The Walking Dead went head hunting last night and if you haven’t watched Not Tomorrow Yet, there will be spoilers.
Carol and Maggie stay and watch outside the facility of the Saviors while Rick and the Alexandrian’s head in to kill them. But not everything goes according to the plan and a gunfight breaks out between the two groups.
Rick puts together a plan that includes giving the Saviors the head of Gregory, the leader of the Hilltop. Rick doesn’t actually kill Gregory. Instead, the people of Alexandria look for a zombie that looks like Gregory. The group finds three heads and Rick has an interesting exchange with Andy as he punches one of the zombie heads to make it look more like Gregory.
EW spoke with executive producer and episode director Greg Nicotero about the three zombie heads and he a very funny story and a surprise cameo.
“It’s kind of funny because a lot of people ask me how many cameos I do in the show as a walker. The Gregory head is actually a cast of my head. When Xander Berkeley was cast as Gregory, we didn’t have enough time to get him to Los Angeles to do a head cast and make a dummy head of him, so I sent photos of him and I said, “Here’s a picture of the actor. Let’s 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!” said Nicotero.
“One of the other heads, I don’t know if I’m going to get in trouble if I say this, was Johnny Depp. I think we had sculpted an emaciated version of a dummy head for something and we used Johnny Depp’s head as a basis just for a clay sculpt. I can’t remember who the third one is, but I’m in good company. Norman kept saying he wanted the heads when we were done shooting. I said we’ve got to wait until the picture is logged. I think one of the funniest moments we’ve shot in the season is when the Savior sticks his hand inside the head and puppeteers it to start talking. I laughed so hard when we shot that scene,” said Nicotero.
Did you notice Johnny Depp when you were watching the show live?
It looks like Nicotero was inspired by Depp’s James ‘Whitey’ Bulger in Black Mass.
