Siblings: You can’t live with them, you can’t stab them in the head--unless it comes to that. The cast of Fear the Walking Dead know that even the healthiest family relationships can get complicated, especially during the zombie apocalypse, and they aired some family drama during a press conference over the weekend at San Diego Comic-Con.
“I think what’s interesting is that you don’t like each other,” actor Daniel Sharman told Alycia Debnam-Carey and Frank Dillane, who play the sibling characters Alicia and Nick Clark.
“That’s not true!” cried Debnam-Carey.
Sharman was referring the Alicia and Nick’s complex sibling relationship. From Season 1 the Clark siblings have been at odds, but now they seem to have come to an understanding that they each need to do what they have to for survival.
Sharman didn't back down, explaining that he appreciates that the two characters' relationship isn't a typical television family interaction. “It’s interesting, usually [on TV] it’s quite a sappy relationship," he said, "and I think it’s quite nice that it isn’t that.”
Fear the Walking Dead is the companion series to The Walking Dead. Premiering in 2015, it showed that the zombie outbreak wasn’t just contained to one area in the world of The Walking Dead. The apocalypse reached far and wide--in this case to Southern California and into Mexico. After three and a half seasons Fear has held its own, creating interesting new stories with fresh new characters, diving into racial and morality issues, and most of all, portraying complex family relationships. The show stands out for its psychological depth and look at complicated opposing life philosophies.
The gloves came off all around during the press conference, as Sharman and Sam Underwood, who play Otto brothers Troy and Jake, spoke about their characters' interactions alongside the Clark siblings, and how the family bonds have seeped into the cast's relationships with one another.
“We shoot in a very remote location in Mexico,” said Sharman. “I think what’s really interesting is that you form these really amazing attachments to people very quickly, and that happens in the show. Human beings, it doesn’t matter how crazily different they are, you will always form these tendrils and attachments to people.”
Fear the Walking Dead has always been a little different from its sister show, The Walking Dead, in that these characters are blood-related families and that dynamic is sometimes more problematic than with families that come together out of necessity.
Jake and Troy have completely opposite leadership styles, one that begs comparison to the biblical siblings, Cain and Abel. Underwood gave his perspective on that. “There’s also this struggle for power, the power dynamic between us and I think the idea of Nick connecting to Troy, and Alicia connecting to Jake, is a really interesting exploration of the two sets of siblings," he said. "Cain and Abel has definitely come up.”
Brother-sister issues weren’t the only topic of conversation during the press conference. After viewing the trailer for the second half of Season 3 trailer, GameSpot asked Kim Dickens and Colman Domingo about Madison and Strand’s friendship, since we finally get to see them back together after the events of Season 2, when Strand decided to stay behind while Madison escaped. “Did it look like we were getting along?” Domingo teased.
“It’s a really creative and surprising way that they reunite,” said Dickens, not revealing any secrets. “And we’re up to our old hijinks.”
“What I think is very cool, too, with all these characters, we’ve been torn apart and now we’ve had some life lessons and it’s interesting to see the way they come back,” said Domingo. “Like watching Ofelia come back and how she’s changed. She’s a very different woman, that’s what’s happening with all of our characters, and it’s really beautiful.”
Moving into the second half of Fear the Walking Dead Season 3, the familial relationships are only going to get more complicated, as the characters are currently deep in the trenches of the apocalypse and now know what it takes to survive.
“I’ve recently looked back at Season 1 and the way we’ve evolved," Domingo reflected. “In the beginning we were just ordinary human beings and now we’ve been stripped down and had to scavenge and figure what we need, who we are, which I think is very interesting. I think we’ve all been becoming something else as we’ve been on this journey.”
The fragmented group looks to be coming back together in a big way, and if the past is any indication, when they’re all together things can get complicated. Even though the support of everyone will be necessary to face new challenges—dysfunctional or not—family has always been key in Fear the Walking Dead, and there’s nothing like family having your back, especially in the apocalypse.