‘The Walking Dead’ Star Andrew J. West on Last Night’s Bloody Episode

Wall Street Journal (blog)

This story contains spoilers about season 5 of “The Walking Dead.”

Last night on “The Walking Dead,” Rick Grimes and crew finally sorted out the problem of the Terminans in one of the most brutal scenes the show has dealt us. It took place in a church and instantly made what was once a house worship a site of bloody carnage. Sure, it was violent – but the scene itself was one filled with tons of tension.

At the heart was Andrew J. West, who played the Terminans’s leader Gareth, who captured the survivors at the end of season 4. Though they were only around for a short while, Gareth’s clan were instantly memorable adversaries – with much of that coming at the end of episode 2, “Strangers,” where Gareth was seen eating Bob Stookey‘s leg – confirming viewer suspicions that these new foes were cannibals.

Speakeasy talked with West this morning from Los Angeles, where he detailed his final days on “The Walking Dead,” what it takes for an actor to play a cannibal, and a tender moment he had after the Hunters’s campfire torturing.

Last night, Gareth got his head chopped off by Rick Grimes. Can you walk us through shooting that scene?

It was incredibly intense. I knew well before we shot episode 3 that he would meet his demise, but I did not know how it would happen. I was shocked at the brutality of it when reading the script. We find that it has a lot of meaning. There’s a significance behind the way Rick dispatches Gareth – fulfilling his promise of killing him with the red-handled machete, it touches on how Rick is evolving and how he’s becoming a leader who doesn’t waiver as much.

The actual physical shooting was very intense. They didn’t know how exactly they were going to cut the scene together. They had to get a lot of different angles, had to get a lot of different pieces. At one point, they wrapped my entire torso with padding underneath my clothes and gave Andy Lincoln a rubber machete – they had him hit me over and over again as hard as he could. I felt the pressure of the blows and it’s scary. At the same time, we had the special-effects guys spraying blood all over us. It was nothing like I had ever shot before.

There’s that one moment where Gareth begs for his life. It raises another question for the viewer about morality in this world.

In the premiere episode, we see these flashbacks and it gives [Gareth] some humanity. We start to understand where he comes from. We do think he’s completely redeemable. But then with episode 2, you feel like this guy is beyond redemption. There is a deep-seated sense of depravity. But I never viewed this character as a sadistic person. Everything he does is very reasoned. With the end of episode 2, where he’s eating Bob’s leg in front of him – it doesn’t come from a sadistic impulse. He has a plan to scare Bob and get the rest of the group rattled. And he almost succeeds in doing that.

What’s the secret to playing a cannibal? Is there a mindset one gets into?

I don’t think so. I’ve got no idea what it would be like to engage in that kind of activity. I got no idea what it would be like to torture somebody in front of him. The context and the writing take care of that aspect of it. Your job as the actor is to get very specific on what you’re doing in the scene and why. At the end of episode 2, when I’m talking to Bob, what am I trying to do to him? Am I trying to convince him of my motives? If I’m trying to put a profound fright into him to fulfill the next part of my plan, as an actor I can focus on that and just do that.

So, no. I wouldn’t even know how to begin to get into the mind of a cannibal.

That you say that is probably a good thing.

[Laughs]. Yeah, probably. It might be a little scary otherwise.

A crux of “The Walking Dead” is the “new rules” of this world. Do you think Gareth’s group  were misunderstood by Rick Grimes’s crew?

I don’t think they were misunderstood. They needed to be handled. They are extremely dangerous. Having said this, they were on to something in terms of “Does the moral compass need to be re-calibrated to some extent?” I don’t think anybody would want to endorse eating a part of a human body in front of them – I don’t think that’s ever going to be OK. But do we need to have a brutal and swift way of dealing with strangers or someone that crosses you? That’s something we see Rick continue to struggle with. But we’re seeing him move more towards the detached perspective that Gareth has.

In the beginning of episode 3, there was a question of whether or not you could turn into a zombie after eating “tainted human meat.” Was this theory discussed on set?

We did discuss a little bit about what effect it would have. It is cooked – you’d think that it would kill anything living or a virus. But what occurred to me is that they’re all infected anyway. So, I don’t know eating someone else who had been bitten would make you more infected.

Looking back at your time spent on the show, what’s your favorite memory?

When we finished shooting episode 2, where I’m eating Bob’s leg, it was such an intense scene. We were shooting in the middle of the night, it was long, and when we finished we all had this really nice moment. All the Terminans, me, and Lawrence Gillard who plays Bob – we all had this group hug-huddle thing. It was a celebratory moment of having completed this scene that everybody knew would be memorable.