Fear the Walking Dead Elfman & Carradine Tease Season 7s Nuclear Fallout

Fear the Walking Dead's Jenna Elfman and Keith Carradine tease what's to come for June and John Dorie Sr. in Season 7.

Fear the Walking Dead Season 6 left its protagonists in dire circumstances when Teddy's somewhat successful missile launch turned the already apocalyptic world even more brutal. With the core survivors separated, each group must navigate the nuclear fallout while wondering which of their friends survived the atomic blast.

In an interview, CBR spoke with Fear the Walking Dead newcomers Jenna Elfman, who plays June, and Keith Carradine, who joined the cast in Season 6 as the father of fan-favorite John Dorie. After squaring off against Teddy, June and John Sr. took refuge in his bunker. Now, Elfman and Carradine have told CBR about their respective characters' headspaces going into Season 7. They also teased what's to come down in the bunker's depths and more.

CBR: You both have great chemistry on the show. When Keith came into the fold, did you do anything to prepare for that, chemistry-wise?

Jenna Elfman: No, because these are two characters that have never met, and I think we definitely wanted to have that be a discovery. Working together is a discovery. These characters are discovering each other, and I don't think a familiarity of hanging out and getting to know each other ahead of time was going to serve us, though it's become delightful to get to know each other and work together. [laughs]

Keith Carradine: It has been one of the great pleasures of my life. Truly, I can honestly say that and what you get is the fact that Jenna and I did not know one another, had never worked together before, and then you see us get to know each other on-screen. I think that's a nice ride for the audience to be able to take. As we're working together, you chat a little bit; sometimes, you don't. Sometimes you just wait, and you go in to do the work. But all of that is a process of discovery that is happening on screen, and I think that that's a wonderful adventure.

Keith, so much of John Dorie Sr.'s arc involves Teddy. However, you didn't really get to work with John Glover until that final Season 6 episode, which built a lot of suspense for fans. Did it also build suspense for you as an actor?

Carradine: My understanding of who [Teddy] has been to John Dorie Sr., of the challenge that he has been, the degree to which Dorie Sr. has basically destroyed his own life in his hunger to bring this guy to justice, to stop this guy from doing what he's been doing, and all of that went into my understanding of Dorie's attitude about who Teddy was.

I didn't know John before we worked together in that one scene. I certainly was familiar with his work, and he's one hell of an actor. He's very distinctive. He has a very distinctive demeanor, and he brings it all to the work. It was just good fun to be able to stand toe-to-toe with him finally in that one scene. I think, once again, it will give the audience what they've been waiting for.

Jenna, June has really put through the wringer this season with John Dorie's death, meeting John Dorie Sr. and killing Virginia. As an actor, what's been the most difficult aspect of playing a character that's navigating so much?

Elfman: Oh God, you know, it's like an embarrassment of riches in a way. There are so many ways to play it. There are so many personal zones to connect in through all of this curating that I think has been the biggest challenge for me to decide how I'm going to roll out those emotions, where I'm going to hold back, where I'm going to cover, when's the best moment to reveal certain things, when to let myself connect with John Dorie Sr. and when not, when to hold the fort for the injustice I feel that's been done to John Dorie Jr. by Sr.; when to help him; when to challenge him; when to expose my grief; when not to expose my grief. You know all of these different things; it's so rich, which I've been so fortunate to have to play.

I think that's been the biggest challenge is just carving that out and navigating it, especially sometimes... They've done a great job when we've been filming in Season 6 within the episodes themselves, filming in sequence a lot, because a lot of times you're shooting the last scene first, the middle scene last. It's all over the place, and that can also be when there's a lot of emotion to track, a lot of nuances and a lot of character change that isn't on the page, necessarily, but is evident in the scenes. There's so much detective work to do. That's been really fulfilling for me, but it's something that I've increased the hours that I spend working on this.

I hate that feeling when I show up on set and then realize that just when I think I've got it, there are eight more dimensions that I might have missed, and that drive home when you're going, "Oh my God! I should have totally played it this other way to make this other scene I'm going to shoot tomorrow." I hate that feeling. And it happens. It doesn't matter if you put 30 hours into something; it's still going to happen.

Lennie [James] and I were talking about that once, and I was like, "I just went to the bathroom and thought of a whole other way that I should have played that," and he goes, "Happens to me all the time." That made me feel a lot better.

The Season 6 finale saw each character group contemplating their impending doom in light of the nuclear explosion. However, because June and John were facing off against Teddy, they didn't get as much of that. So I'd love to hear from each of you: what do you think your characters were thinking down in that bunker?

Carradine: Obviously, that presented itself as a last-minute place of refuge that we suddenly realized was available to us. Up to that point, I think John Dorie was so on a quest to get to Teddy and put a stop to him, and realizing that the missiles had been launched, I don't think that John Sr. expected to survive. But I think that he wanted to complete his task before he died. He wanted to make sure that he had done what he'd spent 40 years trying to do before he died.

