Why David Morrissey Was Never The Same After The Walking Dead

David Morrissey has been in the acting business for quite some time, earning attention across the pond for everything from Shakespearean plays to the "Doctor Who" Christmas special "The Next Doctor." However, the man gained mainstream success in America with his role as the Governor in "The Walking Dead." 

Morrissey was a big fan of the series, and he loved every moment of working on the show. He didn't shy away from the character's evil actions, and instead, he strove to understand the Governor's deeper motivations. His dedication to the role made the Governor one of the most memorable characters in series. At the same time, the show had a profound impact on him as an actor. In fact, taking on such a dark and unsettling character changed Morrissey's approach to understanding people and the other parts he plays. Here's a look at why David Morrissey was never the same after starring in "The Walking Dead".

David Morrissey spent some time studying famous leaders in history to prepare for the role. He told The Walking Dead Universe that he read up on cult leaders like David Koresh from Waco and Jim Jones. But it wasn't enough just to absorb ideas from cultists. He also took a look at more modern political leaders. In Morrissey's own words, the Governor is "able to offer security to a whole group of people." The Governor may be manipulative, in that "he knows how to keep people in a state of indebtedness to him," but he also gives people something they truly need.

Morrissey elaborated on the Governor's relationship to modern political leaders in his interview with Den of Geek. There, he said that leaders have a habit of "turning up the gas on our sense of insecurity, as well as our sense of security, in order to manipulate us." Despite that less-than-savory tactic, in the world of the zombie apocalypse, the Governor can still be considered a great leader because the security he creates is real. Morrissey said, "He doesn't distract his populace with security, you know, that's it. Security is everything."

The meat and potatoes of "The Walking Dead," both on the page and on the screen, is the relationships between the characters. For the most part, the characters get to know each other at exactly the same time that the audience gets to know them. In that regard, the Governor is a very unique character in the show because his relationship with the audience is distinct from his relationship to any other person in the series.

David Morrissey talked about this relationship with Entertainment Weekly. He pointed out that the show's audience gets to see the Governor in ways the other characters don't. The audience sees him at his lowest points (when he guns down a group of his own people) and at his most vulnerable moments (when he burns the picture of his family before the apocalypse). No character in the show has the same amount of knowledge about the Governor as the audience does. Only the viewers understand the character in his totality. For Morrissey, that's the best part about the role. He loved that the Governor's "relationship with the audience is total."

According to Morrissey (via EW), "Nobody is all good, and nobody is all bad." The Governor as a character fully embodies that idea. He provides his people with safety and security. He loves Lilly Chambler (Audrey Marie Anderson). At the same time, he's a mass murderer who destroys countless lives. The Governor may be a fictional character, but his motivations for doing bad things are very human reasons that can be seen again and again in real life.

Talking with SFX, Morrissey described playing another role based on a man who tortured Winnie Mandela (an anti-apartheid activist in South Africa and Nelson Mandela's wife). He saw a similarity between that man's motivations and the Governor's. For both men, their actions have "to do with fear of self, a fear you yourself will be exterminated by your enemy." They both take that fear and use it to "demonize [their] enemy in some way." Morrissey said that "even though to us it's abhorrent, and we find it unforgivable, quite rightly," the fear is still real for the men themselves, and it drives them to do terrible things they otherwise wouldn't.

According to David Morrissey, no one knows when their last episode of "The Walking Dead" is going to be. During his interview with Conan O' Brien, the actor talked about the process the stars all went through when they got a new script for an episode. They each took the script back to their trailer to do a quick read-through to see whether or not they lived through the episode. Usually, the person who stayed sitting in their trailer when the actors regrouped was the one who didn't make it. Morrissey said that the show's willingness to kill off major characters was something he appreciated about it.

Back in 2013, Den of Geek asked Morrissey if he'd discussed his character's eventual exit from "The Walking Dead" with showrunner Glen Mazzara. Morrissey said, "I haven't actually, because I don't really want to have that conversation." Despite that reluctance, Morrissey knew his days were numbered from the very beginning. The Governor died in the comics two years before Morrissey's first season of the show ever aired.

At a Rhode Island Comic-Con panel in 2017, Morrissey told fans the cast held a "death dinner" for someone whenever it was their time to leave the show. They needed to have the dinners at someone's house so fans wouldn't see the group out in public and start speculating about who had died. And there were "a lot of tears" behind the scenes when it was the Governor's time to die.

Years after his time on "The Walking Dead", David Morrissey found himself in a role with some similarities to the Governor. "Britannia," which aired its first season in 2018, is a historical fantasy that loosely follows the events of the Roman invasion of Britain. Morrissey stars as Aulus Plautius, the Roman general who invaded Britain. Plautius is a ruthless and determined leader, not unlike the Governor.

Morrissey draws some distinctions between the two characters that illuminate his approach to the Governor's psychology and help him establish his Roman character. According to Morrissey, the Governor may have the leadership qualities present in General Plautius, but he has none of the conquering drive. As he explained to CBR, the Governor "set up his own enclave, and he was sort of not interested in going beyond that." If it hadn't been for the unfortunate run-in with Rick and the group at the prison, the Governor likely would've never left Woodbury. Morrissey also saw that the Governor lived in a world without order. It was the zombie apocalypse, after all. General Plautius is "in a world that has a strong tradition to it," so he's much more secure and, in some ways, less brutal because of that.

Could fans someday see David Morrissey back on screen as the Governor? He certainly hopes so. Most fans got their first taste of the Governor in the pages of "The Walking Dead" comics that were adapted for the AMC series. Morrissey, however, fell in love with the character through three of Robert Kirkman's novels: "The Rise of the Governor," "The Road to Woodbury," and "The Fall of the Governor." In an interview with Digital Spy, Morrissey said, "There's stories to be told in those novels that I think are really fascinating." Since two of those three books all take place before the Governor's arrival on "The Walking Dead" show, there might be an opening for a prequel spinoff.

In Season 4 of "The Walking Dead," Morrissey had a handful of episodes more or less to himself as the show explored the Governor's fate after the fall of Woodbury. He proved that he's more than capable of being a leading man in those few hours of television, but when Morrissey pictures coming back to "The Walking Dead," he doesn't envision a prequel series at all. Instead, he says he'd "love to return, in a filmic way" to tell the stories in Kirkman's novels. Rick Grimes is getting a movie, why not the Governor?