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Meet Gino Crognale: The Prolific Zombie Actor Who Played Winslow On “The Walking Dead”
You’re so cool, Winslow.
Last night’s episode of “The Walking Dead,“ titled ‘New Best Friends,’ was highlighted by a walker that many are considering to be the show’s most badass to date. Rick and friends found their way into a junkyard inhabited by new group The Scavengers, and in order to prove himself to their leader, Rick was forced to do battle with a zombie that was, well, nearly unkillable.
With a metal helmet and sharp spikes sticking out of his head and body, the junkyard walker proved to be a worthy adversary even to Grimes, a proven zombie-killing machine. Rick sustained a serious injury to his hand during the battle, but was eventually able to decapitate the COOLEST WALKER EVER with a piece of glass. As we soon learned, the zombie’s name was Winslow.
Winslow was portrayed by Emmy-winning makeup artist Gino Crognale.
Crognale, who has been on Greg Nicotero’s makeup team since the show’s early beginnings, has portrayed a handful of walkers throughout the show’s run on AMC. In Season 3 episode ‘I Ain’t a Judas,’ he played the walker that Andrea cut the arms off of, and he also attacked Carl in Season 4 episode ‘After.’ Most memorably, Crognale was prominently featured in Season 5 episode ‘What Happened and What’s Going On’; he was the walker that bit Tyreese, ultimately resulting in the beloved character’s death. Yes, the same man killed Tyreese and nearly killed Rick!
But Crognale’s zombie credits don’t start and stop with “The Walking Dead.”
Way back in the early 2000s, Gino Crognale was a ghoul in the final act of Rob Zombie’s House of 1000 Corpses, and Zombie was so impressed with his performance that he featured Crognale on the film’s poster art; he’s only briefly seen in the film, but has become one of its most iconic images. A few years later, he portrayed “policeman zombie” in Romero’s Land of the Dead.
Behind the scenes, Crognale is even more prolific. Working with legends like Greg Nicotero and Tom Savini, he’s served as a special makeup effects artist on films like A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, In the Mouth of Madness, Phantasm 4: Oblivion, From Dusk Till Dawn, Wishmaster, The Mist, and The Hateful Eight.
Check out some of the badass zombies Crognale has played below!
Only one episode remains in Season 3 of “Chucky,” and what a bloody road it’s been so far, especially for actor Devon Sawa. The actor has now officially died twice on screen this season, pulling double duty as President James Collins and body double Randall Jenkins.
If you thought Chucky’s ruthless eye-gouging of the President was bloody, this week’s Episode 7 traps Randall Jenkins in an elevator that feels straight out of an iconic horror classic.
Bloody Disgusting spoke with series creator Don Mancini and actor Devon Sawa about that ultra-bloody death sequence and how the actor inspires Mancini’s writing on the series.
Mancini explains, “Devon’s a bit of a muse. Idle Hands and Final Destination is where my Devon Sawa fandom started, like a lot of people; although yours may have started with Casper. I was a bit too old for that. But it’s really just about how I love writing for actors that I respect and then know. So, it’s like having worked with Devon for three years now, I’m just always thinking, ‘Oh, what would be a fun thing to throw his way that would be unexpected and different that he hasn’t done?’ That’s really what motivates me.”
For Sawa, “Chucky“ is an actor’s dream in that the series gives him not one but multiple roles to sink his teeth into, often within the same season. But the actor is also a huge horror fan, and Season 3: Part 2 gives him the opportunity to pay homage to a classic: Kubrick’s The Shining.
CHUCKY — “There Will Be Blood” Episode 307 — Pictured in this screengrab: (l-r) Devon Sawa as President James Collins, K.C. Collins as Coop — (Photo by: SYFY)
“Collectively, it’s just amazing to put on the different outfits, to do the hair differently, to get different types of dialogue,“ Sawa says of working on the series. “The elevator scene, it’s like being a kid again. I was up to my eyeballs in blood, and it felt very Kubrick. Everybody there was having such a good time, and we were all doing this cool horror stuff, and it felt amazing. It really was a good day.”
Sawa elaborates on being submerged in so much blood, “It was uncomfortable, cold, and sticky, and it got in my ears and my nose. But it was well worth it. I didn’t complain once. I was like, ‘This is why I do what I do, to do scenes like this,‘ the scenes that I grew up watching on VHS cassette, and now we’re doing it in HD, and it’s all so cool.“
It’s always the characters and the actors behind them that matter most to Mancini, even when he delights in coming up with inventive kills and incorporating horror references. And he’s killed Devon Sawa’s characters often. Could future seasons top the record of on-screen Sawa deaths?
“Well, I guess we did it twice in season one and once in season two,“ Mancini counts. “So yeah, I guess I would have to up the ante next season. I’ll really be juggling a lot of falls. But I think it’s hopefully as much about quality as quantity. I want to give him a good role that he’s going to enjoy sinking his teeth into as an actor. It’s not just about the deaths.”
Sawa adds, “Don’s never really talked about how many times could we kill you. He’s always talking about, ‘How can I make this death better,’ and that’s what I think excites him is how he can top each death. The electricity, to me blowing up to, obviously in this season, the eyes and with the elevator, which was my favorite one to shoot. So if it goes on, we’ll see if he could top the deaths.”
CHUCKY — “Death Becomes Her” Episode 305 — Pictured in this screengrab: Devon Sawa as James Collins — (Photo by: SYFY)
The actor has played a handful of distinctly different characters since the series launch, each one meeting a grisly end thanks to Chucky. And Season 3 gave Sawa his favorite characters yet.
“I would say the second one was a lot of fun to shoot,“ the actor says of Randall Jenkins. “The President was great. I liked playing the President. He was the most grounded, I hope, of all the characters. I did like playing him a lot.” Mancini adds, “He’s grounded, but he’s also really traumatized, and I thought you did that really well, too.”
The series creator also reveals a surprise correlation between President James Collins’ character arc and a ’90s horror favorite.
“I saw Devon’s role as the president in Season 3; he’s very Kennedy-esque,“ Mancini explains. “But then given the supernatural plot turns that happen, to me, the analogy is Michelle Pfeiffer in What Lies Beneath, the character that is seeing these weird little things happening around the house that is starting to screw with his sanity and he starts to insist, ‘I’m seeing a ghost,‘ and his spouse thinks he’s nuts. So I always like that. That’s Michelle Pfeiffer in What Lies Beneath, which is a movie I love.”
The finale of “Chucky” Season 3: Part 2 airs Wednesday, May 1 on USA & SYFY.
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