Bringing Morgan Jones over to Fear The Walking Dead was not only a carefully orchestrated collaboration, it was also Lennie James’ decision to leave The Walking Dead behind for pastures anew.
Via Digital Spy, James admitted that the historic crossover can be traced back to a conversation he had with Scott Gimple, executive producer and former showrunner of The Walking Dead who has since been tasked with overseeing the entire AMC franchise.
And though his on-screen survivor has been a Walking Dead mainstay ever since 2010, Lennie James stressed that next week’s crossover had his full blessing from the off. But first, the actor recounts how Morgan’s leap of faith came to be:
At the beginning of every season you have to sit down with Scott Gimple and he tells you what the arc of this season is going to be and what your character’s arc is going to be. You mostly don’t listen to anything he’s saying because you just want to know whether or not you’re going to die.
A couple of days later he phoned me up, said he forgot to talk to me about something and would I come back. So, I drove back to his house thinking he forgot to tell me that I’m dying. I got there, I sat down, I got a bottled water and he said, ‘By the way, this is not a conversation about you dying.’
Indeed, James was initially taken aback by the proposal; however, the opportunity to develop and expand Morgan’s story in Fear The Walking Dead season 4 was too good an opportunity to pass up.
My first reaction was, ‘Oh thank God,’ but then he said it was much weirder than that. He talked about his new role of overseeing both shows and then he said, ‘How would you like to continue the story of Morgan in Fear the Walking Dead?’
At the end of the conversation, Scott said that he was sure I had loads of questions and, to be honest, I probably did but I couldn’t bring a single one of them to my lips. He asked what I wanted to do and all I was that said I was just going to leave and get back to him.
In the end, Lennie James jumped at the chance to cross over into Fear The Walking Dead, and reminded viewers that there was “absolutely a choice” during those aforementioned deliberations.
We just started talking about it over the next couple of weeks and months as there was a lot to take on board. It wasn’t a case of, ‘This is going to happen,’ it was genuinely a case of what I thought about it, there was absolutely a choice.
Season 4 of Fear The Walking Dead, which has arguably generated more excitement than the last three seasons combined, is expected to hit the airwaves on April 15th – just after The Walking Dead reaches its yearly finale with the super-sized “Wrath.”