So when Teddy died, John and June suddenly had this place to get into to survive. I think from that moment on -- once he's in that bunker -- the question is how long are we going to be able to be in here? Do we have the supplies to survive as long as we need to until it might be remotely safe to venture out into the world and see what's happened? A lot of questions, you know? Those things get discovered during the course of that episode when you find June and John in that circumstance. I'm looking forward to the audience's reaction to how things are revealed during the time that we're down there and the secrets that are revealed and the secrets about the place itself that will be revealed. It's going to be fun.

Elfman: Yeah, there are some fun hints of that in the trailer. With the nuclear bomb, the clock is ticking. June tries her best to do what she can to redeem Dakota and help her, but that bomb's going off, and there's a bunker. So, I think you're pretty myopic at that moment. But once you're in, I think there is a tremendous mystery and threat of loss of what happened to all of [her] friends. On top of already still mourning the loss of John and how that has affected her and changed her, and the decision to kill Ginny did to own her own story and own her need for justice. June's on that quest but also understanding some points that Morgan had made about that, and June kind of betrayed what John wanted by doing that. But, at the same time, there's a part of June that is like owning it. That's what she needed to do, and that changed her, and I think that builds her up a lot on giving no F's a little bit.

But then, going into such traumatic loss of humanity with a nuclear explosion -- are they the last two people remaining in this area? Is it just her and John Sr. now? She doesn't know. She's still coming to terms with who she even is now after everything she's just been through. So, that's a horrible pile on of loss and trauma, and thank God she's in the sanctuary of a bunker because the guy who's going to end the world, who doesn't plan to go along with it to end himself, is pretty much gonna set up a bunker that can take it.

The Dories have always had luck together; that's something John would talk about. At the beginning of Season 5, he was having that survivor's guilt of we just have this luck; we have to share it with people. I just love that the luck kind of continues through with John Sr. and June. But luck is one thing; loss is something else that isn't just a blessing. There's no blessing that pulls you out of that kind of trauma. So, how are they going to be there to help each other? How are they gonna get in each other's way? It's a very claustrophobic space that they're very lucky to find themselves in. What's the denial? What cannot be kept hidden? What is in your face? I think June's going to discover some things in herself she didn't really want to deal with. That's going to push her story moving forward, and she's going to be a different person by the end of this season.

Is there anything you two can tease for Fear the Walking Dead fans about Season 7?

Carradine: I think that the key for my character is this idea of redemption, of somehow finding his way back to his own humanity after the extraordinary loss that he has experienced in his life and, primarily, as a result of the choices that he has made. He's made choices about pursuing and coming to terms with an evil presence in the world that he feels responsible for and that he feels is his task to eliminate. So, he has chosen to do that to the exclusion of everything else that meant anything to him in his life, and it is close to everything.

He's wound up in this solitary existence in pursuit of that one goal. Now that the goal is no longer on the plate, he has a chance to try and find his way back to whatever vestiges of humanity are still within him. I think that's what his journey is going to be throughout Season 7, trying to find some way to do the right thing when he's called upon -- when he's given the choice -- and to somehow restore, perhaps, his faith in himself, as well as his faith in human nature itself. I think that's the journey that you're gonna see John take.

Elfman: I love that story. So well said, Keith. I think the double negative of having just lost John and now being in a nuclear destructive zone and not knowing if [June's] lost every single person she loves but yet being with an anchor that does connector to her biggest love and that swirling of emotions and an inner conflict is where we are going to find her. There are some deep, deep problems going on inside of her.

But as we move through the season, something I really think is a beautiful theme that started in Season 6 with June killing Virginia, is starting to see June play by her own rules. The integrity of not asking permission, it's that fine line when you need people to survive, and then, if you're with people, you need to have agreements. Otherwise, you'll have war. But within a group, each individual needs to have and be themselves and bring their own sense of integrity. You can't lose the integrity and the point of view of an individual person for the sake of the group. I think that's something June's going to start to wrestle with.

I loved in Season 6, when she decides to kill June despite what John had wanted, despite the rules that Morgan had laid down. Also Morgan leading the group, well, now everyone's broken up, and everyone's sequestered, and in different environments, they have to make their own rules. So, I think a lot of the agreements and rules -- the umbrella of rules that Morgan has established that everyone's been playing along with -- kind of don't apply right now, because we are all in this extreme situation, and we are all separated. It's so extreme that you got to play by whatever rules you got to play by that's going to serve whatever it is going to serve.

Which rules people choose within the scope of morality really defines who they are inside as a character. Those choices push us in the storytelling, and that's something I'm really enjoying, watching Morgan's moral code that he's infused as an umbrella over the group unravel and watch each character as they're pulling themselves up by their bootstraps change the rules. And when those rules are changing, there's conflict. I think that's been something that's really interesting to watch how that circumstance is transforming each character in really, really big visual ways.

Fear the Walking Dead airs Sundays at 9 p.m. ET/8 p.m. CT on AMC. All episodes will be available one week early on AMC+.