‘The Walking Dead’ Q&A: Josh McDermitt On Eugene, New Cast Members & The Mullet

A snack run turned into a very sticky situation for
Eugene Porter in “The Walking Dead’s” Season 6 premiere. 

While loading up on munchies, including water crackers,
Crazy Cheese and peach cups, Eugene dropped a jar as he overheard Carter (Ethan
Embry) plotting against Rick, and found himself in grave danger. There was a
collective gasp from the huge crowd at Madison Square Garden last Friday night
(where “TWD” had its Season 6 premiere event) as Eugene was found
out. Hearing the audience’s reaction was an emotional moment for the actor
who brings Eugene to life each week on the hit AMC series – Josh McDermitt.

“We watch the show, we watch with our friends and
family and that sort of thing, but to watch it with that many people, that’s a
different experience and so to hear their reactions, to hear cheering and
screaming and all that stuff is pretty surreal,” Josh told Access Hollywood.

WATCH: Josh McDermitt: Horn Going Off On ‘Walking Dead’ Is ‘Pretty Ominous’

“Eugene comes in and he’s grabbing food off the
shelf and people are laughing, which made me laugh, and then, when he drops the
jar of food and he’s about to be found out I heard ‘Ohhhh!’ and I started to
tear up a bit — just to hear that raw reaction,” Josh recounted.

As the scene continued, there were laughs when Eugene
said “hello,” to Carter, who realized his plot had been overheard,
and a sense of shock when Carter pulled out the gun, which he aimed at Eugene’s
head. Seconds later, when the cavalry arrived on screen – Rick, Daryl and Morgan — there
was “this huge like, release of excitement,” Josh said. “People
were cheering and just tears stated to flow out of my eyes. It was like
something I’m going to remember the rest of my life,” he continued.
“It was so special to be able to just be a fly on the wall in a sense, in
that arena, and to listen to 15,000 people go nuts.”

WATCH: Josh McDermitt: Why He Got Emotional Hearing Fans React To ‘Walking Dead’ Premiere

Season 6 is poised to be the show’s biggest, introducing new Alexandrians, including Heath, who we met in the season premiere
(played by Corey Hawkins), and Dr. Denise Cloyd (played by Merritt Weaver). Access spoke with Josh about the
welcoming the new actors, the cliffhanger involving the loud horn that blared
at the end of the Season 6 premiere, and whether we’ll get to learn more about
Eugene in the weeks ahead.

AccessHollywood.com: In the premiere episode, your character met Heath
at the gate. Why did he let him in? What was it about him?
Josh:
I think
Eugene’s tired of getting beat up (laughs). Look, Eugene is starting to
understand that, ‘OK, we have crews, different teams on the road just doing
runs and stuff like that.’ Even though he wasn’t on guard duty, he probably
wasn’t briefed that this group could be coming back in that moment… I think
that Eugene lets them in because… he doesn’t want to get beat up. He kind of
figures it out, ‘OK, the way the guy’s speaking, even though he’s not saying, ‘I
know so and so is in here, I know this and that,’… if he were actually a bad
guy, he would probably try and smooth his way in a little more than this guy
who’s just like, ‘You’re really wasting my time?’ Like, ‘Open the door!’ That’s
kind of how I pictured it. Plus, if Eugene’s going to bring them in and they’re
going to start going nuts, well, there’s a lot of other people there that could
step up and save the day (laughs). I think Eugene is hoping that someone else
would do that if it all came to pass.

Access: What was it like welcoming Corey [Hawkins] to the
cast [as Heath]? I think all of you probably tried to see ‘Straight Outta
Compton,’ right? The whole world saw that movie.
Josh: We saw ‘Straight Outta
Compton’ like the week it came out. It was awesome. We had been working with
him and he had been doing a lot of press and there were certain days we could
have him and certain days we couldn’t just because he had the commitments with
‘Compton.’ He’s a great actor. …  It’s great when we get a new character,
and the actor’s welcomed into the family and they fit right in like they’ve
always been here. I don’t know that there’s ever been anybody that they’ve cast that
hasn’t really fit in and that’s kind of the great thing that our casting
directors do and Scott Gimple — they choose the best actors and it
just works out. But with Corey, there was something even more special about him
and we had been working with him long before we saw ‘Straight Outta Compton.’ And then we saw it and then, it was almost like nobody wanted to talk to him
because they’re like, ‘Dude! You’re so good as Dr. Dre. That movie was so
great!’ … He’s just a really generous, giving actor. It’s fun to see the edits
and to see everything that they kind of color the scene with because he’s
definitely given the editors a lot of choices of things to do and he’s a sweet
guy and I hope he’s around for a long time – ’cause we need all the hair help
we can get on this show.

