This interview contains spoilers for Fear the Walking Dead, Season 7, Episode 12, “Sonny Boy,” which aired Sunday, May 8, on AMC.
Fear the Walking Dead Season 7 is continuing to explore the aftermath of Season 6’s nuclear fallout, where its characters fight for control over the only safe haven: Victor Strand’s Tower. With half the survivors working against Strand from the inside and the other half surviving day by day on the outside, it’s a game of life or death for Fear the Walking Dead characters.
Jenna Elfman, who has played June Dorie since Season 4, recently sat down with CBR to discuss Season 7, Episode 12, “Sonny Boy.” The events of the episode show June making risky decisions to help Morgan take the Tower from Strand while also saying goodbye to John Dorie Sr., her father-in-law who sacrificed his life for baby Mo. Elfman further went into June’s journey as a nurse in the post-apocalyptic world, filming the wet and sloppy flooded walkers sequence, and continuing the Dorie legacy.
CBR: Jumping into Season 7, Episode 12, I have to say… poor June. She is just losing people left and right. We have John Dorie dying last season, we have Charlie slowly dying now, and pretty definite: John Dorie Sr. As an actor, how do you prepare for the emotional weight you must convey through these constant losses?
Jenna Elfman: How do I prepare? You just know where your characters act, and you just let yourself feel that. It either breaks you, or you have to get stronger. The way they’re writing [June], these are catapulting her. They will catapult June definitely into a position of integrity. She cannot keep going this way, and I think it’s igniting in her a sense of courage, the likes of which we’ve not seen as much, except for maybe when she killed Ginny. So I think I liked that. She’s found love, and she keeps that love in her heart, and it helps her navigate these horrible challenges.
Whenever you speak about June, you speak about her with such care and love and sensitivity. It’s really obvious you’re invested in her development. Through all these traumas and all the things June’s been through, has there ever been a moment where you’re kind of worried about June’s future a little bit, whether it be about her morality or a life or death situation?
If I ever feel moments of worry about her future, I text the writers. [laughs] I go, “Hey, checking in. You need anything, let me know because I’m feeling a little vulnerable.” Then they’ll let me know what I need to hear, but that’s only occasionally, I think. I trust the process of her journey so much. Even with her own morality, I don’t worry about that because even if she did go a dark way, I think that would be interesting, or if it’s a mixed bag of inner conflict on her morality, I think that’d be amazing to play.
I know what June’s North Star is. I know where her heart is. I know where her true character is. So I don’t worry. I think I get excited and interested, but about her future, I just enjoy playing her, you know what I mean? Then I just go, [picks up phone] “Ian [Goldberg]? Andrew [Chambliss]? So what is this? Where are we going with this?” [laughs]
You have to secure your place. [laughs]
I’m just straight up with my communication, and I wear my heart on my sleeve. That’s just the way I have to do it.
You were talking about who June is, truly, as a person, and everywhere she goes, she always finds her place as a nurse. She helps people. How does her role as a healer ground her in this really violent and inhumane world, especially now that she’s at the Tower?
In her professional history before the apocalypse of being a trauma nurse… because, you know, a trauma nurse is not just an ER nurse. It is a very, very specific field of medicine, so not every hospital has a trauma center. It’s a specific unit that’s only in specific hospitals that deals with literally life or death only. So I think in her deep history of being a trauma nurse, it becomes clear to you. You start seeing a common denominator amongst people, and that is everyone wants to survive. Her job is to do every single thing in [the] fiber of her being to make that happen. That’s who she was before the apocalypse, and she knows how to contribute to making that happen.
I don’t think you’re a trauma nurse just for a job. You’d have to be really personally invested in that line of work because it means something to you. It’s not a casual job. I think for June, she knows everybody needs help in some form at all times, that the kind of link that holds us all together as human beings is the right to help each other. I think that’s a North Star for her because you can always do something for somebody. When you do, that makes you feel a certain way that is good.
Going back to “Sonny Boy,” we get a lot of John Dorie Sr. in his final moments, and we see that he’s starting to think about his legacy. He’s thinking about his son. He’s thinking about baby Mo, and he actually thinks that baby Mo could be his legacy in the Tower. Do you think June also has this responsibility to continue the Dorie legacy?
Yeah, I think she’s received such enhancement and betterment. Her life was saved by John Dorie because he helped her give her love and brought her back to life with his benevolence and just everything that made him so charming and awesome as a Dorie. I think June has a little section in her heart for all of these people who have helped her continue, and I think she always honors that. That’s who she is, and [she] honors them in her actions to pay it forward.
That’s a lifeboat for her that keeps her afloat, and she saw how effective it was because she knows how broken she was when she washed ashore at John Dorie’s cabin. She was certain no one could help her… not even him. She was very certain of that in her own mind. To see what that beauty of the soul of John Dorie did for her, I think that’s something that she takes very seriously and holds deeply in her heart.
