'The Walking Dead' Star Tovah Feldshuh: Deanna's Not Buying Into Father Gabriel's Anti-Rick Rant
While the rest of us spent most of the never-ending winter complaining about the never-ending winter, TV, movie, and Broadway star Tovah Feldshuh — 62-year-old Tovah Feldshuh — did something better. She high-tailed it out of chilly New York City and straight to Tanzania, where she and her son climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro. Which offers just one glimpse at why the Emmy and Tony-nominated star, who’d never seen an episode of The Walking Dead before taking on the role of Deanna Monroe, was the perfect choice to play the tough, respected, visionary leader of Alexandria.
Feldshuh, who will star in a two-night reprisal of her Tony-nominated role in Golda’s Balcony in New York in May, talks to Yahoo TV about joining the cast, how the show is one of the best jobs of her illustrious career, her respect and affection for castmates like Andrew Lincoln and Chandler Riggs, and what she thinks Deanna is really feeling about Rick Grimes, his friends, and that weasel Father Gabriel heading into Sunday’s Season 5 finale.
You’ve made such an impact on the show. Is it true that you hadn’t read the comics or even watched the series before you joined?
Like most people of my generation, when you’re faced with that title, you very often don’t go toward that title. It doesn’t mean the title’s bad. It just means that getting scared isn’t your thing. Laughter’s my thing. Anyway, in terms of having the kindness of you saying I’ve made an impact, I’m most grateful, and of course I’m most grateful to Scott Gimple and the writers. The writers constructed those scenes. What was wild was, I didn’t audition with anything from the show. They gave me a fake scene, beautifully written incidentally, where I played the head of intelligence, this powerful person who was the head of the CIA or the Secret Service, some elite group. When I accepted the deal, they disclosed who I was.
It was just fascinating. They flew me out of the Galapagos — I barely knew I had the job — right to Atlanta. I went into a costume fitting. I met with Scott Gimple and Greg Nicotero, these fabulous, kind men with such space in their heart for newcomers to contribute. Every set has its own personality. I think this is one of the best sets I’ve ever worked on. The space that people have for you to contribute at your highest level is incredible and very wise… I don’t think I’ve ever been on a more familial set. I’m very grateful they brought me in. I’m very grateful they chose me. This and hanging from a trapeze in Pippin are the two greatest jobs I’ve ever had in my life. And you’re talking to somebody who’s done quite a few Broadway shows and often been the title role in those things, so I’m saying a lot when I say that. It’s way up there. I love going to work. And who doesn’t love Andy Lincoln?
Did you connect with him right away? Your first big scenes as Deanna were with Rick.
Who doesn’t love this person? I was just in London. I had climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro, and then had the brains to balance that off with going to the South of France and then London. Andy lives two hours from London. He has nothing to do except star in the series; nothing much, right? He comes in to see me. Is that ever a “Wow”? Golda Meir says, “Some people love you, and some people love you and show up.” He shows up, and it makes all the difference. He is so kind, incredibly gifted and beautiful to watch in his work, but his humanity beyond his screen work is outstanding, moving. And I credit him. I got [to set] on a Monday. We shot a nine-page scene either Tuesday afternoon or Wednesday morning, and we were shot out of a cannon. Without Andy, I don’t know what I would have done.
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When you met up in London, had any of your episodes aired yet? Did you have a chance to discuss them, discuss the reaction to your performance, to Deanna?
Three of [my episodes] had aired, but I’d seen none of them. I have this incredible cousin who figures out how to stream what I haven’t seen, so then I saw it. But then, Andy doesn’t watch. He won’t watch [his own work]. I am very different. I think I have a developed analytical eye. I’ve had no plastic surgery, so we’re done with any kind of vanity. I’m over the hill, babe, so I don’t get disturbed if my face looks a little bit like a roadmap. I’m not going to worry about it. I can move it. Whenever I watch Maggie Smith in Downton Abbey, I take great pride, or Vanessa Redgrave is a fond acquaintance of mine, and I’m sure she’s had no work. You can just tell. We may be wrinkled but, boy, can we move our faces. We’re mobile. When I look at Maggie Smith and the subtlety of her work, I say, “Tovah, stay brave, stay brave. You can aspire to that if you have the guts to not touch yourself.” So far, so good.
But yes, I didn’t say a word, but Andy just went on about the reaction. It was wonderful. I said to him, “Your whole life is about the other person. You come up to people, and you always make it about them. I hope what you’re saying is true. I hope to be alive on your series for a very long time, longer than anyone expects.”
Delving into Deanna a bit, she is a very savvy woman, she has big visions for the future, of the level of rebuilding she hopes can be done, and she saw Rick and his group as integral to bringing those plans to fruition. Given the events of the last two episodes, is she now thinking she underestimated how damaged Rick and his friends are by what they’ve had to do to survive?
The first step towards brilliance, as my father, Sidney Feldshuh, would say, is to know you don’t know. Deanna, in certain areas of gauging other people… remember she says, “I’m really good at reading other people.” There’s an area where she so doesn’t have any life experience, where she doesn’t know she doesn’t know.