Access: You guys have Merritt Wever in the cast now.
What was it like welcoming her on board? Obviously everyone fell in love with
her on ‘Nurse Jackie.’
Josh:
Yeah, she has the best Emmys speech in the history
of the Emmys. She’s great. She and I have a few mutual friends and it was fun
because we got to talk about our friends and they didn’t know we were talking
about them because we couldn’t say that she was on the show yet. And she’s a
real sweetheart. She’s really fun to be around and just a tremendous actor.
I’ve gone down to set a few times [when] I wasn’t working — just popped in and
watched her work because she’s pretty incredible.

PHOTOS: ‘The Walking Dead’: Characters Who’ve Died On The Show

Access: [This weekend’s] episode looks like it’s going to
pick up where this last week’s ended. There’s a horn going off.  How bad
is it?
Josh:
Yeah, it’s pretty bad. It’s pretty ominous. I think Gimple even
said that on ‘Talking Dead.’ He said, ‘Well, it’s not good.’ The great thing is
that horn — you can hear it if you’re out herding the zombies or you can hear it
back in Alexandria, and we’re definitely going to address that and the cause of
that and you know, the great thing about this show is sh*t’s about to get
crazy!

Access: We didn’t see you in the teaser. Are you in this
week’s episode?
Josh:
Well then, I’m going to keep that secret for myself. I
don’t know. …. I mean, where is Eugene? Eugene could be honking the horn. The
interesting thing with being in a community like this now is someone could
still be there and not in the episode. … The interesting thing is like, someone
can not be in the episode, but still be in the community and we could go focus
on that in another episode, like, what were they doing at this time, or what
was this group doing while this was going on? The world is expanding and it’s
exiting from a storytelling standpoint for us to be able to tell the stories
this way and to interweave them. And like I said, that horn, they heard it, we
heard it, we’re going to address it and we’re going to see what that’s all
about.

Access: Are you interested in finding out the whole side
of why [your character] interprets social situations wrong, and where the
writers have decided that comes from?
Josh:
Yeah, I asked our writers and
Scott Gimple specifically, about that – ‘Are we ever going to address some
things that I get questions about?’ I definitely have some, I don’t want to say
secrets ’cause it makes it seem like there would be this big revelation, but
there are some things that I do keep to myself as an actor, and I know, Scott
Gimple, he obviously knows them. We’ve had some conversations about some
things. I’m kind of fine with keeping those as secrets. I don’t know that
everybody needs to know everything, because then it just stops being
interesting. A great episode we had in Season 4 was when Beth and Daryl were
together and we got to know a lot about Daryl’s childhood, which it had taken
four seasons to get to that point. I’m fine with the slow burn on this. There’s
definitely some other characters I think that would take priority in terms of
getting to know them.

Access: Do you think that Eugene would have a meltdown if
someone tried to cut his hair – as in, his hair is something that’s so
important to him, and perhaps the way he is, that if you touched his hair or
cut it, that he could potentially freak out?
Josh:
I mean, just to speculate, I
think, yeah. I think a lot of his identity is wrapped up in that. He dresses a
specific way, he wears shorts, he wears long-sleeve shirts, because to him,
that’s a smart thing to do. He has mullet for a reason. It’s not just, you
know, he said it’s because I like this hairstyle and obviously he was kind of
lying about this whole story of T. Brooks Ellis, his former boss, saying he
liked his hair, but there are reasons why Eugene has his mullet to him, and I
think if you tried to cut that, it would be bad. I mean, if you tried to take
Daryl’s crossbow — that would be bad. If you tried to eat more than one cookie
from Carol, I don’t know.

Access: Or take a peanut butter bar–
Josh:
Take a peanut
butter bar from Morgan! You know, Michonne…

Access: She did it!
Josh:
I love that, because that came in
Season 3, and then the payoff for that joke was in Season 6. These writers are
great. I love them to death. So yeah, I just think… we have a hairdresser in
Alexandria. I’ve specifically asked Robert Kirkman and Scott Gimple and company
to make sure that Eugene stays as far away from Jessie as possible.

“The Walking Dead” continues Sunday at 9 PM
ET/PT on AMC.

 — Jolie Lash

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