Season 8 Of 'The Walking Dead' Will "Springboard" Morgan Jones To 'Fear' Crossover

Details of how Morgan Jones will go half way across the country from The Walking Dead to Fear the [...]

Details of how Morgan Jones will go half way across the country from The Walking Dead to Fear the Walking Dead for a crossover event have been scarce, until now.

The crossover event taking place on AMC has required the Morgan actor Lennie James to run straight from Georgia's production of The Walking Dead's Season 8 to Austin, Texas for Fear the Walking Dead's Season 4. There was less than a week between work on the zombie dramas. James even had to cancel an appearance at the Walker Stalker Con taking place in New Jersey over the weekend of December 8-10 due to a demanding Fear the Walking Dead film schedule..

Finding time in that schedule to speak with to ComicBook.com in an exclusive interview, Morgan Jones actor Lennie James opened up about the upcoming crossover.

"The things that the writers are doing with Morgan and the way that they're navigating, it's not really a spoiler alert, but the way that Morgan transitions through the crossover is really, really interesting," James said. "The springboard that goes from The Walking Dead to Fear is a real... He goes with some kind of trajectory. It is a full, well-thought out journey that Morgan goes on. A lot of it is tied to his relationship with Rick. A lot of it is tied to his relationship to this group of people that he feels conflicted about caring for and wanting to protect."

With Morgan's path to Fear being set over The Walking Dead's next nine episodes, the theories regarding the two shows ultimately merging will only gain steam. Still, the reason for Morgan to abandon his fellow survivors who also started in Atlanta, especially Rick Grimes, must be incredibly heavy to drive him so far away.

"He gets really messed up," James said of the remaining Season 8 journey. "That's about as much as I can say."

The first official word spawned at New York Comic Con when Robert Kirkman announced a character would jump from one show to the other. Finally, more than two months later, Morgan was revealed to be that character during an episode of Talking Dead. James, however, learned of the news much earlier.

"I found out quite early on," James said. "I found out maybe a month into the shooting of Season 8. Maybe a month, maybe six weeks into it. Scott Gimple gave me a call and asked me to come around and he pitched the possibility and it took a lot talking."

Agreeing to head from The Walking Dead's set, parting ways with a cast he has come to know over seven years, was not a simple decision.

"It took a lot of back and forth," James said. "It wasn't an easy decision to make. There were a lot of moving pieces. There were a lot of things that needed to be considered. It wasn't a straight forward, 'Oh, yeah! That sounds like a good idea! Let's do that!' It wasn't like that, at all. There were a number of conversation with Scott. There were a number of conversation with Andrew [Chambliss] and Ian [Golberg], who are the new showrunners on Fear.

"There were conversation with AMC. There were conversations with my family. There were conversations with my friends. There were conversations with Andy [Lincoln] and some of the people on The Walking Dead at the beginning until I made my decision whether or not to move forward with it or not move forward with it. I couldn't really talk to a lot of people on Walking Dead about it because if it wasn't going to happen there wasn't a lot of point in raising the conversation. So, it was interesting journey."

Still, the possibility of James ever heading back to The Walking Dead for a journey which would reunite him with day one co-star Andrew Lincoln isn't being ruled out by either party. "I think that they have an intense habit of finding each other, no matter what channel they're on," Lincoln told ComicBook.com.

The Walking Dead airs Sundays at 9 pm ET on AMC. For complete coverage and insider info all season long, follow @BrandonDavisBD on Twitter.

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