'Walking Dead' Actor Shares His 'Secrets'

Jon Bernthal tells MTV News the relationship between Shane, Rick and Lori 'gets more dangerous and more complicated' as season progresses.
By Josh Wigler

Jon Bernthal
Photo: Frazer Harrison/ Getty Images

Secrets are no fun — unless you're talking about "The Walking Dead." In that case, secrets make for very, very fun television.

Take Sunday night's episode, for instance: Appropriately titled "Secrets," the latest round of "Walking Dead" madness zeroed in on the walkers hidden away in Herschel's barn, unbeknownst to anybody in Rick Grimes' group of survivors, save for Glenn and Dale. That story looks likely to boil over in next week's ominously titled mid-season finale, "Pretty Much Dead Already," while this week's outing pushed another tenuous thread closer to its breaking point: Lori's pregnancy and her infidelity with Shane.

Rick learned both of his wife's biggest secrets in the episode, and he took the news surprisingly well. But one has to wonder how Shane is going to react when he learns that Lori is pregnant and determines that he could very well be the baby's father.

Speaking with MTV News earlier this year, Jon Bernthal chimed in on his character's increasingly fragile mental and emotional stability, indicating that something like Lori's recent revelation will have a profound impact on Shane.

"He's lonely," Bernthal said. "He's not suffering from the kind of loneliness you suffer from when you're far away from the people you love; it's the loneliness you feel when you're right there with them and you can't be with them in the way you want."

Bernthal said he doesn't view the situation between Shane, Rick and Lori as a love triangle. Instead, he sees the characters as members of "a family that's been fractured and cut open by the circumstances."

"The people that Shane loved more than anyone else in the world before the apocalypse are still very much alive and still very much with him, but he'll never be with them in the way he wants to and the way he once was," he explained. "Every relationship — Shane/Carl, Shane/Lori and Shane/Rick — it's tainted and fractured. When you suffer from that kind of loneliness, it brings out the worst in you."

We've already seen the darkness in Shane — you could ask Otis all about it, if he were still alive — but is the worst yet to come? Bernthal said that, yes, this kind of loneliness can bring out "the best" in a man, but for Shane, the rollercoaster ride isn't ending anytime soon.

"I really applaud the writers by making this. ... There's nothing tired about the relationship," he said. "It gets more and more dangerous and more and more complicated as the season progresses. They've given me wonderful stuff to play."

How do you think Shane will react to Lori's pregnancy? Sound off in the comments!

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