‘The Walking Dead’ Postmortem: Chandler Riggs Says Carl Was on a Suicide Mission

SPOILER ALERT: The interview for the “Sing Me a Song” episode of The Walking Dead contains storyline and character spoilers.

It was an iconic meeting in The Walking Dead comic book, and in Sunday’s “Sing Me a Song,” it played out in the series: the Carl-Negan showdown that took more than one unexpected turn. Most notably, the psychopathic leader of the Saviors and the teen he calls a serial killer in the making bonded. In between Negan’s head games with making Carl show his eye wound and forcing him to sing to him, he also told Carl what a smart kid he is, asked questions about his dead mom, and showed off the flashy perks of being a mad dictator — like scantily clad women and dozens of people bowing to him — that were appealing to the young Carl.

Related: ‘The Walking Dead’ Recap: We Are … the Saviors

Carl was reminded of Negan’s true colors after seeing him burn Mark’s face with an iron, but actor Chandler Riggs told Yahoo TV the teen’s visit to the Sanctuary definitely made some lasting impressions on his character.

Riggs, 17, also talked about Carl’s plan, or lack thereof, in deciding to go after Negan on his home turf, about Carl’s insecurities surrounding his eye wound, and the toughest thing about singing to a barbed-wire bat-swinging villain. The actor and huge fan of TWD comics also hints at his future plans — he’s a high school senior with college on his mind — and next week’s TWD midseason finale.

Congratulations, Chandler. Your performance was excellent, and you were called on to do a lot of different things, emotional and physical, in this episode.
Thanks a lot. It’s always a lot of fun to do really awesome stuff, whether it be emotional or getting to gun people down.

The funniest Carl moment, and it says a lot about his personality, is when he tricks Jesus into jumping out of the truck first, and then he waves at him. Even Jesus is amused by it. Was that improvised, or was that in the script?
[Laughing] I wish it was improv. It was in the script. Immensely fun, though.

Enid asked Carl in “Go Getters” what he would do if he was able to shoot Negan, and he didn’t really have an answer for her. Do you think he had thought about that all? Because he has a quick moment when he might have been able to shoot him, when he gets out of the truck. Of course, he would’ve been immediately shot by the Saviors. Did he realize that and decide, “Well, I don’t have a plan for what happens after I shoot him”?
I think Carl went in knowing it was going to be a… he didn’t really want to tell Enid that once he killed Negan, he was going to get shot and probably die. He went in expecting a suicide mission. I think that moment is more like, he realizes that the Saviors, that they’re people, too. A lot of stuff they’ve done is really out of line, but they have lives. They have relationships with people, and I think he realizes that. I think he wants to kill Negan with the least number of casualties as possible, because killing those two guys… No one else needs to die. Plus, with the whole one eye missing thing, his aim is off. If he starts shooting at Negan, he will probably miss and end up killing a Savior, and then end up getting gunned down. I think he wanted to do it right and smart.

Carl is visibly surprised when he walks into the factory and sees all the Saviors bowing to Negan. What’s he thinking at that point?
I think for that scene and the next scene, it’s really about showing Carl all the power he has over these people, and showing him, “All this can be yours if you stay with me.” That and patting him on the back, you know what I mean? Before, Negan’s like, “Check this out.” He’s showing Carl how cool it is, all of these people bowing down to him. That’s why, towards the end of that scene, Carl reaches out to the railing and touches it for a second … he’s taking all this in.

Is Carl also surprised about how many of them there are? We keep finding out that there are a lot more Saviors that anyone initially thought.
For sure. I think he got a glimpse of how many people they had when Glenn and Abraham were killed … and that’s just the main area. I’m sure not everyone was in that room. They have tons of other outposts as well, so that was just a fraction of all the Saviors they really have.

What gets to Carl most about Negan making him undress his wound? Is it that this is the first time he’s been forced to confront it, to talk about it?
Yeah, kind of. I think for Carl, it’s almost a kind of weakness, and he’s sort of humiliated by it. So he doesn’t want anyone to see it. No one else has seen it except for when he initially got shot, and he’s not proud of it at all. He’s the only one able to see it, so he keeps it wrapped up all of the time. We saw in [“Go Getters”], when he was throwing darts, he missed, like, every single one. It’s definitely a weakness for him. He doesn’t like people seeing his weaknesses.

What was the process of creating the wound like for you? How many hours in the makeup chair?
Well, we did a couple of different variants, but the one that we decided on took about four hours, and the test runs took about four hours to get it perfect, how it would look onscreen. After a few other runs, we got it down to about an hour, hour and a half. Kerrin Jackson did all the makeup for it. She did such an amazing job. I am so proud of what she did.

Was that the most time you’ve had to spend in the makeup chair?
Yeah, for sure. The last time I had anything like that was back in Season 2, the prosthetic where I got shot in the stomach. I wasn’t even in the makeup chair for that. We literally put it on in the lunch trailer near [Hershel’s] farmhouse. It took like half an hour. And last season, when Carl got shot, I think we did a couple of tests in the trailer, but then we did the actual [look] really, really quickly. I’m pretty sure this one took the longest just because it was a really big reveal. It was a huge deal for Carl and for Negan.

