Matt Frewer, who plays Logan on AMC's Fear the Walking Dead, talks about his character's moral ambiguity and the slippery slope he's navigating. 

Q: What interested you most about joining Fear the Walking Dead and about the character of Logan, in particular?

A: It’s a great show that’s beautifully written and beautifully acted. It asks important questions – specifically about what happens to your humanity in a post-apocalyptic world. These guys are amazing. The crew, the cast… they’re making full on feature films every eight days. It’s a universe we’re living in and that we’re firmly planted in. It’s just terrific.

Logan is clearly a survivor who lives by a different code. I recognized, early on, and also through a couple of chats with Ian [Goldberg] and Andrew [Chambliss] that there’s a really interesting gray area there. I love to play that.

Q: As the show’s new “foe,” did you have any thoughts early on about how to approach him?

A: Logan isn’t a conventional villain. He’s morally ambiguous, but what he says makes a lot of practical sense. The factory is his and it’s his stuff. As far as playing the character goes, I saw an opportunity to play someone who’s unsettling for the audience. The audience may question how they feel about him and whether they like him or not. It’s an ambiguity that makes you a little nervous to be around. I was really excited to play that.

He knows what buttons to push. He’s very manipulative, but this is someone who sees the bigger picture. That’s what I’ve tried to chart here and what Ian and Andrew have crafted so cleverly. It reminds me of my favorite saying, which is “The road to hell is not a slippery slope. It’s a step by step conscious descent.” This guy is on the last stair before he starts polishing apples on Satan’s lap. [Laughs]

Q: In Episode 511, we learn that it was Logan who came up with the “Take what you need. Leave what you don’t.” tagline. What might Logan’s new mantra be?

A: I think the bumper sticker that he might have on his low gas guzzling Toyota Corolla might be: It’s better to be effective than good.

Q: In these dire circumstances, a resource like the oil fields is quite important. How does that push Logan forward and what are the bigger power dynamics at play?   

A: He’s part of a team where he’s brokering and facilitating the oil and the oil supply for a larger syndicate. He could become an officer in that scheme, but in the short term, he realizes that lives may be lost and it is to serve the greater good. At a certain point, his day-to-day survival depends on putting that aside and not offering hope, which is what Morgan’s group lives and breathes.

Q: Do you believe there’s anything Logan can learn from Morgan’s (Lennie James) group or vice versa?

A: Logan believes in survival of the fittest. He believes in adaption and evolution. He realizes the folly of offering hope that can’t be delivered. It’s an interesting character because there’s a certain amount of self-loathing there. He reaches a crossroads and redemption could be in sight, but we’ll see whether he achieves it.

Fear the Walking Dead airs Sundays at 9/8c on AMC. Available 48 hours early, ad-free, for AMC Premiere subscribers.

Read an interview with Karen David, who plays Grace.

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