Given how many TV shows don’t actually film in the actual area they take place in, it was refreshing to visit set of Fear the Walking Dead where they were filming scenes set in Mexico that were being filmed... in Mexico!
It was an early morning on this spring day in Rosarito, Mexico as the cast and crew get to work on a scene you’ll see in this coming Sunday’s episode, “Los Muertos.” Having sat out the Nick-centric midseason premiere, “Los Muertos” catches us up with Madison (Kim Dickens), Alicia (Alycia Debnam-Carey), Ofelia (Mercedes Mason) and Strand (Colman Domingo), as we see what their next step is, now that they’ve lost track of everyone else they were traveling with – or as Mason joked, they’d been split into “The cool kids and the not-cool kids. Obviously we’re the not-cool kids!”
(L-R) Kim Dickens, Alycia Debnam-Carey, Mercedes Mason and Colman Domingo in Fear the Walking Dead.
As you might imagine, when we pick up with them, this group of four's first instinct is to head back to Strand’s boat. But in the scene I watched them film, on an ocean-side cliff, they discover there’s a major impediment to this – one that has them at a loss over what to do, until Alicia comes up with a suggestion.
So how is the group handling their new dynamic? Very differently, depending on the character, with some rising to the occasion more than others.
After filming at the beach was finished for the day, we returned to Fear the Walking Dead’s local studio in Mexico -- Deep Blue Sea, Pearl Harbor and Master and Commander are among the many water-based projects to film here since James Cameron had a ton of stages and tanks built to accommodate water-based scenes for Titanic -- where I chatted with Debnam-Carey in front of the full size exterior Abigail boat built for the show. In fact, thanks to the tank currently being emptied for cleaning, we were standing on the floor of the tank, in what is usually a huge body of water.
Said Debnam-Carey “The split starts to cement a kind of metamorphosis for Alicia. She finally has to come to terms with who she is, on her own, without the group. I think there’s a lot of dynamics already established going into it because there’s a family and a hierarchy of some sort and relationships are established. Finally, now that those are broken down, she can think of herself and where she’s going and what kind of person she’s going to be as a leader. That’s what’s really great about that splitting off. It’s also nice because we get to go in depth a little, more character by character, into their own little personal journeys.”
On the other hand, Dickens told me, “For Madison, she’s completely unmoored at this point. She’s untethered. It’s been two episodes now that Travis has taken off and Nick has as well so she’s really just coming apart and I find that in these moments, the moments today are like for Madison, sort of a desperate moment of trying to not have to come to terms with the fact that he’s gone.”
Ofelia too is coping with loss in an even more direct manner, thanks to the death of her father. Said Mason, “Ofelia is in the worst place possible,” noting she has lost both of her parents very close together, while also learning her father wasn’t who she thought he was. Now, Mason explained, “She’s at a loss with strangers. These people have only gotten to know each other for less than three weeks. The entire span of this has been less than three weeks. I think Rick Grimes is still officially in a coma! So she’s at a really bad place. There is strength in numbers but now most of her group has completely split apart. The only person she has a little bit of a semblance of dare I say friendship with is Alicia. Her father told her not to trust Madison. She doesn’t trust Strand at all. Her father didn’t trust Strand. She’s now in the deep end of the pool, trying to keep her head above water. So she’s not coping well at all.”
Said Domingo, “All of these characters are experiencing [how] the world has been torn apart. We’re coming out of this oasis that Strand and [Thomas] Abigail had set up that turned out to not be so much of a oasis. The fact that everything has been compromised and his relationship with Abigail… all that stuff has been compromised. So coming out of that and coming into the scenes we’re working on now, Strand is a very different person. He’s a little unsettled trying to figure out which way to go. He’s not as in control as he had been in the first episodes.”
Continue on as Fear the Walking Dead's cast discuss more about how their characters are changing.
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