Interview: Colman Domingo opens up about Fear TWD 707

It’s entirely apropos that Fear the Walking Dead 707 aired on Colman Domingo’s birthday. Victor Strand, the Fear TWD OG known for being the best-dressed survivor in all of the apocalypse, is in the middle of his greatest transformation to date. I had a chance to talk to Colman Domingo about this pivotal episode and how it factors into Strand’s future.

(Sarabeth Pollock) I’ve got a Shirley Temple prepared in your honor! I thought it was kind of a morning drink…

(Colman Domingo) Oh good! That’s wonderful. I’m just having water.

I have to say, you’re having one hell of a season, life…everything right now. I want to say it’s the Year of Colman Domingo but it’s really more like the Era of Colman Domingo.

Wow, thank you! How lovely is that. You’ve got me smiling.

I know we’ve talked about this before, but it’s so incredible to see the depth and range you get to play with Strand. Most actors have to go to different parts to get the kind of range you’ve been able to get with one character. Seeing where he is now compared to two seasons ago, compared to seven seasons ago…it’s just so amazing.

Thank you. Thank you so much. I owe that not only to the showrunners and the writing teams. I think that they have really allowed a wonderful collaboration between us, because I know that’s what I was interested in with the character, because he’s such a complicated character that keeps evolving and I wanted to make sure that we fully evolved, season after season, even his look or his facial hair or his haircuts, it’s all character and story. 

So by the time we got to season 7 and we made the decision of how we were setting up Strand as an internal villain – internal villain – I thought this was a great opportunity to really rethink his character and how he’s built this new character that he wants people to see him as. So looking at how he uses his voice, his facial hair, his eyes, the way he makes eye contact. It’s all character decisions, especially for season 7 and how the operating systems of his civilization work. It’s all this conscious stuff that we do and create.

And I’m telling you, I’m having a great time! Again, I think that’s why I’ve been having such a great time for some of these seasons is because I get to reinvent the character from season to season. 

One of the things that’s so fascinating is that this episode begins with an Oscar Wilde quote, which is so revealing about who he is. But when the walkers start getting launched into the building, Strands over here going, “Protect the paintings! Save antiquity!” It just shows that there are so many layers beyond what you see on the surface.

Absolutely. I love that in the moment that the building’s under attack, he said, “Save the artifacts.” He’s the one who’s saying, “I want to save art and history.” You know, it’s very important that that’s what he’s trying to protect. I think that’s part of his operating system that he has there at his tower. It’s about art. It’s about music. It’s about history. It’s about all of these things. And how do you create culture? It’s fashion, it’s yoga, it’s health and fitness and wellness. These are things that we were not as concerned with in other civilizations, whether it’s under Madison’s rule, or Virginia’s or even Morgan’s. So I think he’s really figured something out for himself, and it’s working. 

Absolutely. One of the things I find so compelling about where he is right now – and this is based on my political science and history majors – is that every Walking Dead villain has layers that are so fascinating. But the thing that stands out about Strand is that he’s so instinctual. He plays off his instincts and when people arrive at the tower he’s so selective about who gets in. I actually grabbed my copy of Machiavelli’s The Prince because despite there being so many elements to his philosophy…he’s not wrong. It might not have the best optics, but he’s not entirely wrong about what he’s doing because the fall of civilization on the show is tied to making bad decisions.

I agree with you, first of all, and thank you for that compliment. I do think that, like you said, Strand even more so has doubled down on relying on his instincts because you realize it’s his instincts that got him there, and that he couldn’t have been wrong all this time. You know, he just has to trust his instincts as his instincts will be the key to his success. So I think that just makes a whole lot of sense for me that he’s like, “I’m not listening to anyone else anymore. I have to listen to what I know, the way I listen to people, what people tell me, the way I view people.” 

He has to trust that because it’s been so complicated for so many seasons where he’s been told that he was wrong. But at the end of the day, he was like, “I knew I was right about that. I should have stepped up and said I was right in the first place.” And now he’s like, “No, I will just answer to myself. Whether it means I will live or expire, it’s at my own doing and not at someone else’s. No one gets to control my existence.”

Right, which makes it so interesting when poison gets introduced in this episode the way it does. It’s such a Shakespearean theme, that the king gets poisoned and then you know who did it and what happens, but it exposes weaknesses. Or potential weaknesses.

Yes. And it exposes his own Achilles heel as well. I love this episode so much, especially because of the poisoning. I think it’s such high stakes with someone who is in power and then questioning everyone’s reasons and motives and trying to figure out who to trust, who not to trust. When I read it I was like, “Oh, it’s very Richard III” or something like that. It almost becomes Greek. It becomes super-sized in that way. 

And then everyone’s acting on instinct, gutturally, that’s what I love about that scene in particular. It’s just all guts. And he’s making decisions in the moment. And that’s what I love about Strand. He’s always done that. He’s very instinctual, but he also compartmentalizes things and he doesn’t even know what he needs until he gets it at times. I think he’s very complicated in that way. So he’s just working with what he has. I’m going to go down. No, you’re going to get the baby for me. We’re going to go do this. I don’t think he has it all set up. He’s like, “This is what I’ve been dealt. This is what I’m dealing with. Okay. My instinct says let’s do this now.”

I love it. And only Victor Strand could puke up a van Gogh, honestly.

I’ll be very honest. When we first did the first take, it was just blue paint and I was like, no. I said it’s got to be everything. Everything. And I said it has to be everything that he’s been ingesting. It’s got to be symbolic of it. Because it should be beautiful and ugly at the same time. It’s bile. It’s everything. He brings up what’s inside. So it’s all of the interesting colors. So for this moment, with the props department, we created that look. So it wasn’t just blue dye. It was really complicated.

It’s always so much fun chatting with Colman Domingo and there’s no question that things are only going to get more intense as Fear TWD season 7 continues!