New Look At Khary Payton As King Ezekiel In THE WALKING DEAD Season 7
First revealed in the Comic-Con trailer for The Walking Dead season seven, we now have the first official image of Khary Payton as King Ezekiel along with comments from the actor on his character's tiger.
Rumours of King Ezekiel appearing in season seven of The Walking Dead persisted for months, but it wasn't until the release of that Comic-Con trailer for the show that we finally got to see him in all his glory. Of course, by far the biggest surprise was the fact that he was joined by his pet tiger, Shiva.
Entertainment Weekly has now confirmed that Shiva will be a mixture of animatronics and CGI and asked Khary Payton what it's been like to work alongside that (the full interview can be found by clicking below). Interestingly, the actor's experience as a voice talent seems to have helped a lot.
"It’s just another beautiful way that I get to use my imagination. As far as I’m concerned, Shiva’s as real as the people standing next to me — as Morgan or Carol or any of the other people who move among the Kingdom itself. So I really don’t think of it as CG or mechanic. All I know is that she’s real to me. I’ve done a lot of video games where there’s literally nothing standing in front of me. I’ve done, you know, a lot of voiceovers where there’s literally nothing standing in front of me, I’ve got to make it all up, so this is just another situation where my imagination gets to be used in another context, so no matter how good they bring it to life, it’s already alive in my head."
About The Author:
A lifelong comic book fan who grew up on Spider-Man: The Animated Series in the '90s, Josh Wilding has been contributing to ComicBookMovie.com since 2009.
While he's also written for websites like Batman-News, HeyUGuys, and WhatCulture, Josh is CBM's Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic and the site's #1 contributor with nearly two decades of experience covering film and TV news (including interviews with Tom Holland, Chris Pratt, Gary Oldman, Halle Berry, Jon Bernthal, Tom Welling, and hundreds more).
Based in the UK with his wife, Josh is also an avid WWE and Formula 1 fan and writes about those passions on CBM's sister sites, TheRingReport.com and FullThrottleHQ.com. Favourite superhero? Spider-Man. Favourite pro wrestler? CM Punk. Favourite F1 driver? Max Verstappen.