Lennie James likes to ‘detach from the fan frenzy’ of The Walking Dead
By Adam Carlson
The Walking Dead is the most popular show on television, which also means it is critiqued closely. Actor Lennie James tries to shut out the negativity.
Viewers of AMC’s massively popular zombie survival drama The Walking Dead are passionate about every single episode. In fact, each installment in the series is often picked apart by hundreds, if not thousands, of websites.
Undead Walking is no different. We like to analyze each episode and find things that we believe worked or didn’t work. However, we try to keep things on the positive side of the spectrum while others have a more bleak approach to the show.
Recently, Lennie James spoke with Digital Spy about the media interpretations of The Walking Dead and some of the criticisms that his character of Morgan Jones has been receiving. For the most part, he tries to stay away from those sites if possible.
"“You go on one site and you’re just lost,” he explained. “You just put one toe in the water and you’re in a completely different world, so I would resist doing that.”"
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Of course, one of the biggest areas of criticism for the first half of season 7 was the pacing. The Walking Dead was introducing new characters while establishing the power and dominance of The Saviors, but that wasn’t happening quickly enough for many fans.
Also, watching their favorite survivors be beaten down and subservient to Negan was hard to watch at times, making fans wish for this dark period in the program to come to an end. But James insists the time to develop these characters and tell the story is well worth it.
"“I’m sorry that people have felt that it was a bit slow,” he said. “I mean, I’m always going to defend the show, because I think it’s earned the right to just take a second, because we know where we’re going…There were a lot of people needed to be introduced. I think if it’d gone, ‘Oh, by the way, this is Ezekiel, he’s got a tiger, let’s go!’ – people would be saying the opposite, going, ‘Can we just take a breath?'”"
Next: What should Morgan's resolutions be for 2017?
You can see Lennie James and the rest of the cast from The Walking Dead when the hit AMC zombie survival drama returns to AMC for the second half of season 7 on Sunday, February 12, 2017.