Interview: Jeffrey Dean Morgan on Being a Psychopath in 'Desierto,' Zack Snyder'…

A whole lot of people are about to really, really hate Jeffrey Dean Morgan. I’m not even talking about his role on The Walking Dead, though the topic does inevitably come up, but rather his role in Desierto, the feature directing debut of Gravity co-writer Jonás Cuarón. In it he plays a lonely psychopath who starts hunting people trying to illegally cross the border into America. It’s a rather thankless role, one that positions him as the personification of pure evil but also (wisely) never stops to explain or justify that evil. He’s basically the slasher in a horror movie, only with a cowboy hat instead of a mask.

We spoke to Morgan last week over the phone about Desierto and what it’s like to play someone so unrepentantly evil. We also touched on Watchmen being ahead of its time and why The Walking Dead’s premiere episode will probably make people hate him even more.

Movies.com: Is it weird to have people come to you and say, ‘Not only do I think you’d make a good bad guy, I think you’d make a really, really good, absolutely despicable psychopath’?

Jeffrey Dean Morgan: Yeah, it is a little weird to get that opportunity. And I do look at it as an opportunity, because I do have stretches where I play nice, decent human beings and so I kind of enjoy playing a more villainous, evil role. This role in particular, I’ll be honest, it’s taken on a life of its own given the political climate we’re in. It’s changed meanings since I first took on this project. At the time it was just a character study of these two men who represent good and evil. I wasn’t thinking about the hot button issue it’s become, I was just thinking about it as a bad guy.

It was kind of written bare bones, so when Jonás and I went in, he had written a whole backstory for this guy and scenes we didn’t keep in the movie that kind of explained why he was doing what he was doing. And we were watching those scenes and thinking, ‘God damn, we just don’t need it.’ And he knew it. It didn’t because there’s no excuse for a guy like that– in my book, anyway. It plays much scarier not knowing this guy’s situation. He’s just a crazy, f—king asshole. There is no justification.

Now, while filming it, I had all kinds of justification in my head of why he would do the things he would do. We had whole scenes and backstory, something to the effect that he was just a guy who worked at a factory and immigrants came in and took his job away. He had a sick kid at home, and a wife who thought he was an alchy – and he was – and he couldn’t afford the hospital bills. There was a whole story, but seeing it, it plays much scarier not knowing that. It’s not necessary for the audience, and frankly I think it slows the story down.

Sometimes you over tell, you over share. Audiences are smarter than we ever give them credit for. In this case, you don’t have to be smart to recognize good and evil, and it would have done a great disservice to try and explain this guy.

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Movies.com: Was filming this movie as much of a nightmare as it looks?

Morgan: Yeah, it was rough. It was a small production by anyone’s standards, pretty much just a skeleton screw. We shot in Baja about two-and-a-half-hours outside of La Plaz, and we stayed in La Plaz so it was two-and-a-half-hours into the desert at the beginning of every day. It would be just Gael, Jonás and myself, and we’d help carry cables or camera equipment or whatever up to the top of a cliff. Then the sun would go down, and it was two-and-a-half-hours back. There was no need for hair and make-up. That sweat is real, that sunburn is real. What you see is what you get. 

It was brutal, man. It was no f—king joke. It was running and climbing. I remember being on the side of a cliff at one point, looking down. It was 75-feet down and I was standing on two inches of a rock outcropping and just thinking, ‘Man, this is going to be a hell of a way to die, because I know there are no hospitals within 3 hours.’ And then I’d look up and see the DP hanging off a cliff, and I’d see Gael 20 feet in front of me running up a mountain, and I’d think, ‘Well I’m not going to be the one to mess this up.’ It was love of the game, just pushing each other along the way.

Movies.com: When Watchmen came out, audiences were unsure of an R-rated superhero movie, and now they’re craving it. Do you think you were ahead of the curve on that?

Morgan: I certainly think we were. I think, for one, Zack Snyder’s one of the most visual directors we’ve ever had and knows how to manipulate the medium in his way. I think the way he makes movies is genius. Watchmen in particular…it’s too bad. If that came out now, it would be received and seen in a better way than it was. We were so restricted at the time, and it wasn’t even that long ago, to just the fans of the comic. The general public wasn’t interested in even giving it a shot. And now that climate has certainly changed.

Zack is a friend and a collaborator, and he’s one of the few people that if they ever call, I will always be there. That’s obviously how I ended up in Batman v Superman. He just called and said, ‘Hey, would you do this for me?’ And I said of course. Any time he calls, I’ll be there.

Movies.com: What do you have next that you’re excited about?

Morgan: I’ve got this Walking Dead premiere and I’m so sick of not talking about not talking about it. I’m still shooting that. I shoot until just before Thanksgiving. So I’ve got Desierto press, tomorrow I do Walking Dead Comic-Con, then I go to Atlanta and shoot, then LA for more Desierto, then back to Atlanta for more shooting, and then the Walking Dead premiere.

That will change everything. I think for one, people will probably hate me a little more, and two, I finally get to talk about what I’ve been doing for the last year. It’s been hard. I get asked about it all the time. I appreciate you didn’t ask any questions about Walking Dead. I’ve got a six-year-old boy at home, and he needs his dad more than he needs Negan, so I’m looking forward to spending time at home and just being a dad.

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Desierto is in theaters October 14, 2016.

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