‘Fear The Walking Dead’ Star Colman Domingo Directs Episode 412

Fear The Walking Dead star Colman Domingo makes his television directorial debut in Sunday’s episode 412, ‘Weak.’

The episode pairs Althea (Maggie Grace) and June (Jenna Elfman) while Morgan (Lennie James) and newfound traveling companions Sarah (Mo Collins), Wendell (Daryl Mitchell) and Jim (Aaron Stanford) attempt to locate Morgan’s missing friends, just as a mysterious and dangerous new threat (Tonya Pinkins) closes in.

Domingo shadowed six-time Fear The Walking Dead Season Three and Fear The Walking Dead: Passage director Andrew Bernstein ahead of assuming the director’s chair and was backed by longtime The Walking Dead director and new Season Four director and co-executive producer Michael Satrazemis, who most recently helmed the hard-hitting 410, ‘Close Your Eyes.’

“I’ve been directing in theater for over 25 years so I was really sort of translating everything I knew from helming musicals and plays, to television. It’s just a slight adaptation of that,” Domingo told Hidden Remote earlier this summer.

“I shadowed Andrew Bernstein at the end of last season. I was also in those episodes so I was constantly learning while I was working and that’s the way I’ve learned anything of value in this business is by doing it. So the whole first half of the season I was watching directors who I believed were extremely capable and some directors who had some minor shortcomings and I’d hope to learn from all. You sort of learn from that and then you apply everything.”

Domingo added he had “the support of every single person,” including Satrazemis and executive producer Scott Gimple, and was “truly blessed” in making his first television-directed project.

“From my writer Kalinda Vazquez to the cast, everyone wanted me to succeed. So with that energy all I had to do was be a great facilitator of inspiration, and hopefully good humor, to make our days,” he said. “A lot of things were set up for me to do well. Everyone set me up to do well, especially my [first assistant director] and my [director of photography].”

The Victor Strand actor shot ‘Weak’ with an eye turned towards “very much Spaghetti Western,” teasing viewers will “definitely see some iconic Sergio Leone shots” Domingo used as inspiration.

“I think that even as a playwright I deal with sort of magical realism and sort of fairytale. This episode has a sort of fairytale aspect to it,” he said. “I’m always looking for the beauty in the darkness so I think that we have lush landscapes that will contradict all of the darkness that people are in.”

Of Sunday’s episode, Domingo told ComicBook.com at Walker Stalker Con Nashville he’s “very proud” of the director’s cut he submitted in May and that new showrunners Andrew Chambliss and Ian Goldberg were “very happy.”

Domingo stepping behind the camera marks the first time a Walking Dead star directs an episode of the series. In July, ComicBook.com learned The Walking Dead alum Michael Cudlitz, who played Abraham Ford, would become the second when he returned to the flagship series as director on an upcoming Season Nine episode.

The Colman Domingo-directed episode of Fear The Walking Dead, ‘Weak,’ airs Sunday at 9/8c on AMC.