Fear the Walking Dead interview: Karen David opens up about Grace’s journey

Fear the Walking Dead season 6 has delivered solid stories each week, and there’s no sign that it’s slowing down. From terrific anthology-style episodes to stakes that keep getting higher, the bar is getting raised over and over. We had a chance to talk with star Karen David (Grace Mukherjee) about her performance in the latest episode of Fear the Walking Dead, “In Dreams.”

SPOILERS ahead for Fear the Walking Dead Episode 612

“In Dreams” is unlike any episode of Fear the Walking Dead to date. Instead of leaving Morgan to deal with an unconscious Grace, the episode goes into Grace’s unconscious mind where she can connect with her unborn daughter. She soon realizes that something is very wrong in this idyllic world. Grace believes that she’s about to die, and that’s what’s causing this dream.

Outside Grace’s mind, Morgan is trying to protect Grace from Riley and his men. She’s unconscious and in labor. When she wakes up, she thinks she is about to die and does everything in her power to give her daughter a chance at life. That’s when viewers realize that Grace wasn’t the one in danger, that her baby was dying and in those moments they were connecting as Grace lived and her baby died.

There have been plenty of dark moments in The Walking Dead universe, but this could be one of the darkest ever. Karen David answered some questions about the episode and what it was like to bring such a heartbreaking and powerful story to life.

Karen David says that Fear TWD scenes felt “biblical”

SARABETH POLLOCK: “In Dreams” is such a powerful story that’s going to resonate with so many people. It’s such a sad story, but so many women face this. I feel like, apocalypse or not, this is a really important story to have out in the universe, and how Grace recovers from this.

KAREN DAVID: I’m incredibly proud of our universe for talking about this very sensitive subject. And there are a lot of women out there who have experienced this. Mothers, fathers, families that have experienced this. I’ve had personal experience with my family, dearest friends who have gone through this. The pain is palpable and this is something that we’ve never done.

Not only storyline wise, but aesthetically stylistically for the show, having talking walkers for the first time. And I was asking Ian and Andrew, and Mikey, I was like, “I think this is the first time that a walker has spoken,” and the things that happen in Grace’s mind. And seeing these tributes to Grace’s journey, which take us back to Season Five with the bird poop walker. I love how they tied in Grace’s past, which has led her up to this moment. Yeah, everything about this episode was pretty groundbreaking for this universe.

And for the story too, because the baby was supposed to be about hope. That was the future and to lose that, to lose the baby, the implications are just astronomical.

Yeah. It almost felt biblical. When we were talking about even going back to 608, 609, leading up to the pregnancy and seeing Grace, being in that for it to all to culminate into those final moments where they’re in the barn. And it’s the haystack. It just felt very biblical and what this child would mean. This birth of life. It is a powerful symbol of hope. And Grace knows that and she knows the weight of that. And I think that gave her a renewed sense of purpose.

She started, as we all know, to feel some kind of hope for the future when she met Morgan and the group. To then fall pregnant with Matthew’s child, cemented her purpose in life. And I think that’s what she needed to move on. And to have that taken away from her, it was just devastating.

I’ve watched it a couple of times, and there’s a couple of things that really strike me because this episode in so many ways, it wants to point you towards Grace not making it. There’s so many hints of that. She’s always been fatalistic, right? She’s always had this sense that she’s not going to make it. And it’s so interesting that the twist at the end is that she does make it. Because throughout her story, it’s always been like, “I have to do this so that I can fix the past or keep people safe” so that history doesn’t repeat itself. So then she can go on and have that off her mind when she passes away, but she’s still going. She’s not the one who’s dying.

Yes. I think from the minute that we were introduced to Grace, it was made very abundantly clear that she is on this time clock. That her time is ticking, and she made peace with that. Especially because she really, she was so painfully regretful of the mistakes and choices she made that impacted the people that she cared about. So it was so important for her to get everything done in time. Because she just didn’t know when death’s door would be calling for her.

Certainly when she fell pregnant, she was very well aware of the implications of her pregnancy and the possible risk that would pose to her own life itself. But it certainly doesn’t take away from the devastation of what the reality was for her.

