Jadis actor Pollyanna McIntosh discusses returning to her character for The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live and working with Andrew Lincoln.
The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live episode 3 brought Jadis back into the fold, raising the stakes for the newly reunited Rick and Michonne even higher. Jadis is the only other character from The Walking Dead to have appeared in the top half of the season, but given her crucial role in bringing Rick to the Civic Republic in the first place, her return was inevitable. Looking and sounding quite different from her initial introduction in the flagship show as the leader of the Scavengers, Jadis is clearly as dangerous and tactical as ever.
Pollyanna McIntosh returns to reprise her role as the character and continues to build off her gripping performances both in The Walking Dead and The Walking Dead: World Beyond spinoff. Though The Walking Dead: World Beyond is not essential viewing for the new spinoff, it does introduce the version of Jadis seen in the show. Jadis and Rick’s deal is a key point of The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live’s second episode, and the third sets up the consequences of Rick disobeying it.
Screen Rant had a joyful chat with Pollyanna McIntosh about her return to The Walking Dead universe. McIntosh was quick to praise Andrew Lincoln and delve into Jadis’ complicated relationship with Rick, and jokingly lamented character choices for Jadis that have stuck around longer than she thought they would.
How The Walking Dead: World Beyond Helped Pollyanna McIntosh’s Long-Awaited Performance
Screen Rant: You were tied up with Andrew Lincoln leaving the show in the first place, and people have been waiting for this since 2019. Did you know back then that you would be involved in helping to tell this story?
Pollyanna McIntosh: Yes, absolutely. I felt so lucky being told five months before I left the show that we’d be carrying on with this storyline, so I’ve had secrets to keep for a long time.
I imagine a lot of people are watching this because of Rick and Michonne and haven’t seen your performance in The Walking Dead:World Beyond, which I think is a lot closer to where we see Jadis now. How much did you want that performance to impact this one?
Pollyanna McIntosh: Well, it’s interesting to me that I always knew that we would do this part of the story, but World Beyond was a lovely little bonus and surprise in the middle of the time between the end of the flagship and this. And boy, was she a hard-ass in that show. I feel very lucky that that happened, because I had the chance to get to know her through World Beyond, and hopefully it means that she’s even more grounded in this version of Jadis with The Ones Who Live.
I think when you fall in love with a character, like I did with Jadis, you want her to be the best version of herself. What’s so awesome for me as well is that she’s flipped the script so many times and really the only thing you can count on with Jadis is that you’re going to be surprised. That’s really, really fun to play.
Pollyanna McIntosh Explains Jadis’ Relationship With Rick And Hers With Andrew Lincoln
I have always loved Jadis’ rapport with Rick, all the way back to The Walking Dead where she asks Michonne if she can sleep with him very casually. How do you think that she views Rick now in The Ones Who Live?
Pollyanna McIntosh: Well, I’ll just correct you on that. She doesn’t ask Michonne if she can do it. She says, “I’m going to. Are you cool with that?” basically, which is what makes it so funny. I think Andrew’s response as Rick was just so brilliant to be on the other side of where he’s like, “Whoa.” It was one of the most comedic moments. I felt, opposite Andrew, that he really nailed that moment.
Here, we’ve seen from this episode that she views him as foolishly in the way of the cause that she truly believes in, and a detriment to himself and to his people by the choices that he’s making and the choices that Michonne has made as well. I, as a fan of their love relationship and as a fan of them succeeding, am like, “Damn you, Jadis.” But she has a lot of history with him and there’s no doubt that she respects him — and she respects Michonne too — but her wants are her wants, and she feels that they’re backed up by something much greater than all of them.
It’s just that wonderful Walking Dead universe [thing] of making things really nuanced and not black and white. We could have a whole interview about Jadis’ feelings about Rick. I think that she knows how to play him and play with him, and there’s still that temptation to do so, but she’s also pretty straight up with him. And she doesn’t want to harm people. She doesn’t want to go and kill everybody back in Alexandria. She makes that clear as well, but she puts the ball in his court very much, and I think that’s one of the things that’s so frustrating for him and for us watching that scene. He did make deals with her before, and he’s really trying to make a different deal with her, and she’s absolutely cut and dry about the situation and [is] really putting him in a corner.
Even for me — as a fan of the show, as a fan of Rick, and also even as Jadis — there were moments in that scene where I felt like, “Oh, you’re more vulnerable than I’ve ever seen you, and I don’t really like it. I don’t really like seeing you broken for the cause, [although] that’s the best way for you to be because then you won’t try and run.” It’s a tricky bunch of feelings that are going on there, both for me and for her in that seat.
There’s a line where Rick says she’s a hero with a s**t haircut.Would Jadis ever change her hair to impress Rick?
Pollyanna McIntosh: No. Her hair is designed to intimidate, show edge, show difference, and show that she doesn’t care about what everybody thinks. That’s a far more formidable foe than [one with] a nice set of locks on the head, you know what I mean? But it sure does screw with me.
