There are a lot of new elements in the upcoming fourth season of Fear The Walking Dead Season 4 -- several new cast members have joined, Andrew Chambliss and Ian Goldberg are in place as showrunners and production has moved to Austin, Texas. Of course, there's no bigger change than the arrival of actor Lennie James -- who has played Morgan Jones on AMC's flagship The Walking Dead since Season 1.

Morgan is the much-hyped first character to cross over from one Walking Dead show to the other, something that for years folks like franchise creator Robert Kirkman indicated would not happen. Morgan's mere presence on Fear The Walking Dead prompts questions, such as what this means for the timeline between the two shows -- as Fear has traditionally been taking place earlier in the zombie apocalypse than is sister show, and Morgan has been an active presence on The Walking Dead up through its current season.

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These questions and more were asked -- if not fully answered, due to a fear of spoilers -- at a visit to Fear The Walking Dead's Austin set in late January, where CBR and three other outlets got a chance to talk to James about what Morgan's move to Fear means for the show, his character's dynamic with other series newcomers like Garret Dillahunt's John Dorie, why he was creatively energized by the shift and whether or not a return to the original The Walking Dead is possible.

Lennie James on Season 4 of Fear The Walking Dead.

So when are we?

Lennie James: When are we? That's a good question. You've started with a question I'm not going to answer. [Laughs]

What's different about Morgan now that he's on Fear The Walking Dead as opposed to The Walking Dead?

To be absolutely honest, I don't know yet. We're kind of early days. We're only on episode 6.

He's made a decision about who he is to people, and who he wants to be to people. That's obviously involved, in the storytelling, a shift in location. We're about to discover who he is and what's changed about him.

What's the relationship between Morgan and Garret Dillahunt's character?

It is two men who are on serious missions. They're not just wandering. And they come across each other. For the moment of the story we're telling, their journey joins together.

So much of Morgan's journey is driven by his relationship with Rick. Is there any relationship here that will mirror that? Anybody in particular he clings to?

Again, it's going to be a difficult one to answer, because it's still early days, so we don't know. We're shaping the story. It's the beginning of relationships. It's a weird one, because we're in the beginning, middle and end of different relationships in the early part of the telling of the story so far.

How is it for you coming to this show, and to Texas?

It's weird. I had a week between the end of seven months in Atlanta, and the beginning of seven months in Austin. It's a little bit of a blur. This is usually the time when I'm recovering from seven grueling months, and I'm not. It's a little strange, but I'm kind of enjoying it. It's exciting.

All the reasons I said yes to doing it are here and being manifested. It's exciting. It's a new group of people. It's a different aspect of Morgan, and who he's been, and the potential of what could happen to him -- it's a very weird situation to be associated with a character as long as I've been associated with a character, and then have that character reborn, in a way. It's exciting.

Who was the first people you met out here? What was the introduction to the Fear family like?

My first couple of days filming were with Maggie and Garret. Those were the early weeks, because we were all the newbies -- costumes, makeup tests, camera tests. I then met the rest of the guys.

It's an odd one. It's a show that's been going for three years, and is having this influx and big story point in the beginning of Season 4. It'll be interesting to see how it plays with people who don't know the show as much as it does with people who do know the show.

What was your last day on The Walking Dead set like?

It was a breeze. No one noticed I'd gone. [Laughs]

It was as you'd expect, really. Some of it was obviously stuff I'm not going to tell you. It was a difficult one. That's a hard set to leave. It genuinely is a good bunch of people, and it was a place that I enjoyed working. That's why I hung around there for so long. As has been said over and over again, it's not an easy shoot. But it's a fun shoot, and most of the reason why it is a fun shoot is that fantastic cast and that fantastic crew.

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Being the only character to cross over from The Walking Dead and Fear The Walking Dead, what creatively excited you about that possibility?

When the whole thing was suggested, I tried to think of another character in television history who is about to do the journey that my character was being offered. I couldn't think of one. If you can, it would be really helpful, because I'd like to find that person, and figure out how it all went. But I couldn't think of anybody else. That in itself was kind of exciting.

I thought of Jimmy Smits, when he took over from David Caruso on NYPD Blue, but it was an established show. There have been people who have spun off -- whether it's Rhoda, whether it's Lou Grant -- but in the particular that my character was doing, that's not been done, that I know of. I wanted to phone somebody up and say, "How did that happen? How did it work?" So like I said before, the possibility of taking a character that I thought I knew, inside out, that I had taken a real responsibility for, that I had taken ownership of and I had a real protection for, and then generally having him spun out into a new horizon, a new kind of canvas -- that was really exciting.

It was the only reason I said yes. The exploration of the character. It wasn't really for any other reason, other than what would be the possibilities of bringing Morgan into the heart of a different collection of people, where he had a different set of history and different connections, and see who he could end up being. For an actor, having already been associated with a character for eight years, that's a hell of a gift. It's very rare.

Lennie James and Maggie Grace on Fear The Walking Dead Season 4.

What kind of story are we looking at? Can we expect human vs. human conflict? Human vs. walker? What would you say is the main story-driver here?

I think one of the main things that's different here on Fear rather than The Walking Dead is, this one is much more nomadic. There's not, at the moment, an Alexandria. There's no Kingdom. On The Walking Dead, particularly in the stage they are at now, it's all about the groups, and the groups coming together and preparation for war. This one is much more sparse. In this part of the apocalypse, people have not banded into groups in the same way, and those groups don't have a home. They're much more out on the road.

Beyond Garret's character, what are Morgan's other important relationships on this show?

Again, they're growing and starting. Maggie Grace's character, Althea, he has a connection to. We don't know where it goes yet. We haven't necessarily got there. It's a kind of growing relationship. He meets up with some of the other familiar characters from Fear. All of the relationships are in flux at the moment. The place where they meet, everybody's in a state of repositioning, reevaluating who they are and where they are and what's going on. It's a different telling of the story.

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What's it like doing this without comic book giving you the expectations of where it can go? Morgan has been super-dead for a while [in the comic books], but in the grand scheme of The Walking Dead, you kind of have an idea of where it's going it go, because it follows the comics. This is completely original, there's no source material.

It's no different for me. It's absolutely no different for me. I didn't read the comics quite early on -- even before Morgan died, his trajectory through the show was different. In the comic books, he was a very different character. That was something that we'd been working on from really on.

I never really followed the comic books. When new characters came in, I would go and check with Chandler [Riggs]. "Who's this guy? What does he do? Who's this person? What does she do?" He would tell us, but only if I asked. Most of the time, I deliberately remained ignorant about the comic books.

Is there any chance that Morgan's story leads him back to the east coast -- to Rick Grimes?

Everything is possible, but in this particular moment in time, I do not know the answer to that question, genuinely.

Fear The Walking Dead Season 4 is scheduled to debut on April 15 on AMC. Keep reading CBR for more on the set visi.