What was the toughest thing about having to sing for Negan? That was a great scene, and you hit every beat perfectly.
Well, thank you. The most terrifying part about it was that I was going to have to sing on camera. I had known it for a while because of the comics. It was really surreal, because I’m singing “You Are My Sunshine” while Jeffrey [Dean Morgan] is swinging a bat that’s wrapped in barbed wire, ready to bash someone’s head in. Really, really weird. It was kind of cool. It was a really weird part in the [script], but turned out really cool in the scene.

Do you read The Walking Dead comics?
Yeah, I’m a big fan of the comics.

So you’re all caught up with everything?
Yeah, every time a new one comes out, me and Tom Payne, who plays Jesus, he keeps up with them, too. We always talk about it on set. He’s the only other one on the set that reads the comics and is a fan of that whole series. It’s cool.

Do you guys talk then about what might be coming up for your characters? You both have some big hints about what could be ahead, what has already happened in the comics.
Yeah, a lot of that … the whole storyline with Negan going on, and how Lucille got destroyed, and all the other crazy things going on with all that stuff.

When Carl finally gets fed up with Negan playing games with him, and he tells him he knows he isn’t going to kill him … what makes him snap? Does he really believe that Negan won’t kill him, or is he just sick of Negan toying with him?
Kind of both. I think at that point he realized that Negan likes him a lot, and he’s definitely not … he can do whatever he wants to Carl, but he’s not going to kill him. You know, he might chop off his hand or something, but he’s not going to kill him. Carl is very conscious of that, and he’s totally fine with that. It’s a lot better than what he was expecting going into it in the first place.

Plus, I think what makes him snap is, going into the Sanctuary, Carl’s mission was to kill Negan. Negan took command, broke Carl down, and then acted sympathetic towards him, you know, sympathetically discussed his mom with him. I think that kind of softens up Carl towards Negan. But then in the next scene with the iron, he kind of remembers why he was going in the first place, and why this guy needs to not be alive. It’s just like, enough with Negan at that point.

As you said, it is clear that Negan likes Carl and has a weird respect for Carl. Is there any part of Carl that likes Negan or at least finds him interesting?
Yeah, when Negan was showing him all of the Saviors bowing down to him and all of his wives, I think Carl was kind of envious. When Carl comes in the room, he’s kind of like, “Are these really all of your wives?” It was a curious kind of thing … it’s just very surreal for Carl to see anyone with that much power, because no one in Alexandria [shows] Rick as much respect as the Saviors show Negan. And, you know, I think Carl is kind of jealous towards the beginning.

You have filmed seven seasons now, and you’ve been there since the beginning, one of the few cast members who is still there from that time. What has been the best part so far of having The Walking Dead be such a major part of your childhood and your teen years?
I think being surrounded by such awesome role models, a bunch of really, really nice adults that respect me a lot and always have. It’s just kind of weird not really knowing a time where, I mean, obviously I remember before I was 10 years old, but it’s kind of weird to think that there was a time where I wasn’t on the show. It’s been a huge part of my life, and it’s definitely changed my life in so many ways.

Has it informed what you think you want to do as a career as an adult?
Oh yeah, for sure. I have always wanted to act my whole life. Even way before Walking Dead. I’ve always wanted to do that kind of stuff, so it’s really, really cool being able to do it and live my dream. So many good actors out there are just never able to fit a part, and it’s so nice that I was able to fit the one part that led to a stable job for seven years.

You tweeted recently that you were accepted to Auburn. Congratulations! That’s close enough to Atlanta that you could commute for work. Can you share anything about your college plans? Have you decided on Auburn, or are you still looking at other schools? What can you say about that?
Thank you. I mean, we’ll see. It would be awesome to be able to go to college and be on the show if everything ends up working out. But, we’ll see. A lot of people have to be willing to help me make it happen. So hopefully that will be the case.

And you’re in your senior year right now then, right? Are you getting to enjoy it a little more now that Season 7 has wrapped?
I suppose so. Yeah, I mean it’s kind of like it is every year. After I wrapped, it’s always kind of nice having a lot of time and not having to worry about if I can go somewhere or if I’m working.

When do you graduate?
I graduate mid-May, late May, something like that.

Will any of your castmates be there to see you graduate?
Possibly. I hope so. It’ll be during filming, so I don’t know if they’ll be able to make it. It’d be really, really cool, because Andy [Lincoln] has been there since Season 1, Episode 1, same as me. So it would be really cool to have him, a few of them there.

What can you hint at about the midseason finale? “Sing Me a Song” set up a lot of things that are happening with a lot of characters and their different plans for dealing with Negan. How would you describe the episode?
Well, it definitely goes out with a few bangs. It’s very suspenseful, I’ll tell you that. I think [viewers] are going to like it a lot. It’s really well played, and I’m very excited for everyone to see it.

The Walking Dead airs Sundays at 9 p.m. on AMC