Heather Cappiello, who helmed the midseason premiere (Episode 709), has quickly become a fixture of The Walking Dead Universe. In this interview with amc.com, she talks about how she portrayed Alicia's fever dreams, becoming part of the FEAR family, and why she can't get enough of the infected.
Q: So far you've directed four episodes of FEAR and two episodes of World Beyond. How did you come to join The Walking Dead Universe?
A: I'm a fan of FEAR and The Walking Dead, and I had worked with Ian Goldberg years ago on a show [Criminals Minds: Suspect Behavior] when he was a staff writer, and I was a script supervisor and aspiring director. I had been following his career and I'm a huge fan of the show, so I reached out to him and said, "Hey man, congratulations, love your show! Also, here's what I've been doing." He emailed me back and said, "Wow, I'm so happy that you reached out. Let's set up a meeting." I met with Ian and Andrew [Chambliss] and immediately just fell in love with them. I’m really aligned with how they like to work and how they tell stories, so they offered me an episode to direct.
Then the pandemic hit, but they honored their word. My first episode with them [Season 6's "Handle with Care"] was in September or October of 2020 during the pandemic. It went like gangbusters. I loved everybody. They're real filmmakers and I was looking for a show like this. The second day of shooting, [producer and director] Michael Satrazemis came to set and pulled me aside and I was like, "Oh no. S–t, am I fired?" He said, "Listen, we really dig what you're doing and we want you to continue with us and we want you to do the penultimate episode [Season 6's "USS Pennsylvania"]." I said, "I've been looking for a show like this," and he said, "We've been looking for a director like you." It was really one of those moments in my career that I hadn't had up to that point. I then became part of the FEAR family.
Q: When you talk about the show's filmmakers, do you mean Ian and Andrew or the cast and crew too?
A: The entire cast and crew of FEAR are all filmmakers. Everyone's a storyteller. The propmaster, Colin Thurston, is a genuine storyteller. Not only does he add authenticity, but he will propose a prop which informs a storyline because he has such a story-driven mind. It's amazing. He came up with the idea for the masks that Arno and his gang wear. Those are actual World War II masks that would have been in Teddy's bunker, because what do you do in a world where you don’t want to breathe this contaminated air? Plus it's like, well, where did they get these masks during an apocalypse? Well, they got the masks in the World War II bunker and from the grounded USS Pennsylvania submarine. Colin always makes it make sense and adds to the story.
Q: What's it like to have actors on the show who are also directors?
A: It's always a value-add when you’re working with cast members who understand being behind the camera. They can add to whatever the vision of the director is, as well as their own perspective as actors. It's a beautiful alchemy when that can happen, and that does happen on FEAR all the time because of Lennie James, Colman Domingo, and now Alycia Debnam-Carey. It's a fantastic, creative, fertile environment.
Q: Was it special to get the chance to direct the midseason premiere and usher us into the second half of Season 7?
A: It was incredibly special. This script's written by Ian and Andrew, and it's the first time I was able to direct a script written by the showrunners. That alone has its own specialness. It was also the first time that I really had a chance to work with Alycia because she wasn't in the other episodes except for the ending of [Season 7's] "The Portrait" when we find her at the camp. It was so exciting to be able to do a deep dive with Alycia as an actor. When I received the script, I was prepping another show in Chicago and it was late, but I stayed up to read it and then I couldn't stop! That opening sequence just took my breath away with Alicia waking up, having the dream, and waking up and hearing the loud music, not knowing where she is. I just immediately was flooded with imagery of how to shoot it.
Q: How did you bring your own directorial look and feel to this episode?
A: First and foremost, I was inspired by the intimate story of love in this episode, in particular self-love, as well as Alicia's physical struggle with her fever. I collaborated with the talented cinematographer Scott Winig to show Alicia's point of view coming in and out of her fever dreams. We chose to shoot with a combination of specialty lenses: a swing and shift set, two slant focus lenses, and a modified Petzval portrait, all from Panavision. These lenses allow any part of the frame to be in or out of focus. For instance, the scenes on the desolate four-way dirt road with the group following Alicia where the shots look like there's Vaseline coating the outer part of the frame—that's tilt-shift lenses. I could have the focus fall off in the background and keep only part of Alicia in focus. Combined with slow-motion, it gives you this warped visual frame which was excellent to represent her state of mind. We use it throughout the episode to create this hallucinatory feeling that Alicia's experiencing. We also used a combination of these lenses when she's coming in and out of her fever dream, when she sees the little girl, and when she encounters the Senator Vazquez walker who says, "Follow me." It's a device that we use to represent her psychological and physical state of mind.
