The actress joins the 'Walking Dead' franchise with an unexpected appearance in the episodic anthology series.
Parker Posey is the latest star to join the ever-expanding Walking Dead universe, thanks to the episodic anthology spinoff Tales of the Walking Dead. The actress, famous for her roles in Best in Show, Dazed and Confused, and most recently The Staircase, appears in “Blair/Gina,” a perversely funny departure from the typical stories told in the zombie franchise that takes advantage of Parker’s expert comedic timing and extremely dry humor.
“There’s nothing funnier than mean people who are just, like, hateful… and angry people who can’t deal with themselves,” Posey tells ET about the episode written by Kari Drake, who previously served as a producer on Netflix’s reboot of Lost in Space, which starred the actress as Dr. Smith.
In the second standalone installment of Tales of the Walking Dead, Posey stars as Blair opposite Jillian Bell as Gina, two co-workers who find themselves stuck in a time loop, as they relive the beginning of the zombie outbreak in Atlanta, Georgia, in 2010. Despite how much they hate each other, they realize the only way to survive -- and live out the time loop longer is to work together.
“I really love this idea that two people share the same psychological thing,” says Posey, who found herself channeling her own, recent personal traumas into the character. “I’m like, ‘If we can get people screaming in their homes and just, like, laughing, we’ve done our job.’ Because there’s been a lot of trauma and grief.”
When it comes to Blair, the actress liked how “she’s kind of this monster and then we see the layers come off and the reasons why she can’t contain herself,” Posey says, explaining that the two women are “two sides of the same coin. So, there is this dance between the two of them.”
She adds that “this drama that they’re living through together is bonding them for life.”
Not only is Blair deliciously vile and mean only on a level Posey can bring to life onscreen, she spends the entire episode decked out in a fuzzy green sweater vest over a satin bow blouse accessorized with a pink fur scarf, “which kind of looks like a stuffed animal,” and a pair of oversized Rachel Comey earrings.
“There’s something kind of grandiose and fabulous about that time,” Posey says of 2010, explaining that she ran to the mall -- Zara and H&M in particular -- to find the perfect outfit. “I knew I wanted something that was emotional and that gave me, you know, certain gestures and certain things to play with.”
“I thought it really worked,” she continues. “I loved doing the wardrobe and coming up with the character.”
At the end of the day, what really stuck out to Posey about this episode was how it reminded her of the 1970s gothic series Night Gallery and Dark Shadows, the latter of which starred iconic actresses like Grayson Hall who turned to the horror genre later in their careers. “There are a lot of actresses who, as they age, venture into the horror genre. So, that’s also kind of how I felt too,” she says, explaining that she “always loved those performances” by Bette Davis, Joan Crawford and others.
And when filming her own zombie attack scenes, Posey felt like she was channeling Hall, noting how there’s this “great compilation of the actress from Dark Shadows, where she’s running and she’s screaming all the time, and she’s like, ‘Get me out of here.’”
“You get scared,” Posey continues, explaining how she found herself in “fight or flight mode” while filming those moments. “It’s like, ‘I can’t believe this is my life.’ This episode was a trip.”
Tales of the Walking Dead airs Sundays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on AMC and is also streaming on AMC+.
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