When The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon began, Daryl (Norman Reedus) washed up in France on his own, finding and integrating himself into a new community. By season 2, he was joined by Carol (Melissa McBride). And in season 3, the fan-favorite duo forays to England for a brief trip before setting sail for America—and ending up on Spanish shores.
Director and executive producer Daniel Percival has been involved in the series from the start. In season 3, he's had the challenge of bringing a new creative vision to the series, which takes on western vibes and interesting new directions and dynamics for our main characters. The new season has received glowing reviews from fans and critics alike.
With the arrival of the season 3 premiere, we recently caught up with Percival to discuss the new episodes, challenges he's faced, and what's in store for the rest of the season.
Daniel Percival interview
Winter is Coming: How would you say the Daryl–Carol dynamic has evolved in season 3?
Daniel Percival: Carol and Daryl have always had a unique bond. It’s a brother and sister like relationship where they would take a bullet for one another. In our case, Carol travelled across the Atlantic Ocean to find Daryl.
In season 3, they are both trying to find their way home with the help of friends they make in Spain. However, a conflict starts to emerge. And conflict is always mesmerizing to film.
Daryl is focused on getting back to America at all costs, while Carol, through her innate empathy, becomes more and more drawn into the unfolding drama affecting the community they find in Spain. These grow into deep bonds, even love.
Ultimately, it is Daryl and Carol’s love for one another [that] drives them to support each other, no matter what rifts they have, even at great risk to themselves.
This season is defined by three central love stories. Loves that are not supposed to happen, or not allowed to happen. Loves our characters end up having to fight for. Makes me happier as a director than filming a scene between two people too afraid to say they love each other.
WiC: Daryl Dixon season 3 takes place mostly in Spain, but also spends a bit of time in England. How has your approach changed in season 3 with the move to new landscapes and cultures?
Percival: My approach to each country is inspired very much by the landscape they provide. London is an Urban wasteland. When we arrive in Spain the landscape and environment open up. It’s warm and earthy, ancient and beautiful. There is an Eden like quality to the world. And within this our Heroes find both innocence and dreadful sin. Spain, and the Spanish people offer something more primal, more elemental to capture. The wildness of the place, the heat, the beauty and the danger, are reflected in both the landscape and the lives of the characters there.
WiC: Are there specific films or directors that inspired your approach this season? I’m getting a lot of Western vibes.
Percival: Yes, we were inspired by Westerns. Again, the Western is a more elemental genre, losing characters within wild and threatening landscapes. But it was the Italian-made westerns of the 1960s, all shot in Spain, that really captured my imagination. The most famous are the Sergio Leone films, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, and Once Upon a Time in the West. Both these movies provide stark and graphic frames. Dramatic low angles and extreme, close-ups.
The scene where Daryl and Carol first arrive in Solaz is strongly influenced by the Spaghetti Western.
And that’s key, these Westerns influenced rather than changed my essential approach to the show, which has always been defined by the phrase “Scope with intimacy.” Capturing the person within the landscape. The aim is to get inside the soul of the characters as they move through their worlds. They are, after all, strangers in a strange land. Capturing that experience is my prime ambition.
WiC: Which setting did you enjoy working in more—the dense, urban environments of London or the wide, open landscapes of Spain?
Percival: Both. Every environment is a challenge. Ultimately, it is the story that is the most important thing to capture. The location is the arena for that to play in.
WiC: Daryl and Carol find themselves in a unique Spanish community. What were the creative challenges or opportunities in bringing a new community to life in Spain?
Percival: One of my favorite things to create as a filmmaker is believable communities in a new world. And to do that, the community must feel perfectly at home in that environment. Like it belongs.
We had the joy of having our heroes arrive in Solaz during the build-up to a Festival and a Royal visit that involved the whole town. We create veracity in the world by giving all of our extras stories, relationships, lives, and roles within that community. So by the time our characters arrive within it, all these aspects of village life are already deeply established. It helps too that we cast a lot of our extras from within the community itself.
David Zabel and Jason Richmond, the writers, sought influence from Spanish folk traditions, particularly from Galicia. Our idea is that once you remove all the technology and infrastructure of modern living, communities revert very quickly to how we have always existed before. Subsistence farming, barter trade, shared defense, belief systems, and traditional rituals are what bind a culture together. So we set out to show how our community does all of this.
WiC: How did you approach using this iconic Spanish sites to create a fresh narrative forDaryl Dixon?
Percival: We sought many iconic Spanish locations and places we wanted to set our narrative. First of all, David and Jason imagine all the places we would like to go in Spain, including Belchite, and then we start scouting and planning. Other iconic places we discover en route and think, “My God, we have to film here.”
Some locations we dreamt of filming, like Gaudí’s astonishing Cathedral, the Sagrada Familia, were ultimately off limits. But other places in Barcelona threw open their doors and helped us to showcase amazing places the world is less familiar with, like the Tibidabo church and amusement park high above the city. Indeed, most places we dreamt of filming found ways to help us to realize our bizarre fiction.
WiC: You also film a scene with Daryl and Carol on a boat in rough conditions. How challenging—and fun—was it to film those scenes?
Percival: It’s extremely complex and painstakingly slow filming anything on the ocean. We achieved the scenes with a combination of open ocean filming with doubles (for the wide shots) and then matched them into closer work with the actors on the sailboat in a film tank in Alicante (on the Mediterranean coast).
We owe a great debt to an astonishing special effects team, and genius VFX team, and a daring stunts team. But it was toughest of all on the cast, Norman, Melissa, and Stephen, who were drenched most of the time. But absolutely everyone met the challenge very positively, and the finished results are amazing. We are all really proud of what we achieved.
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.
We thank Percival for his time. The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon season 3 has been amazing so far, one episode in. Catch new episodes every Sunday on AMC and AMC+, and check back with us at Winter is Coming for our weekly reviews, recaps, and other coverage.