Logan Triplett, a business student at Colorado Mesa University, recently had a great opportunity. He was cast for the TV show “The Walking Dead”. His first role was to play as a zombie.
“I am a model and I travel around a lot for modeling shoots,” Triplett said. “One day my manager sent me an email, and they were like, email this address right now, this is one of the private emails for one of the producers for “Walking Dead”.”
“My manager told me exactly what to send and what to wear. I basically had to send my resume, as in head shots and full body close ups. I also had to make a shot while portraying a zombie, and then I had to send a 30 second video pretending to be a zombie. I had to write something about myself and then I had to give my sizes. Basically, I emailed all of that. And then, I’m not even kidding, within five minutes they called me and were like we need you right now.”
“I remember the first thing I did was actually calling my mom like ‘Mom! I’m on the show!’ It felt great.”
“I think one of the main things that got me casted was my jaw line. They said to me that I have a very strong jaw line, and that’s what they wanted because they want more bony structures. It makes sense, since that’s easier to make look like a zombie. They want you to look a bit more emaciated and dead and chewed on,” Triplett said. “But oh well, I will take the compliment.”
Once Triplett went up and filmed for the zombie role, they actually asked him to audition for a lead role, too.
“I flew out to New York to audition for that one already, but we won’t hear back for a couple of months about the results,” Triplett said. “So it’s gonna be a long stressful time, but I’ve already been part of the show so I’m just super thankful for the opportunity.”
What the lead role would exactly entail is unclear, even for Triplett himself.
“If I get the role I’ll either be an antagonist or a protagonist. There is a lot of stuff that I have to be confidential about,” he admitted. “When I was up there filming there were a lot of things that haven’t come out in the TV show yet. I do know that the role would be either a supporting character for Rick and his group, or a character that would go against Rick and his group. So, it will be a human role, they’re alive, but I don’t really know what kind of group I would be in so that’s going to be interesting.”
When Triplet was cast for the zombie part, the crew was very careful of avoiding spoilers as much as they could.
“We had to hand in everything that could record because we were filming for a later season. They literally took all of our phones and put them in a bin before we could go on set and start filming.”
“I did get to meet a couple of the actors which was super cool, they were super fun,” Triplet said. “I can’t say which ones though, because that’s confidential. All I can say is that they were very nice and I really enjoyed it.”
Getting your makeup done as a zombie is quite the process, too.
“On the day we were filming, I was in makeup from 3:00 a.m. till 6:00 a.m,,” Triplet said. “The first couple of days when I was there, all they did was mold my face and tested out different adhesives to figure out which would work best with my skin. After that they had like, jaw pieces made, and dentures that were made, as well as eye contacts to fit my eyes. The final make-up process was from 3:00 a.m. to 6:00 a.m., and then after makeup I was filming from like, 7:00 a.m. till 12:00 at night.”
“I did that for a couple of days. It was pretty crazy because when you put the contacts in, you can’t see out of them. So when people who watch the show see zombies fall over, that’s totally real. The actors really can’t see where they’re stepping,” Triplett said. “They are actually falling.”
“They put in this amount of detail because they never know what zombie will end up in a close-up. It can also differ where they want to position what person, so they’ll never know what zombie actually ends up on screen.”
“About the prosthetics – people might think you put in these dentures and that’s it, but actually it is the whole bottom of your lip that’s taken out with prosthetics. They kind of glue the bottom teeth to your lip, and then they push back your upper lip and put make up all over it to make your teeth look all gross. In the end it looks like your lips are completely gone because of the decay. It’s so cool how they make the zombies, they are so realistic.”
“There’s so much makeup that I don’t think anyone will be able to recognize me,” Triplett said. “It makes sense, since it’s so far in the apocalypse that my zombie body has been so decayed that it’s just non-recognizable. I don’t think anyone will be able to say like, hey, that’s Logan! But that’s okay.”
After being asked to audition for a lead role he got thrown in a whole new process.
“What they have you do is basically they let you audition this part, but the part doesn’t even have to be part of the actual script. They might just as well say ‘Oh, here’s a play we want you to audition with’ and then you audition with that play. After that then they will be like hmmm, he would be great for this, or maybe for that character,” Triplett explained.
“After that they will let you interact more with that character, and they let you do cold reads and interact with all the other characters. It’s a very long process before you finally get the role or not.”
For those not familiar with the actor lingo – doing a cold read means you read aloud from a script with little or no rehearsal in advance at all. It is a technique often used by actors and other performers.
For Triplett, it is like a dream come true, since his main goal is to get a steady job in the industry.
“I do think getting a degree is important,” Triplett said. “But my plan A would be to go into acting or modeling. My plan B would be to get a degree in the field I choose, which right now would be real estate. But, I feel like, if plan A is there, I would go for plan A.”
He does realize he still has a long way to go. And even once you get a role in a successful show like “The Walking Dead”, it does not mean you are there yet.
“It’s very difficult because so many people are trying to get in. Also, jobs in these industries are very on/off, since one day you could have a couple of jobs but, like, if your show ends for example, you could not be casted for something for another year. So you can have a period that you still have to bridge somehow.”
Right now, Triplett does not have the problem of not getting any job offers though.
“Before being casted on “The Walking Dead”, I acted in a couple local productions. This was one of my first big acting gigs, though. I also got casted in a music video, but unfortunately I did not go to that because I went to this instead. It was actually going to be a video for Drake. But yeah, I had to give that up to be in “The Walking Dead”. It was a luxury problem,” Triplett said.
“Right now I am just super excited. I’m such a big fan of “The Walking Dead” myself, so I’m already like ‘I’m my own favorite character!’”
