‘The Walking Dead’ season 4: The biggest challenge for Andrew Lincoln

We don’t know what it is about some of the best characters on TV right now being played with actors with other accents, but it has become in some ways reasonably widespread. After all Damian Lewis won last year for taking on Nicholas Brody on “Homeland,” and this year, Andrew Lincoln may be seriously considered for his role as Rick on “The Walking Dead.”

When you star on such an action-heavy show, there are a number of things that you have to do in order to prepare, whether this means work to make certain that you are in the top shape to studying your lines carefully to practicing your choreography for certain sequences. However, for Lincoln one thing seems to be more important than almost anything else: Making sure the American accent is perfect (given that he uses it from the opening moments of the pilot to where we are now in season 4). In speaking out in a new interview with the Los Angeles Times, he does his best to explain:

“If you’re going to have the honor of leading or being involved in playing quite an iconic sort of American role, I wanted to get that bit out of the way before the zombies — so I could focus on killing them.”

So why are foreign-born actors at times so great at playing American characters ? It’s unfair to make any sweeping generalization, since it may be done on a case-by-case basis, however maybe some see this as an opportunity to really put on a completely different skin, and it allows them to focus and be in the head of a new character with a distinct inner and outer voice. This is certainly a great question for a roundtable discussion, but it ultimately does not matter what the process in particular for Lincoln is. What matters is that he’s great.

Andrew is currently hard at work filming “The Walking Dead” season 4 in Atlanta, and maybe at this point the accent has become habit for him. If you want to read more scoop on the upcoming fourth season of “The Walking Dead” via  producer, all you have to do is click here.

Photo: AMC