Fear the Walking Dead has been reinvigorated during its seventh season.
With a nuclear apocalypse, the characters have been pushed in new and exciting directions.
Fear the Walking Dead Season 7 Episode 3 was an hour all about June (Jenna Elfman) and John Dorie Sr. (Keith Carradine).
TV Fanatic got the chance to speak with Elfman about the significant events throughout the hour and where the show is going next.
We got to delve deep into June and John as they lived in this bunker below the ground, but they also learned about a secret room where Teddy had been killing his victims.
“It consumed a lot of mental attention and focus and preparation,” Elfman shared.
“It was super intense, both characters are going through so much, and they’re both hiding so much from each other, and that slowly starts to leak out as their hand is being forced in the matter.”
The revelation that June and John had been living in such close proximity to the place Teddy’s victims were murdered had a big effect on both characters.
“As a trauma nurse, dead bodies, I don’t think are something that shakes her,” the actress said.
“I think she was probably more relieved that John Dorie could be done with this quest amongst nuclear fallout.”
Elfman added that June was happy that this chapter had been brought to a close because it allowed them to focus on their immediate survival.
John going out into the wasteland could have been the undoing of both characters, but in a real twist of fate, his going outside helped save June.
“The funny part is, is that it circles back around to the fact that he was willing to go out and got her to go outside is the only thing that saved her life when the whole thing collapsed on them.”
“It circles back as it always does on this show in such a fun way. I love how these stories just keep circling back,” Jenna said of John’s fateful decision.
The episode featured an even bigger surprise when we learned that Strand had saved June and John, and they woke up in his compound. Elfman believes that Strand knows June is an asset, but she also believes it was Strand’s way of getting to Morgan.
“He’s only letting assets in the Tower, so I think for him, it’s a win-win. It’s like a double bonus that June is a medical professional and also that June and John mean so much to Morgan.”
“It’s like the perfect upper hand to just torture Morgan. And he knows it.”
June has worked heavily with Morgan and Strand in the past, but the show’s dynamic has been changed by the fact the two men are now fighting on opposite sides.
Elfman says that we will see the characters making more big decisions because they have not worked as closely together in recent episodes.
“I think we started seeing echoes of it at the end of season six, with all the characters, frankly, in terms of them starting to make their own big decisions, not under consult with Morgan and sometimes going even against what Morgan wished and starting to see some of the breakdown of Morgan’s leadership amongst everyone.”
“The nuclear fallout is sort of the perfect extreme backdrop where people have to just move on if they’re not together. They don’t even know if each other is alive.”
“So people are having to make their own big decisions on their own. And it sort of feels like the beginning of like a falling away from, you know, Morgan, having that bond of leadership with everybody, and what does each character look like Kind of making their own decisions as they move forward?”
“And how does that then affect the group and all of their history together?”
At the end of the interview, I asked Jenna what she thought Dharma from Dharma and Greg would be up to during the apocalypse.
“I think she probably would have tried to do a really like very extreme powers for the good of love and figuring out a way to like use the walkers to help,” the actress said with a laugh, saying she would probably find a way to spiritualize the situation and that it would backfire considerably.
Fear the Walking Dead continues Sundays at 9 p.m. on AMC. Episodes are also airing a week earlier on AMC+.
Paul Dailly is the Associate Editor for TV Fanatic. Follow him on Twitter.