Walker Stalker Con: How Lennie James ‘Clearly’ inspired Scott Gimple
The Kingdom panel at Walker Stalker Atlanta was chock full of insights from behind the scenes of The Walking Dead. Lennie James had a particularly interesting story about how he was able to inspire Scott Gimple’s writing.
The fun and engaging panel was moderated by Jason Cabassi, host of The Walking Dead ‘Cast podcast. Joining Jason on stage were fan favorites Cooper Andrews, Lennie James, and Khary Payton who portray Jerry, Morgan, and King Ezekiel, respectively, on The Walking Dead.
Morgan’s apartment
A sweet fan named Piper shared with Lennie James that she stayed in the building that houses “Morgan’s apartment” in nearby Grantville, GA during the convention. Sure enough, fans can tour the apartment where Morgan holed up in the ‘Clear’ episode from season 3.
The apartment walls were repainted by the late Patrick Parramore Jr. and Jonathan Toste to recreate the space’s on-screen appearance. You may recall the many words and phrases covering the walls of Morgan’s heavily armed lair. Patrick and Jonathan recreated the scrawlings with impressive and painstaking detail to give fans the feel of stepping into the episode.
Fans can visit the space through the Grantville Dead Walking Tour. And like Piper, they also have the opportunity to rent the apartment across the hall from Morgan’s space through Airbnb to spend the night.
A special request
When Piper shared her lodging arrangements with Lennie James, he was reminded of all those words and phrases covering the walls of Morgan’s place. He went on to share that Scott Gimple made an interesting request of him related to the apartment.
The executive producer asked Lennie to record the words and phrases from the walls using the voice of Morgan Jones. He then went on to explain that Gimple mixed the dialogue with music to provide inspiration for writing the portion of Morgan’s backstory in the ‘Here’s Not Here’ episode in season 6 of The Walking Dead.
Fans attending the panel chuckled when Khary Payton chimed in suggesting that the idea of the recording sounded “creepy”.
Creepy? Perhaps. But I suspect it was indeed an effective tool for getting into Morgan’s headspace once again.
Next: Walker Stalker Con: Meet Dave Solo, host of the Live Stage
Panels at Walker Stalker Con always prove to be insightful and often funny as cast recall memories from the set and reveal tidbits that fans might otherwise never know. In fact, I have more scoop to share from The Kingdom panel coming soon!