In Season Three of The Walking Dead, the survivors were mostly consumed with the terror inflicted upon them by an eye-patch-donning villain who called himself The Governor. Played by British actor David Morrissey, the Governor fast became one of the better TV bad guys in recent memory. He devised zombie fights, which people could watch like a baseball game. He kept his little girl, who turned into a zombie, chained up so hed always have her. And his general thoughts toward violence and torture were much different than the as-needed approach by Rick Grimes and his crew.
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But at the end of Season Three, the Governors world of Woodbury came crashing down and he was left out in the cold, with no one to govern or care about. Until now. As the end of the fifth episode revealed, the Governor is back. But is he a changed man? Rolling Stone spoke with David Morrissey about his characters return and his motivations for the season.
The Governor is back. Tell us about his return.
What we see at the end of episode five is the Governor lurking in a forest just outside the prison. Of course, with what we know about the Governor, thats bad news for Rick and everybody else inside the prison. We dont know whether hes up to scope it and plan an attack on the prison or whether hes there to negotiate, or whether hes a changed man as hes standing there. We dont know that yet.
Season Three finished with the Governor killing his own people and we see the trauma that this man is in and how he sort of gives up; he gives up on life and hes sort of wandering around the world, around Georgia sort of waiting to die, really. Hes given up. And then he sees, just at his last moment when you think, Oh thats it, hes just absolutely going to die, he looks up and he sees this little girl in the window of an apartment and he follows her and he finds her and her family and her mother and her auntie and her grandfather are living in this apartment, and the Governor is there and he doesnt really want to help these people but slowly and slowly hes dragged in to helping them and supporting them.
That was an awakening of some sorts for this man him choosing life over death, and thats what we see.
It sounds like in some capacity he is a changed man.
He wants to be, but I think hes intelligent enough to know that the man that he was is still lurking inside. I think theres a Jekyll-and-Hyde-like quality to him, that he absolutely knows his capability for badness, his capability for evil, for going into blackouts, I would suggest. Not knowing his own actions, not knowing what hes capable of hes fighting that all the time and I think if youre aware of that about yourself, then when that happens to you, the people you dont want to be around is people that you love. Because thats a terrible, terrible situation, and it makes it hard for people that you love.
A lot of The Walking Dead is all about the idea of being a team player. When I saw first saw him lurking in the forest, I wondered if he wanted to join the team and play ball.
Thats a question you have to ask, and if he does want to play, then hows that going to work with Rick? In this world, the one thing that you need is a sanctuary, you need protection, and if youre in a world thats not a great place the prison is an obvious place to be in terms of safety. In the zombie apocalypse, its great to keep zombies out. He needs the safest place to be and I think the prison is the obvious place.
One of the great things to watch in Season Three was the power struggle between Rick and the Governor. Do we start to see a semblance of that return in this season?
Yeah, I think theres power struggles, really, amongst different characters all the time. I think the Governors natural place that hes found is that he can lead, is that he can step up. And we saw in Season Three that he got drunk on that leadership. It was a corrupting influence on him as an individual. But he liked it and I think once that genie is out of the bottle, its a hard thing to put back in the bottle. You know you can lead, you know the qualities of leadership, you know the qualities that somebody needs in order to make the decisions that have to be made in order to survive. We see that military situation all the time: you want someone to be decisive but you dont want them to be hot headed. And thats a very fine line sometimes between those two places. You know, sometimes you have to make decisions very, very quickly and you want someone who can be decisive, but you also dont want someone whos foolhardy. I think the Governor knows he has that ability.
So in Season Four, it is about the raw elements of him deciding whether hes going to step up again and become this leader, whether hes going to take control. Because he knows how to. I think he would prefer not to but sometimes the situation demands it.
In terms of crafting the character, is there anything different youre doing this season that you werent doing last season?
I think we see him in a very different state. When we pick him up in six, he looks like a homeless guy; hes got hair down to his chest and he looks like Jerry Garcia. A thin version of Jerry Garcia. So hes sort of emaciated but with a big old straggly beard and long hair, and hes given up. Its a very, very different tone to the person I played last season. Its very much a man whos less sure of himself. A man whos not wanting to be a leader, a man whos fighting leadership, and man whos fighting responsibility, a man whos trying to get away from the human race and the responsibilities around that. While the person we saw in Season Three was a man who was embracing all that and loving all that and being drunk on power, this is a man in Season Four who is absolutely trying to isolate himself. He reminds me a little bit of Harry Dean Stanton at the beginning of Paris, Texas: Hes just walking and walking and trying to walk away from all thats come before and theres a real nomadic almost sort of strange search for death really.
Are you in the show for the rest of the season?
I am. Weve been down in Georgia, you know this time of year, that fall. Its just a great place to be. The trees and the temperature and everything is just gorgeous this time of year, its so beautiful.