Josh Hamilton never watched an episode of "TWD" before getting cast on the show's final season.- He didn't intend to binge all 10 seasons, but then he had two weeks to kill before filming.
Josh Hamilton had no intention of binging 10 seasons of "The Walking Dead" when he was cast on the show's 11th and final season as Lance Hornsby.
"I had never seen the show before," Hamilton told Insider last month over Zoom alongside a few of his "TWD" costars. "When I was cast, I thought, 'Oh, there's no way I can watch 10 years of a show.'"
Understandable.
Catching up on 153 episodes of a television series is a massive undertaking, especially when each one averages about 45 minutes.
Hamilton intended to watch a few episodes, but that quickly turned into more when he had to arrive in Georgia a few weeks early for filming.
"I watched the most recent ones, the season before, sort of to get just a flavor of where the story was at," Hamilton said. "And then, because the COVID rules are still really in effect, I had to go down like two weeks or so before I started filming. I thought, 'Oh, I should go back and see at least how the beginning started.'"
"I started watching episode one, season one, and I basically spent the two weeks in my apartment in Georgia watching 10 years of the show, which was one of the greatest viewing experiences I've ever had," he added.
Season one is a short, breezy six episodes when compared to the majority of "
If you watched "TWD" every day non-stop for eight hours you could finish the series in a little over two weeks, but you'd also be watching around 10 episodes a day.
As a result of his binge, Hamilton said he then had to convince himself to not fangirl a bit when on set with some of the cast.
"The only downside was that then when I ended up on set ... I'd be a little fanned out when I saw people," Hamilton said. 'I was like, Be cool. Be cool. Be cool. I just felt the more I watched, the more I felt honored to be allowed to come play in the 'Walking Dead' playground."
Josh McDermitt, who has played Eugene Porter on "TWD" since season four and was also on the Zoom call, recalled Hamilton's commitment to his series' binge, sometimes leaving set to go straight home to continue watching "TWD."
"A few of us had actually talked about it. We would see you on set. You'd be done for the day, leaving, and we would just want to check-in and be like, 'Hey Josh, how are things?' And you're like, 'Good, good,'" McDermitt told Insider.
"You'd be getting in your car and trying to leave and we're like, 'What what's going on?' You're like, 'I gotta get home. I got more episodes to watch,'" McDermitt said. "It was really funny that you were that into it."
McDermitt added, "I think everybody comes in, whether they're a fan of the show or not, they start watching the show just to kind of get a tone and a feel for it. But it was just funny how, you could just tell, he wasn't necessarily fully engaged in any conversation he was having because he was thinking, 'This is taking time away from my binge-viewing right now.'"
Binging all 10 seasons may have really invigorated the star to get lost in his role because Hamilton has quickly become a fan favorite as Hornsby, the right-hand man to the Commonwealth leader, Pamela Milton.
—Reel (@ReelToRealPro) February 27, 2022
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—Abraham Ford (Parody) (@TheAbeFord) March 14, 2022
Hamilton has had a few stand-out moments on the final season with some longstanding "TWD" cast, including Melissa McBride, McDermitt, Lauren Cohan, and Ross Marquand which have made it tough to discern whether or not Lance is a good guy, bad guy, or somewhere in-between.
More layered than the comic version of his character, we've seen Hornsby pulling a lot of various strings at the Commonwealth in order to gain power and prestige within the community while also doing right by some of our characters. (He helped move Ezekiel up on a list for surgery after Carol did a favor for Lance.)
Lance also seems to be running some shady underground group that Eugene recently stumbled upon.
On Sunday's episode, "Warlords," we learn that Lance was trying to reroute some Commonwealth supplies that were meant for Alexandria's rebuild for some other secret project we have yet to hear more about.
What is he up to? We'll have to keep watching to see what Lance's ultimate goal is on "TWD."
For now, you can follow along with our ongoing coverage of the series all season long here.