Lennie James plays Morgan, a character who embodies the sorrows, joys, and hopes of all The Walking Dead Universe's most important characters. In this Q&A with amc.com, he talks about ending his character's story, the impact of Madison and Grace on Morgan's life, and the gift of this role.

Q: Wow, Morgan leaves the show after Episode 6! When did you know that he would be leaving? Or was it your idea for him to leave at this point and look for Rick?
A: It was a little bit of both. We'd been talking about the end of Morgan since the end of Season 6 and the start of Season 7. On one level, I knew that there had to be a cutoff point and we just started preparing and putting it in the showrunners' heads that it was going to be time to call time on Morgan.
Q: Why was the timing right for that?
A: You know what, the thought first came around when we hit the 10-year anniversary of the pilot episode of The Walking Dead [October 31, 2010]. I just felt like 10 years is a lot longer than I thought I was going to be associated with the character. I felt like it was a nice round number. It was a time when I wanted to see what else was possible for me as an actor. Anyone who knows me knows how important Morgan is to me and how protective and defensive I am about his journey, his legacy and him as a character. I worked really hard at bringing Morgan to life and keeping him relevant for all that time, which has been good. I've been very happy to take that journey.
Q: Episode 6 was quite an episode for you to go out on! What did you think after reading the script for it? I liked how it all came full circle in the end for Morgan.
A: The challenge that [showrunners] Andrew [Chambliss] and Ian [Goldberg] laid down in that episode wasn't just for me. It was also for Mikey [Michael E. Satrazemis], who directed it. It was also for little Mo to navigate. There were challenges all over that episode for everyone. And if it didn't make sense to go back to King County, I said to the guys that if it smelt anything like a gimmick to me, I wasn't really interested in it. It had to be fundamental to the story we were telling in the present time. Other than that, it was just an exciting episode to try and get right, an exciting episode to try and figure out.
We also had to have the conversation about whether Morgan walks away or whether Morgan dies. I think the reason why we went for the former is because I think most people's expectation is that it's going to be the latter. I thought it was a nice touch because Morgan walked into Fear literally, leaving Virginia and walking all the way down through Texas. I thought it was a nice touch that he left the way that he came. But because he goes with Mo, he somehow leaves, both figuratively and actually, with more than what he came with.
Q: What was it like reliving the events of two iconic episodes of The Walking Dead — "Days Gone Bye" and "Clear" — in both Episode 4 and Episode 6, especially with all the callbacks to Rick, Jenny, Duane, and even Eastman?
A:  We didn't go back to Georgia to shoot it, so it was a fantastic job done by our location people, our set design people, and our art director. To recreate the house was incredible, and I think we did it in three different places trying to make it seem like we were back in the house in Atlanta. And a very weird thing happened. At the time, we were shooting the King County stuff and we were in the house that we were using for part of the interior. At that very time, a friend of mine was scouting a movie that he was going to be shooting in Atlanta and one of the places that he scouted — he sent me a photograph of it — was the actual house that we shot in in the pilot. Literally the text said, "Do you remember this place?" And I sent him back a photograph of where we were filming going, "Yes, it's a lot like this place."
The weird thing was even though it looked the same I was always aware of the difference. It wasn't the road; it was us trying to make it as the road. Because of that, I wasn't overwhelmed by feelings of nostalgia. That wasn't necessarily a bad thing because there’s a distance Morgan was fighting to have about the environment, about the place, about walking back into that room, about walking back into that house. Also some of the story we were telling when he goes back to King County is stuff we hadn't told in the pilot.
Q: Yes, I wanted to ask you about that too. Morgan gets to put Duane to rest, to put him down, which as you say is something that means there's finally a resolution to Duane's story. Can you talk about the importance of this moment?
