll continue to see fantastic episodes come our way.