Just like climbing Kilimanjaro. Don’t you think I thought I was prepared to climb Kilimanjaro? I was, but I didn’t know what I didn’t know. I didn’t know that I didn’t know that you climb six hours up and stay at that altitude. I didn’t know you have to sleep on a slant board at night, that your head must always be above your feet so that your diaphragm can work, that you can never, ever compromise your breath capacity on Kilimanjaro, or you could go into shock. I didn’t know I didn’t know. That’s what Deanna Monroe’s learning. Of course she underestimated how damaged they were, because she has no experience of being out in the field for two years. What she did see was that when they were in dire straits, they didn’t cannibalize each other. That she saw, her scouts saw, Aaron saw. She knew they had the stuff of humanity.
Look at Melissa McBride’s character, Carol. Just look at that character. How brilliant is she? That’s one of the most interesting things in the whole series, her going from victim to perp, if you will. To a person who can gauge who shall live and who shall die, who by fire, who by water, who by guns, and this practical sense of what is morality in this society.
So yes, Deanna doesn’t know she doesn’t know. But she’s learning very quickly, especially after she lost [her] boy.
So her reactions in “Try,” leaving the casserole on the porch, burning the note Carol wrote… were those simply the reactions of a grief-stricken mom? She seemed to have a realistic view of Aiden and his abilities, or lack thereof.
I think she thinks her two boys were running [Alexandria] OK, up to their capacities, until she took Rick in. Deanna took Rick in because we needed his brawn, we needed his savvy outside the walls, and [his group] needs our civilization. They need a shower, a babysitter, the possibility of classical music, relaxation, a real nap where you’re not always on alert. They desperately needed civilization, and we desperately needed protection. Deanna didn’t feel we desperately needed protection, though… She just wanted to bolster up our ranks, but, God bless Deanna. Her intuition to take Rick in before things were dire inside Alexandria was very smart, except, since there’s no such thing as a free lunch in life, does taking their group in bring things to a head? Does it polarize things? The answer is, in certain respects, of course it polarizes. The boys go out, and they no longer have the best judgment, but they’ve never handed the reins over… They don’t think of handing the reins over to a bunch of pirates who have much more experience. What happens is that they go out on a Green Beret mission, and they’re just enlisted troops. They’re nothing compared to Glenn and the skills of these other survivors who’ve been out in the field. They don’t know that, and as a result, one gets impaled and dies.
Bottom line, does she now think bringing in Rick and the others was just a bad idea?
I think she might think it’s a bad idea, but her learning curve is getting very steep now. There’s a huge learning curve between her concept, her vision. In my family, there hasn’t been a divorce in 150 years to my knowledge, no divorce in our direct line. I’m married 38 years, my parents 63, my parents-in-law 63, our grandparents at least 65 years, our great-grandparents… people never divorced. We don’t have a knowledge of that. We know it’s horrendous. We have rich friends who get divorced and often get destitute. I know it’s unsavory, but I don’t have a visceral knowledge of it. I haven’t been out on that field, thank God. Deanna, her body has not experienced this experience, so there’s only so much she can take in and intuit and predict. There’s no question the taking in of Rick’s band — I call them the pirates — was a great idea… but they come in very carefully, and they have Plan B immediately in place. Remember, he says, “We’ll take this place over. If it’s a problem, we’ll just take it over.”
Does Deanna think it was a bad idea? She has her doubts. She’s beginning to get frightened about what she said to Maggie, [played by] Lauren Cohan, who is so lovely. “We go out in the field. My people start to fail. You ask me to reassess, and we always end up picking your people as captains.” The keys to the kingdom of construction are handed to Michael Cudlitz, that gorgeous redhead… I’m telling you, having lunch with these people is enough reason to be in The Walking Dead. They’re so beautiful. They’re so physically exquisite. Between the Peter Pan-ness of Melissa McBride, who’s just adorable, and this kid Chandler Riggs, who’s just one of the most articulate, wise souls, gifted people… I’m just the new girl on the block but, yikes, it’s so lovely there.
Anyway, a mistake? I wouldn’t put it that way. Deanna feels we could be in danger. She comes from a belief in democracy, one person, one vote, and all of a sudden they’re saying to me, “Are you nuts? This doesn’t work. If Pete is this hideous wife-beating person, he needs to be killed. This isn’t trial by a jury of your peers, innocent until proven guilty. You have enough evidence to show that you’re a menace to our society, you’ve got to go.”
In her reaction to the Pete situation, we see that she, like Rick, does look at some things in a more practical way. She focuses on Pete’s importance as a doctor and surgeon, versus what he’s doing to his family.
Risk, benefit; risk, benefit. The benefit of his medical knowledge outweighed him beating up his wife. It’s awful. Rick understood that Pete is capable of killing his wife. Rick saw the O.J. Simpson implication. That didn’t fully occur to Deanna.
How much of an impact do you think Father Gabriel’s rant had on Deanna, and will it play into the season finale?
It just might. Watch the writing of that scene… it’s so precise and so interesting. The way he presents his case is slightly wacky. It’s off. What is her experience of him? He has never harmed her or the community to her knowledge, but his presentation is odd. She’s open-minded… she listens. She’s respectful, as she would be to any of her constituents. But she’s not yet buying in. Quite the contrary. She’s more like a judge. She’s more like Ruth Bader Ginsburg or a judge in Law & Order. She’s trying to weigh the scales of risk/benefit, truth and lie. She’s faced with a lot of lies in this past episode… pretty rough. That’s why she videotapes things.
The Walking Dead Season 5 finale airs Sunday, March 29 at 9 p.m. on AMC.
