Into the Badlands: Sherman Augustus interview part 1

In part one of our two-part talk with Sherman Augustus, we discuss his process in becoming Nathaniel Moon. We also talked about his relationship with Lydia, social media presence, and the amount of training that goes with the role.

Sherman Augustus’ Nathaniel Moon is introduced as an adversary for Sunny but quickly became a fan-favorite. Between his parallels with our protagonist, his awesome sword, and his quest for honor, Nathaniel Moon is an amazing character. This season, we have learned more about Moon and have been allowed to root for him without feeling like we’re rooting against Sunny.

Central to the awesomeness of Nathaniel Moon is the man behind him. Sherman Augustus’ presence on-screen makes him perfect in this role. I’ve never been one to cosplay but Sherman makes the bowler hat and purple trench coat combo quite tempting. We had the privilege to talk to him about bringing the character to life and got the inside scoop on a few things that may be coming.

Hidden Remote: How did you come into the role of Nathaniel moon and what was that process?

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Sherman Augustus: The second season, episode 3 is when they introduce the character. From what I was told they wanted to introduce Nathaniel season 1 but AMC only gave those guys 6 episodes. Which I think is like a template that they do. They did it with The Walking Dead, Fear The Walking Dead, and they built from there and built an audience. So they didn’t have time to [introduce him in season 1] so therefore they did it the second season, episode 3.

I knew that he was coming back for 7 episodes the following season, they just wanted to see how well the character took off. I’ve got to tell you that it was written very well, so well-rounded and very present that nobody could mess that up.

Really, like dude I didn’t read the script until I was on the plane heading over to Dublin and I’m like dude if I can’t knock this out of the ballpark there’s something wrong with me! You know, and I remember after my first week I had a conversation with Daniel Wu and he was like: hey man we offered it to Wesley, you know? Like Wesley Snipes. I’m like, what??? You know I’ve worked with Wesley before and I’m a fan of his work. I was like dude are you serious? So he’s like yeah man we offered it to the Wesley but everybody’s glad you’re here. I was glad Wesley was busy. I’m like: thank you Wesley! Thank you brother! (laugh)

HR: Awesome, no pressure at all! So what was your approach to the character in your preparation to take on this role once you read the script?

SA: You know it’s always personal for me. So I was going through whatever an actor goes through with auditioning your ass off. I came off of Westworld and Colony back-to-back. I was coming off those two shows and I just had a lot of time because there was a lot of stuff that was coming at me that I wasn’t interested in at all. But I was going through the motions with them because I like to stay fresh and challenge myself. There was a lot of frustration and a lot of angst that was building up. I used a lot of what was going on. For me, because I didn’t write the dialogue, I want to make that dialogue real and the only way to do that is to use a personal aspect of yourself. That’s always the key, and another thing that I always like to do is let the character evaluate me.

Sherman Augustus as Moon – Into the Badlands _ Season 3, Episode 1 – Photo Credit: Aidan Monaghan/AMC /

There were a lot of late nights with me just walking around my place just having conversations with Nathaniel and letting him ask me questions. “How are you going to get me off the page?” “What have you been through in your life, actually, that can get me off the page?” So you start having this conversation, before I even start learning the dialogue by heart. Therefore you’re not listening to yourself. You’ve just got to get away from those other actor quirks to make it real and to make it still as possible. So there was a lot of that going into the first episode I did, season 2, and then I know I was going to get more information about the character going into three. So I had to do the whole reevaluation thing again and it works it just makes you present so you can react instead of act so that’s what it is.

I approach every character the same way it’s always a conversation with that character always, always. I let them pick me apart you know (changes to a villain voice) “right look at you, look at your shirt you spilled mustard!” (switches back) You know that s**t. I go there with it.

HR: That’s awesome! So speaking of digging deep, we did dive deeper into the character this season and we find out that you had a past with Lydia.

SA: Yeah, yep.

HR: …and love doesn’t exactly work out in the Badlands, so is there any hope for Nathaniel and Lydia?

SA: There’s a lot of hope you know but it gets real tricky for everyone in the second 8 (second half of season 3) and pulls on everyone’s personal relationships. Because of the threat with Pilgrim and the new threat with the Black Lotus. You’re going to see a lot more of those guys. So alliances are going to have to be formed in certain ways with individuals, and I can say this now, with individuals that you wouldn’t expect. Because there’s only one way to survive. A couple of people have to put their grievances aside for a minute which kind of pulls on Nathaniel and Lydia in a way, and she gets more and more cunning and smart. She’s always just the smartest woman in the room, in the Badlands, and it kind of pulls on everything and it makes for a very good dynamic.

Sherman Augustus as Moon, Orla Brady as Lydia – Into the Badlands _ Season 3, Episode 2 – Photo Credit: Aidan Monaghan/AMC /

The way we approached it, Orla and I, you know because we’re friends and we’ve worked together before. We said let’s just make sure that the audience feels that we love each other, that Moon and Lydia love each other. So we try to portray that as much as possible because we’re all one big, happy, dysfunctional family in the Badlands. I mean I have never, ever, ever in just a couple of years been with a group of actors that all just care for each other and love each other so much. I think the main thing of it is that we had that fight camp for 3 weeks which brought us together and there’s not one knucklehead actor. When we get together, we all want to get together. So that makes that dynamic even better and with all the new material coming at us and the new situations, it just helps us.