A:  I think that one of the things that you have to realize — in order to make it make sense in the present — is that Morgan carried a lot of shame from leaving his boy to turn and that shame has been with him ever since. It's part of what broke him down in "Clear." It's part of why he walked away from Rick in Virginia. It's partly why he wanted nothing to do with John Dorie and Al when he first met them, and he just wanted to keep walking. It's part of why he just wanted to be alone. It's why he couldn't allow himself to fall in love with Grace. It's why he's reluctant to take on the responsibility of little Mo. It's why he hands her over to PADRE. It's why he kept Alicia at a distance. In every single friendship/relationship decision he's made it’s been the secret that he's been carrying… he never buried his boy. He never did what he should have done. It's a weird one because first I had to place that decision into the history of Morgan and then go back and try and play it and give it the importance that it needed to have in Morgan's journey.
Q: You had your final scenes with Kim Dickens in Episode 6. The two of you basically had only half a season together, but how crucial was Madison to Morgan's story?
A:  Well, she's been vital because she's been at the center of pretty much every choice he's made since he met her, every choice he's made since he realized who she was. They had a connection that they didn't even know about in the sense that they have — certainly in the case of Alicia — cared, and to a certain extent, parented the same child. So yeah, it was less than half a normal season, but the relationship that Kim and I crafted for Morgan and Madison is one of the things I'm most proud of. I’m certainly looking forward to seeing it when I sit down and watch these episodes. It wasn't expected that they kept on challenging each other, kept surprising each other, kept growing closer to each other, that the relationship that they had mattered. It was something that they would fight for. It was something that, despite the fact that they clashed often, there was something of an allegiance between the two of them. You know, working with Kim is so easy but so fruitful, so invigorating, and fresh that I just enjoyed our time together and hopefully that can happen again somewhere else.
Q: Plus Madison gave Morgan the gift of peace in the end, helping him realize that when you lose people, you don't really lose them.
A: And she also gave him permission. I can't remember the exact words, but she made it okay for Morgan to walk on because she was basically saying, "I'll take care of the people you care about here. You go and take care of the people that you need to take care of."
Q: What was it like saying goodbye to Grace, as well as Karen David, in Episode 5?
A:  Well, I only really said goodbye to one of them and that was Grace because Karen's still very much in my life. Myself and my wife have become very good friends of her and her husband, so there's actually no getting rid of her at this particular moment in time!
But saying goodbye to Grace was a really difficult one because she's the one who broke through Morgan's barrier. She's the one who made him feel something. It's not even that he never thought he would feel it again. He never considered feeling it again. He wasn't aware there was a need for him to feel it again. In fact, when he first felt it, it scared the hell out of him and he ran away. She's the one who, to a certain extent, made his future possible with or without her, and I think that losing her could have broken him, but it didn't. I think it's the reason why he can live. It's the reason why he can walk on. It's the reason why he can take little Mo and protect her, and help her protect him, and why they can survive. Even though she's not going to be with him in body, I think she remains his future.
Q: Although there have been some gaps, you've been part of TWDU since the very beginning. What has playing Morgan meant to you?
A: On one level, I'm still a little bit too close to it, so I probably won't know. When I came to America, it was not what I was necessarily looking for. But I'm so glad and lucky that it's what I found. You have to understand that I came to America when I had already been working as an actor for over 15 years. My structure back in the UK was if I did a television series, it was six or eight episodes at the most, and then I'd do a bit of theater, I'd do some voiceover work, and maybe pick up a movie if it was shooting somewhere in Europe. Then I'd go back and do another television series, but it was six or eight episodes and mostly six. So, the idea of doing 16 episodes or 22 episodes was something that scared, excuse my French, but it scared the sh-t out of me. I was like, "There's no way I can sustain playing the character."
To have spent all of this time with all of the episodes that I've done and still be interested in the character, still feel connected to the character, still feel a responsibility to the character, still enjoy being in his shoes, his trousers, and his mindset was a real lesson, a real boon, and I count it as a real gift. If you ask me what Morgan has really meant to me, it was [that] he was a gift. He was a great character. He was someone with immense depth. He was complicated. He interested me. He fascinated me, and he provided a heartbeat in this universe that I like to think would have been sorely missed without him.

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