The Big Picture

“The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon” makes a bold move by relocating the fan favorite character to France, offering a new and unfamiliar landscape for him to navigate. Director Dan Percival discusses blending European filmmaking sensibilities with the distinctly American genre of “The Walking Dead,” creating a fresh visual and storytelling language. Actor Norman Reedus’ deep involvement as a producer and his desire for a challenging role has breathed new life into his portrayal of Daryl Dixon, making the show an exciting evolution for both the character and the actor.

[Editor’s note: The following contains some spoilers for The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon.]The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon sees the fan favorite character relocated to France, where he’s washed ashore and trying to figure out what comes next while navigating a very unfamiliar landscape. Along the way, Daryl (Norman Reedus) meets a nun (Clémence Poésy) with the goal of protecting a child named Laurent (Louis Puech Scigliuzzi) who’s in her care, and the trio find themselves on a very dangerous journey as they evade foes of both the human and walker variety, all with the hope that he’ll be able to find a way back home.

During this 1-on-1 interview with Collider, director/executive producer Dan Percival talked about how the bold move of dropping Daryl Dixon in France affected the storytelling, blending European filmmaking sensibilities with a genre that’s distinctly American, having executive producer/special effects makeup guru Greg Nicotero to help with franchise consistency, further evolving the zombies, why this is such a challenging show to make, and what it’s been like to have a lead actor as involved as Reedus is with his character.

Collider: I’ve watched the whole season and it’s wild how different it feels, just by moving the franchise to a new location.

DAN PERCIVAL: That’s the biggest, boldest move, for sure. It’s like, “Let’s wash Daryl Dixon up on the beach and see how he survives.” You may as well have dropped him on Mars. I’m glad it feels different, but it should also feel familiar, as well. We put a great deal of thought into that. AMC and David Zabel, the showrunner, wanted a director and cinematographer who hadn’t shot The Walking Dead and who bought a different aesthetic to it, but who would also respect the original American show. I’ve worked both in Europe and America, so it was a nice hybrid for me to be able to let my more European filmmaking sensibilities free to play with a genre that is so distinctly American. It was a lot of fun to do that, and to find new visual language and new storytelling language to expand the scope of the series.

Image via AMC

At what point did you sign on to be a part of this? Was it back when it was originally going to be a Daryl and Carol spinoff, or was it once it had evolved into this version?

PERCIVAL: The scripts I was sent were just Norman Reedus, who’s Daryl Dixon, so it was a surprise to me too, and a delight. We were given a lot of license to reinvent our approach. There was never any time when I was told, “Look at how we did it in the original show. You’ve got to do that.” What I had for consistency, which was so useful and so wonderful, was Greg Nicotero, who came with us to France. He encouraged us to push to really embrace the France of it, the more European approach, and to and use the French language. At the same time, he was the guide to consistency, to series lore, and to how zombies behave. And then, you’ll see that there are different zombies here too, which he was very excited to be able to do, as well.

When I spoke to Greg Nicotero, he told me that he worked really closely with you on coming up with cool ideas for the show. Was it really clear and obvious what would work and what wouldn’t work?

PERCIVAL: No. Greg was super confident because there’s not a thing in the universe that he doesn’t know about, especially with zombies and prosthetic makeup, and also about what everyone else has done with zombies. He’d be like, “Oh, that’s what they did with zombies in this show, or in that movie,” partly because he very often did those, as well. But he was really encouraging and pushing the ambition of what we could achieve, what we could do, and what would still fit into the canon and lore of The Walking Dead universe. Obviously, it was a comic book before it was a television series, so he understands all the motivations. I remember having conversations with him where I asked him, “Greg, do zombies have consciousness?” He said, “No, they don’t have consciousness. Why would you have that idea?” I said, “Because they think and make decisions.” And he said, “No, they just want to eat your face.” And I said, “Okay, I get it. They can smell and see.” And he said, “Yeah, kind of. But they didn’t see so good.”

It was really wonderful for me to learn those basic rules. And then, Greg did this fantastic thing, where he had a zombie workshop in Paris, with hundreds and hundreds of people, where he was training them to be zombies. That was just fabulous. I’ve really enjoyed that collaboration. It’s been what’s kept us rooted in the original series. It’s so important that, no matter how different this is, that it still feels familiar to the core viewers. At the same time, what I hope we’re doing is also opening it up for a whole new audience to enjoy and get something different from. At the end of the day, this is a very emotional human story where, if you’d never met Daryl Dixon before, I don’t think it would matter. If you come to this show, you’ll meet a stranger in a strange land, and then you’ll learn how he got there and what matters to him, and you’ll experience that journey with him.

Image via AMC

Was there anything that you wanted to do or try with the show that either didn’t work in the current story you were telling this season, or that you just didn’t have time for, but you’re hoping could show up in a possible second season and that we still might see somewhere?

PERCIVAL: There are always ideas that the writers have. By the time I get a script, I just go to work on the script. David is the principal writer and he’ll say, “You want to do what? I’ve never done that before. That will be interesting. Okay, we can do that. How many days have we got?” It’s been a constant challenge for me. I’m a pretty experienced film and television maker, and I’ve been challenged as much on this show, as I ever have in my life, just to bring it to the screen and make it real. I don’t need any new things. Of course, there are new things, but I’m not going, “Damn it, why didn’t we do that?” I’m just going, “Wow, we can do this?” It’s so important to credit the crew and the team in Paris, who’ve been so enthused by this and so excited. Our production design department is world-class, just amazingly talented people. The biggest challenge of the show is just keeping pace with the ideas that are already there in the scripts and bringing them to life. That’s taken every ounce of experience and skill that I have, and every ounce of the experience and skill of our amazing team of cinematographers, gaffers, lighters, set designers, set painters, prop designers, and prosthetic artists. It’s just a gigantic show, in that sense.

Adding to that, what’s it like to work with Norman Reedus on this? He has played this character longer than most actors play any character in their career, and he’s somebody who also wants to be involved with the further development and the evolution of the character. What did you learn about the character from working with him and from watching him play this character?

PERCIVAL: What Norman really wanted was to be challenged. He said that in our first conversations together. He was very instrumental in hiring me. I said, I’m gonna challenge you.” And he said, “That’s great. I want to be challenged.” Unlike the [flagship] show, which is an ensemble cast, this is just him, and he carries it. We were like, “You’re gonna be working every day, on everything.” It’s very tough for an actor, but he’s really embraced it. He comes to set every day with a smile, and he’s so excited to be doing this. The scripts are great. The experience of shooting it is very different to what he’s used to. He loves that organic style. He’s very camera aware, very story aware, and very emotionally aware. He’s been a huge part of the whole process of making the show. He’s an executive producer on it. He cares deeply about the scripts, he cares deeply about the direction, and he cares deeply about the realization of every scene. He’s hugely contributed.

It’s been a joy working with Norman. He’s been such a critical asset to this, not just as an actor, but as a producer, too. And for him, it’s given him new life in this series, not just the character, but him. When you spend 11 years doing one thing a certain way, you question, “Why am I still doing this?” And then, you get a chance to evolve the character and really spread your wings, and show what you can do and what you can be. Everyone making the show is very passionate about making the show, everyone’s a fan and loves the original one, and everyone wants to see it succeed, so I hope it does.

The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon airs on Sunday nights on AMC and is available to stream at AMC+.