The Walking Dead and A Million Little Things star Chandler Riggs has a bright future ahead of him. He has been acting since he was four-years-old and shows no sign of stopping.
He told some stories from the set of TWD and shared one thing he took from Andrew Lincoln on that show to bring to A Million Little Things.
“He (Lincoln) did this thing on set where whenever he was doing a pretty highly emotional scene, which was like every damn episode, honestly, he would do this thing where he would just like look at his hand. I thought it was just like kind of weird because he would just like, go off on his own and just like staring in the sky. What it was is that it was a thing that he learned from his acting classes from when he was in college and just to kind of bring everything internal so all of the distractions on set… trying to get the focus right so it’s, there’s a lot going on and so he would just do that to kind of bring everything to himself and I started doing that on A Million Little Things. I would do it like a little bit differently, I would just have my hand be like another voice talking to me basically. And like can I like have a battle within myself so on screen and like looks, you can really see the confliction from my character and it made a lot of sense.”
Onset Shenanigans
One thing we all wanted to know is what happened when Chandler “pumpkined out.” There are strict laws when it comes to child actors and after a while, when Chandler couldn’t work any more hours, a dummy would be brought in to fill in for him.
“Yes, they made the dummy. It was mainly just so they could get the prosthetic great. But they had they took a mold of my face, which was absolutely terrifying… They ended up actually using it for one of the shots in the episode when he takes the bullet and then he says ‘dad’ and he falls over. Rick comes down and like scoops up Carl to run to the infirmary when he’s when he scoops him up and starts running it’s straight up the dummy. Andy does an incredible job of selling it as heavy like hundreds of pounds. But no.
No one knows where the dummy is now, but I can guarantee that it’ll show up one day. Props never get thrown away.
Speaking of Carl, Chandler, who is a huge fan of the comics, loved how he got to portray some of Carl’s key moments.
“The thing, the fortunate part is that they never really established Carl’s age. They almost did… I was the biggest fan of The Walking Dead on set… So all of those things that Carl did on the show that seemed childish, were big parts of the comics and things that I was so stoked to do. And I didn’t really see them as childish. I was just super stoked to do them and I think he really kind of came full circle at the end and showed his maturity so I think it all kind of wrapped up pretty nicely.”
Chandler’s theory on Rick’s fate: he’s alive.
A Bright Future
After hearing that he wouldn’t be on the show anymore, Chandler decided to switch gears and use this momentum to propel his career. Aside from A Million Little Things, Chandler’s auditioning like crazy, working on his music and coming to conventions to see his fans. One thing he doesn’t miss about TWD is the intense heat.
“Oh my god, you guys have no idea. Actually in the first season, like 99% of the first season was shot on location outside in record, breaking heat every day. It was terrible. For episode six, the first day that we were shooting in the CDC, we walked in, air-conditioned and oh my god. That was glorious. We just walked in this air conditioning for the first time in like three months, it was amazing. So it’s great being on a soundstage and we’re actually in the in Vancouver so it’s even better. And but it’s also great being clean because every single day in makeup, they would have to spray like fake dirt on our hands. And we’d have to dig it into our fingernails. It’s not real dirt. But it was all in my hands and on my neck and face and arms and you’re just coated in sweat and it’s the most disgusting thing ever. It is amazing being on a soundstage, for sure.”
Chandler’s goal in his career is to hit every medium. He is already an established actor and musician and he plans to dabble with directing and scoring and all kinds of things.
“Kind of my end goal, as a musician, is to be scoring like films and TV shows eventually… When you listen to the soundtrack of a film, it sounds like they made the song and they just copy and paste it onto the film. But they score it based on the final edit… That’s kind of like the end goal to hit all mediums.”
We all wish you the best Chandler!