Last night’s new episode of The Walking Dead, “Hostiles and Calamities,” was another one of those dreaded split-up episodes that concentrates exclusively on one single community of survivors… in this case, The Saviors. But it actually turned out to be pretty great, because our favorite mullet-wearing man of many skills Eugene was at the center of everything.
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, actor Josh McDermitt revealed that while Eugene had several stressful encounters with Negan and Lucille, the scariest scene to film was actually the most lighthearted one. That would be when Eugene shows off his “explosives” know-how by recreating some standard high school science experiments for Negan’s wives.
“The special effects guys showed us how to do it and I got to practice it a bunch and it was very consistent and everything,” McDermitt said. “And then, of course, when it’s rolling, it never went the same way twice. There was one moment, because these little balloon things were filled with hydrogen, and I was supposed to put the candle up to the balloon and it just explodes, but there were a couple of takes where it just pierced a pin-sized hole in it, so the hydrogen comes jetting out and it’s on fire so it’s like a blowtorch.”
“Basically, the fire cuts the line and then the balloon starts flying around in this crazy direction and I feel like it’s going to land on my mullet and catch it on fire, so I start running and I’m screaming and everyone’s laughing at me and like, ‘I’m literally right next to this fireball that’s not exploding and you guys are laughing at me? Go for it.’ I’m freaking out, man.”
There might be a few way too serious Walking Dead fans out there that think Eugene deserved a little fire for his apparent betrayal of Rick and the Alexandria community. As we’ve mentioned in our breakdowns of “Hostiles and Calamities,” the most interesting part of the show is trying to figure out if Eugene has legitimately turned Savior. McDermitt would have you believe he doesn’t know himself (implying a much longer stay at Chez Negan than Daryl), but given how quickly the cast of The Walking Dead resort to deception when it comes to future plot points, we’ll accept the latter part of his answer. Reluctantly.
“The people don’t care,” he said. “They just want to know if Eugene is playing Negan or not. I get it. I’m not revealing it.”
