By Christopher Wallenberg
In approaching the character, DeMunn says that he avoided trying to formulate a larger take on the role or looking at it in broad strokes. Instead, the classically trained actor started with the little details and moments in the play and focused on bringing each of those to life individually.
"I find that if I try to go big and understand the character in a really broad way, I just don't really have much capacity for that. That's not a talent of mine," he says. "So I just try to work it through the details and hope, in the sort of pointillist approach, that a general picture develops and appears out of my little details. That's basically what I do: 'What is happening right now? What just happened? What does my character want?'"
The biggest challenge of doing the role, DeMunn avows, is trying to navigate these rocky, larger-than-life emotions and yearnings inside of Willy and find what's at the heart of each. "The main thing is to simply continue to tell the truth despite the fact that you're going to such extreme emotions — such self-loathing, such anger at others, and such powerful feelings of futility and hopelessness and desire. The desires are so enormous," DeMunn says. "Willy doesn't just want to just live a good life and get along and come out the other end, and love his family, and be done. For Willy, it's got to be more, it's gotta be bigger, it's gotta be enormous. If he's going to drive a car, it's gotta be the best car made. But of course, nobody drives the best car. All cars have flaws. Life is filled with flaws and weaknesses."
25 Jan 2011
Jeffrey DeMunn on "The Walking Dead"
photo by Scott Garfield/AMC
"He bought into a system and succeeded very well at it. But the system of business has changed. And Willy doesn't change. He can't adapt to it. He doesn't understand it. It's confusing to him. And so he is left powerless in a world that used to be his kingdom," DeMunn says. "He had many visions of grandeur for himself — and I understand that. And much of what he says about himself and his past and his present is not true. It's what he would desire it to be. But there was a time when Willy Loman was a real kick-ass salesman. He did all right. People were glad to see him. People knew him. But now, the people that he grew up with in the business are dead. Or they're retired! And he's 63. And they're gone. All those people that he worked with, they loved him and respected him, and he loved and respected them. There was a sense of comradeship within that world that's now gone."
DeMunn, who earned a 1983 Tony Award nomination for Best Actor in a Play for K2, admits that Willy's sense of dislocation is a feeling he can certainly relate to. "It's a little bit, I suppose, the way I sometimes feel if I go [audition for] a movie in New York, and I meet with the producers of [a film or TV series]," he says. "I look around the room, and they're all in their late 20s or early 30s, and they don't know me. I don't know them. A generation has passed, and now Willy's dealing with the new generation. And they know him only as someone who's passed his prime."
While Willy may be a man who struggled to adjust to a changed world, DeMunn has had the good fortune of working steadily for Darabont for the better part of two decades on films like "The Green Mile," "The Mist" and now the TV series "The Walking Dead." Indeed, Darabont has called DeMunn his good luck charm.
"If you just trace it, it's amazing," DeMunn says. "He doesn't use someone and then toss 'em. He finds someone whose work he likes, and he keeps at it. And look at lucky Jeff DeMunn! I've been fortunate enough to be able to work with him again and again over the years. I think that's an amazing quality that he has — fidelity. It's one of the things that Willy Loman finds so lacking in the world, and I feel very fortunate to have it in my life."
While DeMunn had starred in the 1988 remake of the classic B-movie "The Blob," for which Darabont had co-written the script, the two never met until DeMunn was cast by Darabont on the Oscar-winning film "The Shawshank Redemption" in 1994. Darabont wrote, directed and produced the film. From that moment, DeMunn knew that he had met a dear friend and trusted colleague. "He won my heart right away," says DeMunn. "I thought, this is a man I can work with. This is a man I can trust."
So when Darabont asked DeMunn if he wanted to play the role of Dale in "The Walking Dead," DeMunn immediately said yes. "He called me up and said, 'Do you want to come to Atlanta and kill some zombies?' And by now, I have enough experience with Frank to know that if he is throwing a party, I want to be there, because I know it's going to be spectacular."
DeMunn didn't know much about his part before he arrived in Atlanta, where the show is filmed. But he knew the quality would be high-level because Darabont was in charge.
The series, based on Robert Kirkman's comic books, centers on a band of survivors who have endured an apocalyptic event that's wiped out the majority of the human race and left them as brain-dead creatures that crave human flesh and blood. The show turns the standard zombie trope on its head to focus on the human side of the story — how people band together or tear each other apart when faced with extreme, life-threatening circumstances. The show's main character, Rick Grimes (played by Andrew Lincoln, of "Love Actually"), is a former cop who woke up from a coma inside a ravaged hospital only to learn the world as he knew it has ended. He eventually reunites with his wife and son, but the motley crew of survivors face a daily battle to stay alive.
DeMunn's character, Dale, is the salty, philosophical sage and de facto leader of the group who lost his wife to the deadly zombie virus and is essentially a broken man. When the series opens, Dale, who has ended up at the survivor's camp in his beaten-up RV, is beginning to bond with Andrea, a former civil rights attorney, and her younger sister Amy.
"Dale is a man who lost everything, because he lost his partner, his wife, that person with whom he was planning to spend the rest of his days," he says. "When that happened, he had nothing left emotionally. But it is within that cauldron of this post-apocalyptic world that he has started to come back to life again and to care again.
"It's like he now has nothing to lose, because he's lost everything. So he's not really afraid of anything. He can stick to his truth, to the truth of what he knows is right and good. He can care about other people, but he doesn't need anything from them. He's got no dog in the fight anymore, in a way. That's a little bit of the way I think of Dale. He's got no horse in the race, except that he has started to care deeply about the people around him. And his heart has come back to life, his soul has come back to life — in a world where people need some protection and they need somebody to keep an eye on them."
Continued...
