The Walking Dead: Tom Payne’s accent/thoughts on world peace
By Susie Graham
Tom Payne is the latest British actor to join The Walking Dead. Hear his voice in this old interview and consider some of his thoughts about that film as they relate to his role of Jesus.
Lennie James, Lauren Cohan and Andrew Lincoln are all from the UK. Whenever an actor with an accent from The Walking Dead appears on Talking Dead, on the couch or in a behind-the-scenes interview, Chris Hardwick has to take a moment to acclimate the audience with a quick moment of recovery from the surprise of hearing the accent.
So in preparation for the first time we see Tom Payne in an interview or on the Talking Dead couch, you can listen to this interview from his film Der Medicus (The Physician) from 2013 about a surgeon’s apprentice in Persia in the 11th century who disguises himself as Jewish in order to go to a school that does not allow Christians. (Via IMDb)
Related Story: Tom Payne's favorite episode is coming up
Listening to the interview, there must be an element of intuitive ability in his character about sensing impending death. There’s also a question about a genie, because of a story told in the film, that is fun and revealing about Tom and perhaps Jesus as well.
Did you enjoy the accent? It’s funny, once I got used to the accents of Lennie, Lauren, Andrew and the Australian accent of Mr. Wolf, I don’t notice or I’m not thrown off at all when I hear them in interviews. It’s fitting in each situation to hear them different ways. Like Hugh Laurie and House.
We’ll have to adjust to some Fear the Walking Dead characters as well. Frank Dillane, Nick, is British and Alycia Debnam-Carey, Alicia, is Australian. Rubén Blades has a lovely, subtle Panamanian accent when he speaks English.
Some of Tom’s thoughts about his character in The Physician and himself could apply to Jesus, all of the characters, for that matter, on The Walking Dead. There is a lot of death in the apocalypse. While they don’t necessarily see specific deaths coming, the threat of death is always there and the frustration of not being able to stop it affects all of them.
Frustration is an interesting theme not fully explored in The Walking Dead. Many characters’ dark sides could be explained or traced back to frustration of some kind, Even the kind characters have frustrations that influence their actions and emotions.
Cheesy or not, I’d imagine in the apocalypse, world peace or, as Tom Payne put it, to “stop fighting over stupid things,” would be a welcome wish. Unfortunately, or fortunately, since we love the show, there are no genies in The Walking Dead.