So I mean answer the question, I know it’s a long broad answer, but the simple fact that we’re all friends makes it a little easier to be nasty to each other. Basically it’s just trust, you know you’re going to be hanging out in a breeze so it’s just easy. We just say we’re going to care for each other so much that the audience feels that. We want them to smell our love through the television so that’s what we’re going for.

HR: You seem to be pretty active with the fans on social media. Is that who you’ve always been or is that something that’s come with this show?

SA: Man, I gotta tell you. I mean for years I was like: “Agh bump Facebook. What’s this new thing, Instagram? Eh. Twitter? I got something to tweet right here. Here’s your tweet.” You know what I mean? It’s just one of those things in the business. If it wasn’t for folks like you guys, a lot of shows would not be on the air. A lot of shows wouldn’t have the numbers that they have because there are so many platforms right now that we can all just watch anything we want to watch. You can binge on stuff, you don’t have to watch commercials about catheters. I mean, come on man. So [social media] can help get you exposure, and with me being 199 years-old you have to learn something new.

Basically, I’m a big photography nut so that’s what I was using social media for. When I travel, I take pictures and that kind of stuff. But I sat down with Lewis Tan and Aramis Knight quite often and learned more because those guys have to be so active. Lewis is really good at that. He’s really, really good. Like, dude.

HR: He gets himself roles.

SA: Yeah, yeah. So is Daniel. Nick and I were like agh we gotta do that. But it helps you know, it opens up doors and it helps people get to know you more so if you can use that medium that’s really great. You don’t have to necessarily sit around and wait for Good Morning LA to call you up and say: “Hey will you come on and talk about the show?” I can do this anytime, anywhere. It works. I have friends who are film critics. Because paper is dying and you can read everything online, they put everything online and they do a lot of podcasts. So this whole thing is just great, it’s awesome. I’m digging it. I’ve acclimated myself to it and I’m getting better and better, but whenever you have to sit on your phone every morning for like 45-50 minutes I go: man this is just too much I mean come on man.

Sherman Augustus as Moon – Into the Badlands _ Season 3, Episode 2 – Photo Credit: Aidan Monaghan/AMC /

HR: So it is something you’ve had to work at then.

SA: Yeah, I’m not a whiz at it yet but I’m doing okay. I love the fact that we can interact with the fans. Be it if it’s something negative or not it just depends on if you’re being trolled or it just depends on how you look at it. You know I’m doing this, it’s part of my job I’m going to do it and if you don’t like what I’m doing or if you don’t like my show, you don’t like my belt buckle, then don’t look at my belt buckle.

HR: I asked the fans from an Into the Badlands Facebook group, that I believe you’re in, for some questions. A few people wanted to know how much work you put in, besides the fight camp, to make sure that you’re in the right condition for the fight scenes on the show?

SA: A lot. Before I left last August to report to fight camp, you know I played professional football for a while and I do have my 2nd dan (Black belt), and I was supposed to test for my third dan in a taekwondo a few years ago but I didn’t. I walk around lying, saying oh yeah I have a 3rd dan in Taekwondo and kuk sool. Kuk sool is Korean kung-fu so I actually over-trained last year going into fight camp, and even though I over-trained I still was not I was in shape. I was in shape but it was a different kind of shape than we had to get into. Flexibility, strength training, all that stuff is there and we do a lot of cross training.

Matt Lucas [was the guy] who got Daniel in shape for the first season. Daniel was just going to produce the show and they saw over 200 actors for the role of Sunny after the show got greenlit, because he didn’t want to do it. He felt that his body was just beat up and Matt got him into incredible shape. Matt is a master of almost every single martial art. His dad taught Navy Seals and Matt actually teaches a class to Navy Seals on how to kill. It’s just a kill class, and he’s just as nice and sweet of an individual that you’ll find on the planet. He says he’s in the business of service. He carries around a titanium toothpick and I always joke with him that you can kill somebody with that toothpick and then he’s like mhhhm. He’s from the south, grew up in the south in Florida, but he’s lived in San Francisco and he’s a bona fide yogi, the whole nine yards.

So what we did is called combat yoga and I learned a lot about the early training of the samurai, even way back during feudal Japan. Matt and I are going to start working together and he knows a lot about the Persian martial arts which is dirty and nasty and I love it. Oh man it is insane. So he basically just got everybody so ripped up by the time we started shooting.

Then we also, in between those 9 months, every other week we would have a two-day fight camp. During the week, we were working in the afternoon or morning and just after work we will go get stretched out and all that kind of stuff and it’s very demanding. The one thing about it though, the weather changed in August so quick. We had three great weeks of beautiful weather and then when we got to shooting that’s when the weather changed.

We were shooting the Moon tower first, so from that moment on, from early September on when it started getting cold you have to work a little harder. Because your muscles are tightening up no matter how flexible you are, you just get tight. But it worked out, to answer your question. I’m giving these long-ass answers but Matt Lucas kept us all going. We all love that dude but it never stops. Everybody joins gyms, you’re constantly working out, and I elected not to get a car in Dublin. So I did a lot of walking and I would do over 14,000 steps or whatever just walking around, tripping, going oh look at the ducks! Let’s go walk at the duck pond! Okay so that’s about 35 minutes away, so there’s always something to do.

Next: Into the Badlands S3, E6 recap

Part two of the interview will arrive tomorrow and we’ll touch on Sherman working with the new hand, the fights on the show, and upcoming projects.

Into the Badlands returns Sunday, June 17, for their mid-season finale at 10/9 Central on AMC.

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