Sarah got her time to shine on Fear the Walking Dead Season 7 Episode 4, and Mo Collins could not be happier about it.
TV Fanatic got the chance to chat with the actress about the most significant developments on the latest episode.
If you watch Fear the Walking Dead online, you know Sarah has wanted to locate her brother. It was a heavy installment.
Mo has spent most of her career doing comedy and found herself stepping in to do something very dramatic, but the star revealed it was something she’d wanted to do for a long time.
“I love Sarah, so it was a cool opportunity for me to experience this side of Sarah.”
“There are sides of Sarah that I’ve been wanting to show for a while now.”
“Physically, it was really challenging,” Collins added, revealing it was ten day shoot that was taxing both physically and emotionally.
“I was pretty drained at the end of it, so that was a cool experience,” Collins said with a laugh before noting that she loved working with Demetrius Grosse (Josiah).
“He’s a consummate actor and a great scene partner,” Mo said, revealing that getting to see these two come together as they both traverse this new world was fascinating.
“We enjoyed that process and really took time to take note of that journey when we were doing it.”
Sarah’s search for Wendell was filled with wild developments, culminating in Strand revealing he was living at the Tower and thriving.
Strand warned Sarah that she could see him, but he wouldn’t be granted to return, forcing Sarah to adjust to life without her brother. I asked Mo whether she thought Strand could be lying to Sarah.
“I think anybody in this world is capable of lying,” Mo shared.
“I think anybody in this world is ultimately capable of being ultimately evil, ultimately good, and against a new backdrop of another apocalypse, people are having to re reinvent themselves again.”
Mo said that the characters are all trying to think about who they are now and that there’s no better time to reassess.
“It’s like Easter for the characters in a way.”
Strand hasn’t proven to be the most reliable, so I asked Mo whether Sarah liked to think of Wendell alive in the Tower, even if Sarah doesn’t fully believe it.
Mo said that Sarah believed it because she could breathe, citing the accident in the car when she thought he was dead.
“She lost her breath, physically lost her breath. Then again at the tower, you know, in walking away and she starts to lose it again, and Josiah helps her, and she realizes she is okay.”
Mo likes that Sarah now has to figure out who she is on her own.
“Sarah has relied on Wendell to be quite literally her breath. She doesn’t know who she is without him. So from this point forward, that’s a big journey for Sarah internally to figure out.”
Mo also touched upon the fact that Sarah crashed the car next to the nuclear warhead that hadn’t detonated.
Mo said that she’s always shocked when reading the scripts because she thinks things can’t get any worse for the characters, and then they do.
“The next thing you know, you turn the page, and boom, there’s a warhead next to you. You’ve just been in a car accident, you’ve just found out what you believe is your brother being dead. And now there’s a warhead to your left,” the star added.
The star said that she sometimes laughs because of how crazy things get for the characters, but she believes it’s all par for the course of the end of humanity.
The series has zeroed in on the nuclear apocalypse this season, meaning the cast has had to wear extra layers to make it seem like they are safe from radiation.
Sarah was fortunate because the area she was in didn’t have as much radiation because the warhead did not blow up.
I asked Mo what it was like to get a break from these new costumes, and she said it was still hot. She said she felt for Jacob Kyle Young (Sage), who was wearing all these layers while shooting.
As for the power struggle between Strand and Morgan, Mo likes that they were once on the same side but are now on opposing forces.
Fear the Walking Dead continues Sundays at 10 p.m. on AMC. Catch new episodes a week early on AMC+.
Paul Dailly is the Associate Editor for TV Fanatic. Follow him on Twitter.