Too easy, it turns out.
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It just grinds everything to a halt.
Credit: Gene Page/AMC
Youre like, its so strange; Its such a normal world.
Were going to have to go out and kill people.
Then it becomesDie Hard.
Gene Page/AMC
It goes from light and airy to be the nighttime raid on the compound.
Its almost like Carol was having a little vacation there.
Yeah, but whats nice about it is shes not in disguise anymore.
Carol really wants to be this person.
She kills the walker and then she gets splattered with blood and we see her in the closet.
She chooses that sweater for a very specific reason.
Shes not going to old Carol mode.
Shes trying to escape it and she cant.
It weighs on her.
Thats why she wakes up in the middle of the night and sits down and writes the list.
Shes tallying the number of people that shes killed.
Theres a lot of depth in whats going on with Carol.
She feels that Maggie is being reckless by even leaving the safety of Alexandria.
Melissa McBride and I spoke about that.
Its all coming full circle to Sophia there, isnt it?
Its what began her journey into transition.
Its a great episode.
I had a blast shooting it.
So we made really beautiful fake prosthetic heads.
So when Steven came up, he saw the hand with a ring on it and this head.
And thats not even in the shot.
Its not in the shot.
It was done purely as a equipment to get Steven to the next level.
Tell me about creating those.
The Gregory head is actually a cast of my head.
Lets see what we have in stock that looks as close to Xander as it can be.
It ended up being a mold of my head.
So that head that he picks up is actually a fake head of me!
I cant remember who the third one is, but Im in good company.
Norman kept saying he wanted the heads when we were done shooting.
I said weve got to wait until the picture is logged.
I laughed so hard when we shot that scene.
Now Im going to keep picturing Andrew Lincoln punching you in the face during that scene.
Maybe he was getting out some aggression there, Greg.
I didnt feel it.
We were going to see this weird montage of her cutting the hair and shaving it.
He walks around and hes like, What do we got?
Theyre looking at the heads and hes like, its such an absurd plan that it actually works.
I want to backtrack a little bit, as we were taking about Carol earlier.
But what about this love connection between Carol and Tobin?
Where did this come from?
I think its sweet.
I think its an effort for Carol to sort of normalize everything in her life.
Shes suffering from post-traumatic stress.
Its a really sweet scene.
I like the way that she leans in and kisses him.
Tobin kind of puts it out there.
Theres so much going on that it just shows you the struggles of existing in a new society.
I have no idea.
NEXT:Nicotero on the assault on the Saviors and that ending[pagebreak]
Yeah, its brutal.
The show always has a very specific rhythm.
What theyre about to do is so horrendous and its so horrific.
Theyre about to go into this compound and murder people in their sleep.
Thats why the episode is structured that way.
Heres a real moment about two people breaking up.
Then theres this scene with saying goodbye between Tara and Denise.
Then you have Maggie and Glenn talking about how they need to be together when theyre doing these things.
It also shows a very sophisticated confidence in Rick.
Rick really believes that theyre capable of anything.
Their confidence is high.
Theyre getting themselves into a pretty good place where they genuinely believe that they cant be beat.
Why cant we just talk to them?
Ricks like, Were putting it to a vote.
I love the fact that Rick is not laying down the law.
Rick puts it out there for the group.
Its the end of the Ricktatorship.
It really is the first time that we get a sense that Alexandria is a democracy.
Nobody argues with it.
Morgan stands up because we know Morgans philosophy.
His philosophy is, all life is precious and maybe we can avoid this.
Nobody else agrees with that philosophy.
Lets talk about the big assault on this Saviors compound.
Tell me how you wanted to stage this.
Well, the trick with this whole action sequence is that its the race to the armory.
They break up into separate groups.
They have to get to the armory because they remember that thats what the Wolves did.
If somebody isnt in there and its not the armory, they move on.
Its Glenn and Heath that are trapped in the armory when theyre chased down the hallway.
I really was very adamant about using blanks for everything because I wanted the gunfire to be real.
I wanted the actors to react to the sounds of the gunfire and muzzle flash.
They knew what they were doing, and if they came upon anybody they killed them.
It was a little miniDie Hardaction scene.
If somebody runs in front of you and you fire blank ammunition into their back, thats bad.
Somebody could get hurt.
So we had to do a lot of rehearsals.
That compound that we shot was a real location that we found.
I remember it was about 45 minutes away from our studio.
There was a little discussion about Its a really long drive.
I said, This gives us some serious production value.
This place is beautiful.
We need to find a way to make this work.
The episode then ends with this voice on the radio that announces they have Carol and Maggie.
What can you say about that and where this is going?
The one thing that you could never do in this world is underestimate your opponent.
Clearly, Maggie and Carol were distracted enough to be overcome, and they let their guard down.
