Known as the free-spirited yoga instructor in the late ’90s sitcom “Dharma & Greg” and as a PR exec with a ghostlike mentor in the recent sitcom “Imaginary Mary,” Jenna Elfman surprised her devoted fans when she joined the cast of “Fear the Walking Dead,” a hardcore spinoff of “The Walking Dead.” Elfman has been a series regular as June and alternatively as Naomi. Harboring a dark past, Naomi killed everyone she blamed for her daughter’s death in a FEMA center, so there’s lots of emotional baggage that comes with the role. In this roundtable interview at WonderCon 2019, Elfman reveals the challenges she faced, both physically and mentally, in developing her character.
Asked why she decided to leave such comedic genres like “Dharma and Greg” and “Imaginary Mary” and jump into the horror genre, Jenna Elfman replied. “I was doing drama before I ever got a comedy job. I just happened to get a comedy job. And people went, oh, you’re the new comedy person. So I had that experience and I wanted a new experience.“
What did she find most challenging about being in “Fear the Walking Dead?” “It was a big learning curve for me. It’s a universe that’s established already. I wanted to learn everything there was to learn about it, so that I could advance the storytelling for myself be aware of what is and what’s already being discussed, what’s been done, what the agreements are. So I started watching every season of those shows because I felt I had to. Because it’s a show that’s so engaged with the fandom, which is so much a part of the journey of the show, I just wanted to become literate with what was going on—like inside baseball. I wanted to have a good apocalyptic storytelling IQ of the show. So I could serve the fans and the story. But the learning curve of that was the biggest challenge—of my character, how we get information from the writers, the evolution of that. It comes in doses and, as an artist, you really want to know what’s happening. There was a new chapter for the show and there was a lot of change going on.”
Elfman also went into the physical demands of the show. “The cool thing is that it’s super physically challenging with the stunts and everything. We’ll arrive at a location and it’ll be time to rehearse for some huge physical stunt or fight scene choreography. It’s a little overwhelming at first, but the stunt coordinators have almost magical powers. I’d be like, how is this going to play out? How are we going to do this? But they’d already been on the set working it all out. There’s something about how they work out the stunts to look cool and for the actors to be able to do them. But they walk you through it and in five or ten minutes, you’re doing this amazing stunt scene. And you wonder, how am I doing this? They make it so simple, the way they convey it. So they play a huge part in us being able to pull this off.”
Responding to the question of how she is like her character and how she differs from it, Elfman replied, “I’m often asked that question. But to me, it’s a character and there’s always a piece of my soul in that but it’s an entity unto itself. I inject my mind and soul into it, but I don’t think it matters to me how much I’m like a character or not. It’s an entity and the joy of creating it is what interests me. I think we’re capable of far more than we give ourselves credit for or think we can do.”
Asked if she had any projects during the hiatus that kept her busy or was summer just downtime, Elfman noted, “The two children that you see (they were in the pressroom) growing fast are my summer project. It’s an annual project, but during the summer, it’s my time to really uninterruptedly do that.”
Will we see more of Naomi’s backstory in the upcoming season? Elfman explained, “In last season’s episode “Just in Case,” we learn more about her backstory. How she lost her daughter, how it happened. And how she tried to do the right thing. Her story now is one of evolution, moving forward.”
FTWD returns in June. Check out the Season 5 trailer.
Alex A. Kecskes is a published author of "Healer a Novel" and "The Search for Dr. Noble"—both now available on Amazon. He has written hundreds of film reviews and celebrity interviews for a wide variety of online and print outlets. He has covered red carpet premieres and Comic-Con events for major films and independent releases.
