Actor Jeffrey Dean Morgan doesn’t always play a bad guy, but when he does, he never half-asses it. He leans into the villain’s motivations with gusto, and devours it until you’re almost as scared of the actor as you are the character he’s playing. After years of smaller roles in films and television series (most notably “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Supernatural”), Morgan was shot out of the bad-guy cannon when he embodied Comedian in Zack Snyder’s WATCHMEN. But Comedian was supposed to be a good guy, which made Morgan’s portrayal of his reprehensible behavior all the more interesting.
The actor followed up WATCHMEN with such works as THE LOSERS, TEXAS KILLING FIELDS, THE POSSESSION (the film which brought Morgan and me together for the first time at a San Diego Comic-Con several years ago), and RED DAWN. More recently, Morgan has done solid work in such films as THE SALVATION, the mini-series “Texas Rising,” the series “Extant,” and the celebrated final season of “The Good Wife.”
Morgan is a classic working actor, so it’s not surprising that when we spoke recently, he had a couple of projects to discuss, most notably his upcoming stint on “The Walking Dead” as the much-feared, baseball-wielding Negan; and as a racist, sharp-shooting, freelance border guard in director Jonás Cuarón’s (who co-wrote GRAVITY with father Alfonso Cuarón) DESIERTO, in which he plays a man who has simply snapped and is taking out the pain in his life on immigrants crossing into America from Mexico illegally, including one played by Gael Garcia Bernal. In our short time chatting, Morgan and I cover a fair amount of ground, so let’s dive in. Please enjoy my talk with Jeffrey Dean Morgan…
Jeffrey Dean Morgan: Hello, Steve.
Capone: Hi, Jeffrey. How are you?
JDM: I’m very disappointed that you’re not here and that you’re making me talk on the phone [laughs].
Capone: Where are you right now?
JDM: I’m in New York City [Morgan was there to attend New York Comic Con].
Capone: I talked to Jonas back in June, I believe, when I first saw the film, and he was awesome. We had great talk.
JDM: Oh, did you see it at the L.A. Film Fest or something?
Capone: Not exactly, but I did see it around the time it premiered there.
JDM: Ah, okay.
Capone: So what was your first exposure to the material, and what do you remember responding to when you first heard about it?
JDM: I got the script, I want to say it was three or four years ago. And I read it and I liked it, and obviously I know the lineage of Jonas, and I met with him in New York City, and we sat down and had lunch or tea or whatever the hell it was. We talked about his idea for the film and my ideas of what I thought the character was and could and should be. We just bantered about. I really liked him, and apparently he really liked me because he called like a day later and offered me the movie and I think we were shooting pretty quickly after that. I think I was in Mexico within the next two months shooting. It was quick.
Capone: I remember him telling me you had some ideas about where this guy was coming from that were maybe different than the in the script, or maybe there weren’t any in the script.
JDM: Yeah, there weren't really any in the script, and it’s important for me as an actor for me to go grab onto something, and obviously this guy felt justified in everything he did. And that’s the way you have to sell this. At first glance, yeah, he’s the bad guy, but in order for me to play it effectively I had to believe in whatever the fuck I was doing. So we came up with a backstory. We shot 90 percent of all of this, by the way.
Then ultimately what happened is, we went down back to La Paz for a day of additional shooting like six months later, and Jonas showed me a rough cut, and I saw it and I was like we’ve got to dig everything out. There should be no justification for who this guy is, and frankly who gives a shit? They had everything. And we both felt the same way about it. And the next time I saw the movie, it was very much like what we see now, and I think it’s much more effective not knowing, because I don’t think it should matter what the justification of what this guy was. And it works that way, I think, very well.
Capone: As someone who grew up watching horror films, I recognized this as a horror film, where you don’t understand where this “monster” has come from, and that is always the scariest. Because often when you include a backstory, that kills a lot of that fear.
JDM: Yeah, and I think it did. In the beginning, there was a seen where I was torturing a guy before I shoot him, and I remember this whole monologue about “You fucking took my job,” like immigrants came across the border and took his job at a factory, and he lost insurance, and his kid’s sick, blah, blah, blah. And it just ultimately didn’t matter, and it was much more effective and it moved the story along at a much better pace, and as an audience, I think it’s much more interesting not knowing. What made this guy snap, or did he snap because that’s just who he is? As a story, it’s much better the way the final cut turned out.
