‘Walker’: Keegan Allen Previews Liam’s ‘Volatile’ Unraveling (VIDEO)
Walker is back from its winter hiatus tonight and even though Cordi (Jared Padalecki) and company had a few weeks off, there’s still a whole lot of unfinished business when they return. In addition to the emotional fallout from Micki’s exit, there’s also the matter of Liam (Keegan Allen) calling in a false warrant against shady Dan Miller (Dave Annable). That ethical lapse has not only put the state’s case against Serrano into jeopardy but it’s also put Liam’s legal career on the line, as well as his relationship with his justifiable furious brother.
The tensions can be seen in the above exclusive clip from the episode, “Where Do We Go From Here,” and things only get worse once Liam decides to self-medicate at the Side Step. According to Allen, though, there is hope for our boy…as long as he accepts help from the guy he’s used to getting out of jams.
I love how the show has found that sweet spot between the Texas Ranger action and the family drama stuff. It feels like there really is a balance. And I really like the kids too.
Keegan Allen: Yeah. They’re really fun. The show really has a cool, full-encompassing storyline for every single angle of humanity.
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Right. And it’s really giving us emotional depth with the relationship between Liam and Walker in Season 2. There’s stuff there that we’re just getting to that these guys need to hash out.
It’s great how the writers really have been crafting so much around the characters, especially this relationship, but with all of these other relationships as well and the histories of these characters. I love what Season Two is doing with the Davidsons, too. Because we kind of get a taste of it in Season1, but man, it’s fun.
And this is probably a great ride for you because when we met Liam, he was the one who was really holding them all together, and now…he’s a mess!
[Laughs] Yes, yes. That’s a very good way of putting it.
Not that you can blame him. He’s been shot. He’s been spied on. He’s had his relationship taken from him, his political aspirations taken from him. Of course, he’s going to be a little adrift.
Yeah. Liam’s trying to figure out what to do next in his career. He’s also taking a good, hard look at everything that life has thrown at him. I mean, assessing the fact that, like you said, everything he’s gone through — him getting shot, him holding the family together, and then feeling sort of slighted by the fact that people would vote in, essentially a murderer, to be the DA over him — that’s a hard pill to swallow.
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How does he rebuild? Because when we last saw him, he’s made this false allegation against Dan Miller and put everything in jeopardy. How does he come back from this?
So in this episode coming up, I don’t think he’s been able to rebuild anything. I think we’re seeing the effects of his decisions, the seismic effect that ripples through not only his relationship with Cordell but pretty much just the entire space around him. He does get a surprise visit from Brett, which we’ll see what happens with that, if they’re able to reconcile or not. But beyond that, he makes this very rash decision, while intoxicated, and he has his reasons for it. And we get to see a side of Liam that is I think a bit more volatile than we’ve ever seen. It’s kind of a coming-apart…his very tight demeanor is sort of falling apart and failing him. Because you can only hold together so much if you yourself are coming apart.
There are some details seeded into the story about Liam’s time away from home, which we don’t know a lot about. Are we going to see that maybe things weren’t all great while he was away?
Well, we’re going to see a lot. And especially in the upcoming episodes, there has been something kind of brewing. He feels like something’s wrong with the Davidsons and I think that that gets explored more…why he feels that way, as well as how he deals with the demons that he has. His character, as we’ve seen, is dealing with a lot and trying to keep a brave face throughout. But really, he’s having a hard time with figuring out who he is and his identity.
James (Coby Bell) drops a line in the episode that Liam doesn’t have to be a D.A. to have a positive impact on society. That seems to land with him.
Liam needs to figure out what he is going to do next in his career. And from my perspective, if it was just me, I would want him to find something that makes him happy. And so I think it’s Liam’s journey of figuring that out. Is it more time on the ranch? Is it doing something in law? Or is it taking a step back and recognizing what is happiness to him?
When we come back, he doesn’t seem to know yet.
Liam is pretty much trying to spend this time-out trying to figure this out. He has this big fight with his brother at the beginning of the episode and leaves to get his head straight…he doesn’t want to come back into the cacophony of issues that have come up. He’s just trying to get his head straight. But upon coming back, it’s like, how does he deal with it? Well, he gets very drunk and then realizes he messes up again. And again and again. [Laughs]
It’s a beautiful episode, it really is. I love this episode a lot because there’s so much going on in it. And it’s a delight to see someone struggle through this, but at the same time, a delight to see them come out of it on the other end.
How is it getting to play this reverse dynamic with Jared? All last season, you were the one pulling him up…
It’s wonderful. Working with Jared is incredible because he is just one of those actors, man. You rarely get to work with someone like this in your entire career, actors that are able to adapt like this. Jared is just so wonderful. He plays his role so close to the heart and getting to be the one who needs help and have him pull you up? It’s an amazing, tough love kind of role that he’s now employing. And we get to see that dynamic get deeper and deeper.
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And how is the photography going?
Oh, you know, at the beginning of the whole COVID thing, I was working on a third book and now that book is kind of an impossibility. That being said, there might be a pivot to a different type of book now, and it might be more Western. Because I’m loving Texas, man. I’m loving it. I think it’s just so beautiful here. It’s very inspiring and very photogenic. The countryside is amazing, the landscape, the people, the way of life out here, it’s just very special. And Walker has been sort of the arbiter to getting an experience of that and I love it. And also being able to take photos on set of everybody. Everybody’s so wonderful and so supportive of that. It really is like a dream life.
Walker, Thursdays, 8/7c, The CW
