Andrew Lincoln opens up on Walking Dead return: "There was an unfinished story"
"People would stop me in the street and go, 'Where's Rick?'"
Before The Walking Dead, Andrew Lincoln was best known as the soft-boiled Egg in This Life, the BBC’s beloved drama from the late 1990s about young London lawyers.
Then the role of Rick Grimes in the American blockbuster zombie series made him a transatlantic action star.
Now Rick’s back in the mini-series The Ones Who Live, in which the 50-year-old reprises the blood-and-guts role he left behind in 2018.
In this week's issue of Radio Times magazine, Lincoln reflects on his return to the world of The Walking Dead and his varied career to date.
What are you recognised most for: The Walking Dead, This Life, Teachers or Love Actually?
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"Certain people my age will be This Lifers; there’s the kids, who know Rick Grimes; there’s my mother-in-law – Love Actually; and quite a lot of cabbies know me from Teachers."
You left The Walking Dead in its ninth season – why return now?
"Because people would stop me in the street and go, 'Where’s Rick?' There was an unfinished story. And I was talked into it by Danai [Gurira, who plays Grimes’s love interest, Michonne] and Scott [M Gimple, one of the series showrunners]. But I didn’t want it to feel like a spin-off. I wanted to complete a story that we left unfinished. It was about reuniting two lovers and seeing if their love could survive time and distance apart.
"Also, I felt that six hours gave us an opportunity to tell a bigger story. The Walking Dead characters have been scrabbling around in the dirt for years. What if we tell a more operatic story of what the grown-ups have been up to in the apocalypse – rebuilding society? What if there was a viable restart going on?"
You’ve said that you never watch yourself on screen. As an executive producer on The Ones Who Live, have you had to change your own rules?
"On This Life, I watched a couple of episodes and got self-conscious about my curly hair and big nose. It was complete vanity. It became an exercise in self-consciousness, so I pulled the plug. [Watching this] was like aversion therapy. Not good! Fortunately, I let my children and wife watch a very raw cut. They encouraged me to watch ten seconds, 30 seconds... They were helpful in weaning me into a place where I wouldn’t vomit."
Making The Walking Dead meant that your wife and two kids had to shuttle bi-annually across the Atlantic for extended periods – was that tough?
"Every time, the journey in the car to the airport was horrendous. I was already homesick. I would view with dread the prospect of being away for eight months of filming. We were fortunate that my wife is such an extraordinary woman and was able to up sticks and build a life anywhere. I just didn’t want to be the Brit abroad.
"My mother’s South African, I’m from an immigrant family in the UK. We’re travellers – I like joining the circus. And I think my wife does as well – she’s the daughter of someone in the music business, so she’s actually even more able to get in a camper van and run. I said to her the other day, 'Shall we just sell everything, get a camper van and go?' She went, 'Yeah! I’ve still got that in me.'"
You’ve been part of The Walking Dead world for the best part of a decade and a half. How hard is it to take on other roles after that?
"It’s a really interesting question because it occupied my life for so long, and because it was an unfinished symphony, to a degree. I needed to complete it. That’s why this is such an important, momentous full-stop – with a bow on top – to that story. The next thing that I’m about to do is the polar opposite of Rick Grimes.
"It will be a palate cleanser, shall we say… I’m now returning to a British role and my own accent. My daughter has been doing her GCSEs, so we’re staying here and I’m about to go up to Glasgow to start work on a new ITV drama, Cold Water, with playwright David Ireland [writer of Sky’s romcom The Lovers]."
After playing an American for so many years, are you happy to be using your own accent again?
"I recently did an interview with a millennial from Manchester and she said, 'I had no idea you were English!' Yeah, it’s nice."
In 2007 we saw This Life + 10. Would you do another reunion show in a couple of years’ time – This Life + 30?
"Ha! It’s a funny one. I mean, did it even work in 2007? All those guys are dear friends. It was an extraordinary, seminal show for us all… But is there an appetite for This Life + 30? Surely it would just be all of us watching Netflix for an hour-and-a-half..."
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