ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Let’s start with the basics in terms of time frame. When are we picking up with season 10? We left with a huge snowstorm. How much time are we looking at in terms of passing between seasons 9 and 10?
ANGELA KANG: We’re passing a few months, probably. I feel like we mark time on the show based on the children. So we saw Rosita pretty heavily pregnant at the end of last year, and I’ll say that that state has changed. A little time has passed. They’ve been living with some of the Whisperers’ rules, and we’ll see that some things have changed and some people have done some unexpected things in the time that has passed to deal with the trauma at the end of last season.
Is there anything in terms of the look and feel, or just thematically, that you guys are going for in season 10?
Yeah, one of the great things from the comic book that we got really excited about, there’s this idea of propaganda and paranoia, and this idea of “silence the Whisperers,” which Robert Kirkman played really well. So there’s definitely a feeling as our group gets into this conflict that keeps building between the Whisperers that’s very different from how the Saviors war played out, where there’s just elements of paranoia but kind of a Cold War feel.
There’s a lot of brinkmanship and things like that, because the Whisperers are so different. Alpha pulled her big move on our people by being in disguise and sneaking around in the middle of a fair. It’s just open for all to see, and somehow nabbing these people. That’s a very different way of operating than any of the other people that they’ve had to deal with, really. So we’ve been having a lot of fun playing with that feel for the season.
And how do the allies respond to that?
We’re dealing with a lot of things also to do with people’s trauma, and the idea of what is real or not real. Things having to do with illusion, or just memory breaking, PTSD. So there’s a lot of stuff that we’re doing that’s pretty unique to the feel of this season. We’re also having a lot of fun with the fact that the last time our people were in a war, it was automatic weapons and gunfire, but we’re just not really in that period of time anymore. So we’re working on some battle stuff that is unlike anything we’ve done on the show, which I’m super-excited about. [Director and executive producer Greg Nicotero] has been in rehearsals for some stuff we’re about to shoot that I think is pretty cool. That’s some of the stuff that look-wise, feel-wise is unique to the start of season 10.
You mentioned the Whisperers, who obviously passed that ultimatum about not passing through their land in a very emphatic fashion. What can you say about them specifically in season 10?
We’ll be telling more of their side of the story in season 10. We will get some interesting backstory, and some more insight into some more characters within that group. We will learn more about Alpha and Beta. They’ve got their own problems, too, within their group, so there will be some interesting back-and-forth between our two groups as they deal with this conflict at the border.
Obviously, we know that our people have crossed the border before. The border continues to be an issue, and as with borders in our world and in life, what is a border? It’s something where one group has said, “Hey, this is the border. Don’t cross.” Our people are dealing with, “Do we live with that? Can we live with that? What does that mean?” When they crossed the border at the end of last season, they discovered that the Whisperers weren’t there, or at least they think they’re not.
But there are some pretty strange and interesting things that happen around that story having to do with those lines, and whether you can cross them, and what happens when you’re caught. And of course, Samantha Morton as Alpha, and Ryan Hurst as Beta — they are so great. We love them as people, and as performers I think they bring so much to those roles. So I’m really, really excited for the audience to see what they’re bringing to this season because there’s much more to explore with them.