We also had a great challenge in the scene when Alicia sees herself on the dirt road. She taps the shoulder of the Vazquez walker and, as he turns around, it isn't him. It's her, she's looking at herself. In that case, we filmed her twice with the same camera set-up—first in her sweaty, feverish look, and second in her idealized, renewed look. We used green screen as our background so that we could marry the frames in post-production, creating the illusion that Alicia is looking at herself when she says, "Follow me," as if she is in two parts of the same frame during one camera move. There were some really great technical challenges to telling the story in a visceral way.
We're world-building in every episode in every show in The Walking Dead Universe and my job is to have a point of view and be prepared. The biggest part of the job is inspiring collaboration and that’s really fun on these shows because everyone is so gifted and up for the challenge. In prep, I worked with a really talented storyboard artist named Mark Simon on storyboards, and I would present these, along with my shot list, to the crew every day. A picture tells a thousand words, so they would know what I was thinking and then we would elaborate and elevate those ideas and turn them into shots and scenes, and that's what you see in the episode. I'm always drawing diagrams and figures to show where the characters are on the set, and then of course the actors make their choices during blocking rehearsal. I really try to set up what Colman Domingo calls “the architecture of the scene,” and have that ready for them. I really feel it's my job to be in service of the story all the time, and to be a steward of the story and the set for the actors to inhabit.
Q: Warren "Wawa" Snipe has performed extensively as a dancer and a rapper, but what was it like directing him as an actor?
A: He's a truly gifted actor and we all benefited from working with him. He's just a very special person and a very emotionally centered actor. He knows how to express himself, and with the added dimension of sign language, it was so powerful to work with someone who's so in touch with their emotions and so expressive on the screen. I find him to be so expressive with his eyes, his gestures, and just his physical being, which I'm sure is probably related to how he communicates every day. He's lovely and so impactful in such a short amount of time.
Q: I was hoping he would survive and join the gang at the submarine, but it was not to be unfortunately.
A: Oh gosh, you and me both! I still text Wawa and I can't wait to be able to work with him again. He's just so gifted and such a lovely human being.
Q: Much of the episode is a two-hander with Alicia and Paul. I know you have a theater background, so in some ways did you direct their scenes as if you were directing a play?
A: Given that we shoot on location so often, we can only do the scenes that are on that location in that given day. Basti Van Der Woude, the wonderful first AD [assistant director] will schedule the scenes in script order as much as possible, which allows us to rehearse in the location in a linear fashion. So in that way, yes, it's similar to rehearsing a play. And because it was a two-hander most of the time, Wawa, Alycia, and I talked through the episode and worked on scenes during prep, so we knew the through lines and the overall story arcs before we even came onto the set. It really helped having that prep because then I could choose the location based on what we were all trying to go for.
It's always tricky to rehearse a TV show like a play because of the location-first priority. But we do really try to shoot in order in any given location. For instance, in the house with Paul and Alicia, we had that house for the whole week. So we could do Alicia waking up upstairs in the bedroom, bring her downstairs in the location, and have her hear and see Paul for the first time, and then go into that fight with the walker where Paul stabs the walker and Alicia pulls down the stereo. We did all of that in order, which is phenomenal because that doesn't always happen. Choosing a location where we could do all of these parts in the same house was really key. We really lucked out with this house because we could do everything on the inside and the outside. That beautiful scene at the end where Paul sacrifices himself and Alicia's running outside the window—we chose that with that in mind. There was a first-floor bay window looking out, and I knew I could do the shots that I wanted to get them.
Q: Since this was your sixth foray into The Walking Dead Universe, are you used to working with walkers now? What are the special challenges of directing them?
A: I've got to say I can't get enough of these beautiful walkers! They're so unique. These actors, in particular the stunt walkers, are incredibly talented performers, completely dedicated, and willing to do anything. For "The Portrait," when I said we were going to be shooting a walker out of an air cannon through a glass window, they were getting in line to say yes. They're up for anything! Their ability to do things contributes to the stories we can tell.
One of the really fun challenges is to come up with inventive walker kills that haven't been done yet in The Walking Dead Universe. In this episode Paul grabs the tonearm off the broken turntable and stabs a walker in the eye with it, so that was really cool—we hadn't done that before! And in my first episode that I directed, Dwight picks up a saw and lands the saw in the mouth of a walker. That was really fun because it was a collaboration between all of the departments. First off, how can we create a saw that looks like a real saw that an actual human stunt person can use in the fight? It's a great challenge and it goes back to everybody operating at such a high level that we can pull off these amazing ideas and stunts.

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