The Walking Dead’s Vincent Martell Talks Zombies, Final Fantasy and Comic Con

Sunday’s season premiere of AMC’s The Walking Dead aired to a record audience and put the show on pace to–again–be one of (if not the, as it was last year) the highest-rated shows on television.A key scene in the episode revolved around guest star Vincent Martella, who joined the series as a friend of Carl’s who plays a kind of medium between the old-beyond-his-years son of series star Rick Grimes and the rest of the kids living at the prison, who seem to have retained much of their youth and innocence.Martella’s character, Patrick, also got to spend some screen time with Norman Reedus’s Daryl Dixon at the start of the show, establishing Daryl’s “rock star” reputation in the prison community.The actor, who stars in Phineas & Ferb and has appeared in TV series like Everybody Hates Chris and movies like Batman: Under the Red Hood and Role Models, joined ComicBook.com for a conversation about his career, and playing Dead.ComicBook.com: You’re a face and a name that people know. I feel like on most TV series, you’d have been billed as “guest star.” Do you feel like The Walking Dead can’t do that because the minute you’re a “guest star” people just assume you won’t survive the episode?Vincent Martella: Yeah! I mean, obviously on a show like The Walking Dead, it’s a pretty unique situation. I feel like the only other show you could compare that to would be Game of Thrones, where people would just assume that meant they’re dead pretty soon.So it’s probably a pretty delicate procedure for how AMC handles those things, but they know exactly what they’re doing and they’ve certainly done well so far.ComicBook.com: Most established shows, they’re hesitant to shake up the cast chemistry but when this season started, they rolled out a bunch of new characters, and even though you’re in and out, your appearance certainly leaves a mark. Was it interesting coming into a unique group dynamic like that, where it’s not just you and the cast, but it’s you and a whole group of other new people, and the cast?Martella: Yeah, it was definitely interesting being a new element to the show and as you said, Patrick kind of sets in motion this chain reaction of a lot of craziness within the group right now. So it was really great for me to be able to play a part that’s going to be a catalyst for quite a lot of trouble in a variety of ways. It was definitely very interesting.ComicBook.com: Gimple told them on Talking Dead that Nicotero instructed you to play like Daryl is kind of a rock star. Was that easy, since you got to see how people actually interacted with Reedus?Martella: I think it was just easy for me personally because I’ve watched the show since the very first episode and I’m a fan of Norman Reedus’s work. He’s a really talented actor and just a very cool guy in general. So it wasn’t too difficult for me to be playing very excited to get to work with him because I was very excited to get the chance to. He made it really easy because when he’s playing Daryl he’s just being incredibly smooth and awesome, so it was pretty easy for me to react off of that.ComicBook.com: You’ve got a pretty decent body of work in the geek community, here. You fit in nicely with the Walking Dead/Comic-Con crowd. Do you have anything else that will appeal to our audience?Martella: Yeah, I’ve definitely been fortunate to have worked on a lot of projects like that, you’re right. I did Comic Con for Under the Red Hood, where I got to play an incarnation of Robin that hadn’t been done before in an animated series. I’m there every year for Phineas & Ferb and also I work on the Final Fantasy games now. I’ve played the character of Hope in two Final Fantasy games already and I’m also working on a new one now–The Lightning Returns. So that’s my new big project that I’m working on; people love Final Fantasy and it’s got a really loyal following and people have been great with their reception of the character I’m playing so I’ve got another one of those games coming up pretty soon.ComicBook.com: You got to play off of Chandler Riggs on The Walking Dead, who is one of those guys who is constantly in the conversation as one of the best young actors working. It’s so rare, too, that he gets to spend screen time with someone who’s within ten years of his age group. Did you guys get a bit of time to spend some downtime on set so that he wasn’t spending the whole time doing video games with Reedus?Martella: Chandler is awesome. I really enjoyed getting to know him. He’s an incredibly talented actor and a really nice guy. We ended up hanging out while we were shooting a bunch just because we were working together and we had a lot of common ground when we were talking; we related to each other very well. Then we ended up going to see a movie when we were done working. His dad was on set, so we would all eat lunch together and stuff like that.He’s just a really cool guy and I was glad I got to know him on a personal level as well as getting to work with him because as you said, he’s being considered one of the best young actors on TV and I definitely think he is; he’s got talent well beyond his years and it’s really great watching him grow in the series–watching the things that he has to do for his character arc.