How Real-Life Politics Inspired Tom Vaughan-Lawlor’s Reformed Zombie in ‘The Cured’

Arguably more than any other subgenre, zombie films reflect cultural and political issues as responses to supernatural situations in eerily prescient ways. In the upcoming film The Cured, formerly infected victims are reintegrated back into society, despite the rest of the public holding them responsible for the violent murders they committed while infected. While portraying a former politician who rallies the ostracized “cured” members of society, Tom Vaughan-Lawlor drew inspiration from real-life political leaders.

“I suppose it’s about identifying where people get to in their lives, in terms of where he ends up. It’s framed as this kind of voice for this disenfranchised race, as a manipulation ,” Vaughan-Lawlor shared with ComicBook.com. “He’s a very, very clever man, who manipulates a situation. His damage, his own kind of damage from his childhood, or his own damage from his rejection from his family, they’re also tropes, I suppose. I think he has sociopathic tendencies anyway. A man who seems to find empathy very difficult to express. I suppose is, in one way, is a drifter or a loner, and finds an inspiration, and finds a community in others who feel marginalized. He realizes, ‘Wow, this is my forte. This is where I can belong.’ Unfortunately, he takes it in a very dark direction.”

Rather than attempting to fit in with what society expected of these formerly infected individuals, he uses violence and propaganda to unite his peers that feel ostracized.

“I think his political ambitions that were there, were latent in him, were there anyway,” the actor confessed. “He’s found himself, through a very strange channel, to be given a platform. I think yes, he does believe that they are … His own sense of being an outsider has now been given a platform, and now he can harness that personal pain and that personal fury, at being an outsider. He can channel that into this new guise, as a leader of people who feel dispossessed. Where his pain or his kind of motivation for that cause begins and ends, I’m sure it’s very hard for him to define.”

This theme of uniting those who feel cast aside by the rest of society is regularly reflected around the world in various ways.

“People who feel outside of communities, outside of social groupings, that being marginalized makes people feel very angry, understandably,” Vaughan-Lawlor noted. “People who feel pushed aside, resent it and find other ways of expressing that anger, unfortunately.”

The Cured hits select theaters and VOD on February 23.