The Walking Dead’s Norman Reedus reveals battle scenes with Alpha left both stars battered and bruised
THE Walking Dead aired one of season 10’s most grisly fight sequences this week as Daryl (Norman Reedus) and Alpha (Samanta Morton) finally locked horns.
Daryl had his forehead slashed and was stabbed in the leg, while Alpha had a tree branch driven through her shoulder.
Now Reedus has revealed that he, along with Morton, suffered injuries while choreographing the brutal scenes.
After sustaining bruising from completing her own stunts, Morton had limited mobility, while Reedus found himself “exhausted” after putting his already-strained muscles through their paces.
“The fight itself was kind of rough because Samantha had some injuries and so she couldn’t do certain things, and so that was really difficult,” Reedus began.
“I had an injury as well, so it was a rough episode physically for me, for her, for everybody,” he continued to Entertainment Weekly.
Reedus found the copious amounts of fake blood to be particularly challenging as he slipped while fighting off the extras made up as walkers.
“Yeah, it was very slippery. You know, it’s one thing when you have like, a 180-pound zombie trying to fight with you, it’s another thing when you’re covered in blood and you’re trying to fight back and you are just slipping all over you like a slip and slide,” he went on.
“It was a big red water slide. It was just insane. It was an exhausting episode.”
As for the battles themselves, Reedus remarked that Daryl and Alpha had very different fighting styles, with the latter being much more conniving and using her environment to her favour.
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This was at odds with Reedus’ scraps with Beta (Ryan Hurst), who was all about brute force.
“You know, she’s got a different fighting style than me, and hers is sneaky. She uses the walkers to her advantage, so if she can surround me with walkers where I’m fighting, then she gets these cuts in and basically just bleeds me out like an animal and then tracks me to the spot,” he remarked.
“I thought it was such an interesting way to have a fight scene, because I just had the Beta fight scene where I’m fighting with the Mountain, and then to have a different sort of fighting technique — it’s just so snake-like and sneaky and it’s like a cat playing with a mouse.”
As for the events of the episode, titled Stalker, see below for our official recap.
Daryl had been trying to track down another entrance to the subterranean trap in a bid to rescue Magna (Nadia Hilker) and Connie (Lauren Ridloff), when he stumbled across Alpha and a handful of her Whisperers.
He took out one of the grunts with his crossbow as they started leading the herd of walkers from the cave, drawing the attention of the group.
He was subsequently slashed across the forehead, but that didn’t stop him tackling Alpha to the ground and stabbing her through the shoulder with a nearby branch.
As he demanded to know the whereabouts of his missing friends, he found himself swamped by zombies, and upon turning to face them, was stabbed in the thigh by Alpha.
Daryl ended up limping to a nearby gas station, with Alpha in hot pursuit.
Taking advantage of his limited mobility, she drew the attention of nearby walker by banging her gun on a metal pipe.
Daryl yanked the knife from his leg to take out one of them, while Alpha dropped the grounded, her loss of blood kicking in.
“Can you see beyond the darkness, into the light?” she asked him, but Daryl wasn’t in the mood to talk and shot back: “No.”
Seemingly delirious, she claimed she could see “the ones who broke me all around us.”
She continued: “Pain made me, pain made you. Pain made my Lydia.”
However, Daryl corrected her: “You lost her, you drove her away. 'Cause you didn't love her.”
Enraged by the comment, Alpha attempted to stand up and reach for her weapon, fuming: “What did you say? What did you say boy? I can't hear you.”
In an epic twist, Lydia then arrived and rescued Daryl after watching him from the shadows.
Meanwhile Alpha was tended to by a group of Whisperers, who managed to patch her up.
An emboldened Alpha declared that she was ready for war against the allied communities, insisting: “I am no longer weak, I am stronger than ever.
“My horde will butcher, consume them. Screams will be song to me.”
Sounds like next week’s episode will be just as violent…
The Walking Dead airs Sunday on AMC in the US and Mondays on FOX in the UK.