So it’s such an honor to tell Grace’s story. And my heart was truly broken throughout this whole process for her, knowing what was to come. And knowing how sensitive, like I said, this subject was, it was my deepest hope that I could do the story justice in a very respectful way to all the families that have been through something similar.

I was chatting with [director] Michael E. Satrazemis about the episode because he had mentioned that this was coming. He just said he went on this journey with you, and you’ve also mentioned that you’d both been on this journey together. But I thought he summed the episode up in a really interesting way. He said “two souls were passing, getting a brief moment to know each other before only one survives.” And he talked about how it really stretched the creative rules that allowed you to go down this rabbit hole in telling the story. And it really is. 

It’s such an interesting way to tell that story. Because if you flip it and you think of, “Okay, if it hadn’t happened, then it would have been Morgan’s story, dealing with an unconscious Grace the whole time.” But you were able to be the focus and Grace was able to have the focus on something that’s going to impact her so much.

This was Grace’s story to tell. Grace’s experience. And when we sat down going through this in pre-production, Mikey sat down. We had Jala (Jalaludin Trautmann), who’s our amazing DOP. And just the visions of seeing the vision board. The storyboards that Mikey and Jala were showing me, to give me an idea of what this unconscious world would be like for Grace. Just the rich colors.

And Jo (Jo Katsaras), our costume designer, who put me in a beautiful dress that just felt very Earth-like, very grounded. Just these pops of color that gave such vivid enriched hues, that in this unconscious state for Grace. I’m wearing pink [today] just to pay tribute!

I noticed that!

I wanted to pay homage to that. Just really made me so excited of where we were going. Because again, this is something aesthetically and stylistically that we’ve never done. I love that they’ve delved in between this unconscious state, to the conscious world. 

If you had seen my script, I kid you not. It was like a flipping map with different colors just to help me navigate for Grace in the unconscious world, but also in the conscious world with Morgan. There were no breaks. I was in every scene. And I knew it was going to be a big episode for Grace and I. But I was just so excited to be able to tell the story. So honored to be able to tell Grace’s story. 

And if it’s to lead up to that final scene in the end, which was the ultimate twist, even Grace did not see that coming at all. Let alone all of us who have watched it. That was a really big moment for not only Grace and I, but for us as a TV family together. The crew, for Lennie and I, who I could not have hoped for the most wonderful scene partner. And to be in the safest of hands with Mikey and our crew. I couldn’t have hoped for a more loving family.

Absolutely. And my last question is, one of the things that was interesting is that the whole story painted this picture of a future and what could have been. But at the end it cracks, because two of the biggest aspects of it, Athena living and Grace dying end up being untrue. And the key seems to be an interesting tell, that maybe there’s a lot of these things in Grace’s visions aren’t true. Could you talk a little bit about the visions and is there anything to read into them and about how things might appear and how they may actually play out?

I think for Grace and what she knows based on her visions. We know Grace as being very pragmatic and very scientific and always guided by facts, never by emotion. So to see this side of Grace is very, very different. But she’s so convinced that this is the way of the future, that that key is the cost of peace and that nothing is worth more than the price of peace.  And also having the community unified, having her and Athena and Morgan together as a family. Nothing is worth more than that. 

So whatever it takes, she feels like she’s come out of this unconscious state for a reason, for a purpose. That there is this message from a higher being that she can’t even explain. But she is so thoroughly convinced that that is the way of the future that never mind the key. Trust in what Morgan has built. Trust in what we have together as a community, and trust that we will forge forward without that key. That’s what she knows. 

And with her raging hormones in that moment, of being through an accident, in labor and about to give birth. That’s what she knows, and she’s convinced. And I don’t think Morgan had a choice. Because he knows better than anyone else what Grace is like. And for her to be speaking on this heightened level, and symbolically that says a lot.

Our thanks go out to Karen David for taking the time to speak with us. Fear the Walking Dead airs Sundays at 9: 00 p.m. EST on AMC.

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