Capone: What’s particularly interesting about the film is that you and Gael have almost no scenes together until the very end, which is weird, because it’s like you’re making two different movies, but at the same time, it makes it all the more effective when you do have that final confrontation. How did that work when you were shooting it?
JDM: I’ve heard him say that he intentionally kept us apart. I don’t know, to be honest with you. I never heard that while we were shooting. We shot all of my stuff, and then they shot all of his stuff was how that worked. Yeah, it was a quick shoot. We shot it in less than a month, so it was a bang-bang job. But I heard him in interviews, and I’ll say he kept us a part on purpose, but I think it was a total of three days Gael and I actually worked together—very little. I was just with myself and the dog for the whole time. At least Gael had people to talk to. It was just me and that fricking dog.
Capone: Well that dog is the secret weapon in this movie.
JDM: That dog is THE weapon in this movie. When I saw it, that dog scared the shit out of me. While we were shooting it, too, there were three dogs that played it, one more vicious than the next. So one dog was kind of tolerable of human beings, and then they got progressively worst after that. I’ve been telling this story, they put the wrong dog in the car with me at one point, and I went to touch the dog after I was drinking whiskey saying, “Good job, Tracker,” and the dog almost bit my face off. That was about it for me after that. I was like “Well, I’m not going to pet that dog anymore.”
Capone: The dogs got to act with other actors more than you did. They’re the real stars.
JDM: That’s exactly right.
Capone: When you shot this film however long ago, this storyline might have seemed slightly outrageous, but the time leading up to now and the current political climate, it doesn’t seem as outrageous as it might have a couple of years ago.
JDM: Isn’t that crazy? I thought, what a neat deal for me to get the chance to play this super-evil kind villain guy and try to live in that head space for a month and make this edge-of-your-seat, pulsating, thriller-type movie, you know? And suddenly, because of the climate that we are living in and our awesome Republican nomination, it’s turned into this hot-button issue, and this movie is very timely, and that’s all we’ve talked about today is this aspect of it.
It’s a weird place to be, because you want to talk about this movie and the process of making it, and instead I’m talking about some fucking bozo who’s running for president, who sadly a bunch of Americans think is a viable fucking option. And they also probably think Sam is some sort of fucking hero. It’s a weird place to be, and I can’t believe I’m having to talk about it. In my whole life, I’ve always said :I’m not going to give my political views,” and suddenly today, I’m just spouting out everything; I think this country is in trouble right now. You can’t win.
Capone: I’ve got to ask you real quick, what have the last six months for you been like in terms of dodging questions and fan derision. I know you’ve been shooting “The Walking Dead” in that time, but this has to have been the craziest time in your career.
JDM: Yeah, it’s crazy. It’s a whole different life. I pride myself on living in relative obscurity—I live on a farm in upstate New York and get left alone. I’m able to be a husband and a father and a farmer, and my side business is acting. Suddenly, it’s turned into this—and we haven't even aired yet, mind you. It hasn’t even aired yet and it already has gotten crazy. I mean, I could give a hundred examples. It’s just a different atmosphere. I can't walk down the street certainly here anymore in New York, and anywhere I go is…just today alone I’ve been doing press all day going from one venue to the next, and there are crazy fans with baseball bats and paparazzi, and I still don’t even know how they even know I’m in town. That kind of crazy. And tomorrow will be Comic Con, and that’ll be nuts, but mostly what I’m excited about is the show airing.
Capone: I was going to say, you’ve got to be happy just to get it out finally.
JDM: Oh my god, just air the show so I can fucking talk and answer a question. I’m a little bit worried that people are going to turn on me, and I think I’m on my last two weeks of good will here. Things could change drastically. That being said, I’ll risk it. I don’t care if you hate me, because if I can at least talk about it and answer a question without trying to like think “Oh, did I give anything away in that answer?” It’s just crazy. It’s like playing fucking press Jenga all the time [laughs].
Capone: Jeffrey, thank you so much. It’s great to talk to you. Best of luck with this and the show.