Right now, she’s caring for Charlie, who looks to be nearing her final moments as well, sadly. You had a scene in “Mourning Cloak” where June was swearing to Charlie that she’ll live to see Strand fall. It’s so heartbreaking but also empowering. Do you think this is the moment exactly where June says, “I can’t just put up with this anymore”?
Yes, 100%. I think that was a huge wake-up call for June. She’s gone through a lot in a very short period of time. She lost Dorie and then went straight into a nuclear explosion and then straight into a tyrant. So there hasn’t been a lot of time to heal and work stuff out. So she’s been coping and thinking that she could cope for a bit this certain way, but clearly, that’s not actually how it’s going to happen. If she continues this way, people that she cares about are just gonna keep dying around her because she’s not doing anything about it. That will eat her up. That will send her to the dark side. For her to not go to the dark side, she actually has to stay true to herself, and that means having a voice and following that voice and staying true to what she knows is the right thing to do.
Do you think June has any fear that, despite all the good she’s doing, she won’t make it out of this fight alive? Strand has such a powerful presence in his tower, and she betrayed him in “Sonny Boy.”
Yeah, I think at this point she has the confidence to know Strand needs June, but I think also, at this point, if she died, because she was staying true to herself and doing the right thing, then so be it because at least you die trying as opposed to dying compromising, which just feels like a rotten way to die. If you die, staying absolutely true to yourself, that’s a different death. I think that’s a cost. That’s what you do. I think June has that in her back pocket unless Strand goes completely psychotic… even more than he already has!
She has the confidence to know he’s smart enough to not do away with her because it’s to save himself from any illness. He’s that narcissistic. He’ll keep June around for his own well-being. June can sit in the confidence and reassurance of that fact, but also, she’s going, “Enough.”
There’s this running joke in The Walking Dead universe as a whole that if your character is a doctor, you’re probably going to die pretty soon, but June’s been around for quite a while. So how does it feel to be the one victorious person to beat those odds?
Well, I just love storytelling, so I’m happy to be in this story as long as it will take me because I’m enjoying it. So I guess I’m honored [laughs] and grateful because I did it. I love working on the show. I love working in The Walking Dead universe. I love these stories. I just am really enjoying myself. So I’m glad to be part of it.
I have to ask about this one sequence in “Sonny Boy.” It’s when you’re sneaking Mo out of the Tower, or at least attempting to, and the entire area just floods with walkers. What was it like to film that sequence? It looked pretty gross and pretty wet.
Yeah, it was. Exactly. It was very challenging in a fun way. It’s fun to have to work hard and figure things out. We just want the easy way through life, but that’s boring. So I love a good challenge. I’m always down for working hard. I’m always down for a good challenge. There was a lot of coordination of motion with the stunt people and keeping everybody in the frame for that camera or for that camera set-up.
Keeping that intensity, keeping the story and the narrative going within those physical stunt coverage moments, there was so many demands within that camera set-up or this camera set-up, and what this camera needs to see now or what that camera needs to see. Then you have three [cameras] going at the same time. Each three cameras have different needs of what they need in their frame to tell the story, and you’re coordinating with a very wet environment, and the bulk of them were stunt walkers. You can only push the ones that are the stunt people. You can’t push them all the way out of frame because the camera needs to see, but you have to make it look real.
It was a lot of juggling balls and then sloshing your way back to your chair in between camera set-ups. I’d be dripping. My feet were shriveled! [laughs] My feet were sopping wet for 14 hours a day. They were so shriveled up. At lunch, I would just take everything off and just sit in my trailer, trying to just get dry and give my feet a break because they were very wrinkly.
Well, it made for a really great scene, so props for that.
Awesome.
Season 7 is continuing the anthology format that started in Season 6. Do you ever miss any other cast members who are off doing their own episodes?
Yeah, sometimes I do. I mean, I’m always enjoying the story, but those big group scenes are fun because everyone’s hanging out. Even in Season 6, they bring everyone together under certain circumstances. So you do get to [gather] back up with everybody, usually, at some point in there.
I do enjoy the anthology storytelling because you can really focus on the potency of the story when it’s just a few characters. You really dig into those layers and the nuance because there’s time for it. I think that’s what makes it so pleasing. It allows the audience to also invest in the heart and souls of these characters because they get to spend more time with each character’s narrative. They invest in it and relate to it and think about it and soak that up.
Those days when you have everybody in the scenes, they’re fun. You don’t often have huge monologues to do or anything when there’s like everybody. There’s sort of more action sequences, or whatever. You find you have a little more mental bandwidth as an actor to hang out and have fun catching up with everybody.
Fear [the Walking Dead] is teasing Madison’s big return, which is what everybody’s talking about, but we’re also getting a showdown between Strand and Morgan. Obviously, no spoilers here, but where does June fit into all of this?
You start seeing which forces are aligning in which direction as these next episodes unfold. You start seeing a consolidation of characters working together in specific trajectories. June will be sliding into one of those trajectories. I think that’s probably as much as I could say about that.
To follow June’s journey, watch new episodes of Fear the Walking Dead every Sunday at 9:00 p.m. ET/PT on AMC. New episodes are available to stream a week early on AMC+.
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