Thursday, May 22, 2014

Motor City Comic Con: Jane McNeill

This author has had the great pleasure to talk to seven cast members (and three zombies) of AMC's wonderful "Walking Dead" series, so far, and that's mostly in just the past few weeks (look for the upcoming "Dead" interviews from Washington, D.C.'s Awesome Con on episodes of the "Fantastic Forum" TV show). At this past weekend's Motor City Comic Con, it was the lovely Jane McNeill that Billie Rae Bates of BRBTV got to chat with (along with Scott Wilson and Kyla Kenedy off-camera).  BRB and friend Don asked her about her experience on the "Dead," as well as the weekend's event, which was a first of a kind for her.


"It is not the first time I've been in Detroit," she told us, "but it is my first comic con, or convention. I've kind of done an appearance or something before, but I've never really done one of these, so it's been kind of exciting and different."

The role of Patricia on "The Walking Dead" was her first TV role. Nothing like starting things out with a bang! "I had started acting again in 2009 and I had an agent," she said, "and I had worked with a casting director and trained to be on camera, because I never really had done that. I quit acting for 15 years. Anyway, several auditions had come and gone, but this one came up and I just felt like I knew that character really well, even though I knew nothing about the show. And I mean literally nothing."


"I didn't even really know it was about a zombie apocalypse, to be honest with you. I just felt like I knew Patricia. It was the scene where I was stitching up T-Dog, and I worked with a bunch of nurses at my day job, so I kind of saw her as this one nurse in particular that was a friend of mine. So that was a sort of jumping-off point. And then I didn't hear about anything for three weeks, so it was just another one of those that came and went. And I was on a trip with my family and I landed in New York, and my agent called and said you have it, you have to be there Tuesday."

So be there, she was! "I live in North Carolina," she said, "so I was in New York, and then the flight was canceled, they lost my bags, I had to rent a car and drive to Georgia with nothing. I was completely wigged out. And the first day on set, I'm at the farmhouse, you know, to meet everybody, and they just kind of plopped me down, and I'm looking around like, omigod, and Andrew Lincoln comes over and kisses me and hugs me and says welcome, and I'm like, I think this will be OK."

Look for the video of our interview, as well as other video from the con, on the BRBTV YouTube channel.

Screenshots by BRBTV;
copying with credit is OK; a link would be grand

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