When I volunteered that haircut in World Beyond, I was like, “How about we do this, we shave it, we do like a Joan of Arc thing, and we make it military and edgy, and we call back to Jadis’ original bangs and bring back a bit of that?” I didn’t really know that I’d have to have it all the way through The Ones Who Live. I thought maybe the timeline would be split a little bit more, but nah, it was back to it. I’ve been trying to grow my hair for three years at this point.
I am very curious what your first scene was back with Andrew Lincoln on the show, and how that was to do.
Pollyanna McIntosh: That was that scene at the end of episode 2 where she’s in there waiting for him to come in with a bottle of whiskey, and it was electric. Each take was different. With Andrew, one of the great joys of working with him is that he is completely open to suggestion within the scene. You play a little differently, and he responds. He plays a little differently, [and] I respond.
It’s this beautiful back and forth, and he’s such an open, communicative actor. He’s not about rigid choices. He’s about really feeling the scene and he knows exactly who he is as in that character. He’s feeling what’s going on, and so there were real high five moments. I love working with Andy so much. It was the same as when we were in the junkyard scenes together. He leaned into me at one point really early on and went, “You guys are really weird. I like you.” It was the same sort of feeling in this, where he was just like, “Oh, that was a good one,” or, “Oh, that was cool,” but you just felt it. It was all very genuine.
And one of the other really fun things was that Matthew Jeffers was shadowing our director, Michael Slovis, on that episode. I met him for the first time. He was just quietly being behind monitor, just quietly doing his thing, but at some point, I said hello, and he said, “Oh, this is really great work.” It really meant a lot from him because I admire him, and that felt like a really genuine meet as well. It was a really gorgeous day on set. I was nervous too, because most actors’ first day on anything, let alone something that means this much, you’ve got the little bit of nerves, but as soon as you’re in it with Andy, it just goes away, because you’re genuinely in it.
Jadis Believes In The CR, But Pollyanna McIntosh Misses The Junkyard
How much does Jadis really believe in the CR and CRM? Is her not wanting Rick to leave really just to protect that, or is there anything else going on with her that you can talk about?
Pollyanna McIntosh: I feel that she went into the CR and she was really impressed with what the possibilities were of this organization. In my mind, the back story is that she experienced the world closer to what it used to be like, and there’s respite for people in the CR in the Civic Republic. There’s even a possibility for art again. You see it with the guy with the phones in the market. There’s freedom and there’s joy, and there’s even love.
When she says, “Well, why don’t you have your relationship here?”, she really means it. But just like Rick, she needs a purpose, and she needs to lead. In the Civic Republic Military, she gets that opportunity to have a purpose and to be a leader again, and that’s really how she’s built.
I don’t want to muck it up for the fans because I don’t want to say, “This is the only way to look at it.” I think one of the great things about Walking Dead is that there’s a lot of discussion between people about what they think about the characters are doing and what their motivations are, and I think that’s really, really fun. I don’t want to say, “This is how it is,” but for me, she’s gone beyond the idea of having friends around and having people around that she likes to spend time with. She’s very, very focused on these goals and she knows how hard the work is to achieve them.
And she in that first scene together in episode 3 — I believe it’s actually at the end of episode 2 — she says, “My hands are covered in blood. They can’t get any bloodier. I’ve done it all, and I’ve chosen this. I’ve chosen this way of doing it because I believe this will bring the world back.”
It’s hard to contend with, but I think that’s the genius of Scott Gimple in this new world we’re being brought to — that these horrific military choices are being made for seemingly for the good of everyone. I think Jadis believes in that. She doesn’t want to see Rick dead as well, though. I suppose that’s the best way to put it is that she doesn’t want to see him dead. She doesn’t want to see Michonne dead either. It would be a waste. People are a resource.
Jadis seems like she’s living pretty well in the CR, especially compared to when we met her in The Walking Dead. Do you ever miss the junkyard set and shooting those scenes?
Pollyanna McIntosh: Oh, totally. I miss Jadis speaking that way. I miss all those people. I miss the excitement of the independence that they had. There is a darkness to carry in this world for sure. I just loved her swagger and her delight and her capacity with her people, but I think she’s getting quite a lot of that back in this version of herself as well.
I think probably my favorites go: original Jadis, current Jadis, and then Anne. Even though for me personally, as Pollyanna, I’d much rather be chilling with the Alexandria Jadis and having a good time. It is fun to me that you notice that she’s living it up a bit and she’s sort of got what she needs, because I see her as quite a fat cat in this situation. She’s even little heavier, physically.
She’s got that whiskey bottle and she’s definitely taking, and there is bothering going on. It’s not “We take, we don’t bother” anymore. I feel like some of the darkness also has her probably overindulging a bit in the booze—[there’s] a little bit of the numbing going on. When I see two to three chins on myself, I go, “Good work, lady. That was a very great character choice.”
Jadis Will Return Later In The Season
This is coming out after episode 3. Is there anything you can say about what Jadis is up to for the rest of the season?
Pollyanna McIntosh: Well, she ain’t going to let that fly. She’s on a mission. She’s always on a mission, and she’s not the type to stop until she gets what she wants.
