The Walking Dead Season 5 Spoilers: Andrew Lincoln Says New Episode 'Them' Made Him Cry

AMC's The Walking Dead returned with a new episode entitled "Them" on Sunday, and many fans and critics reacted somewhat negatively to the episode. But star Andrew Lincoln revealed in a recent interview that the episode actually moved him to tears.

Lincoln spoke to EW.com about Rick's big speech in the episode. In case you forgot it, here's what the leader said when the group sat around the fire toward the end of the episode.

“When I was a kid, I asked my grandpa once if he ever killed any Germans in the war. He wouldn’t answer. He said that was grown up stuff, so…So I asked if the Germans ever tried to kill him, but he got real quiet. He said he was dead the minute he steeped into enemy territory. Every day he woke up he told himself, ‘Rest in peace. Now get up and go to war.’ And then after a few years of pretending he was dead, he made it out alive. And that’s the trick of it, I think. We do what we need to do, and then we get to live. But no matter what we find in D.C. I know we’ll be okay, because this is how we survive. We tell ourselves that we are the walking dead.”

So why did this particular monologue move Lincoln so deeply? Lincoln told the site several months ago that this was “the episode I always wanted to make.” He clarified that statement after the episode aired.

“Well, what I meant was that I’m a huge admirer of Cormac McCarthy,” he said. “When I was preparing for the first season of this show I read a few things and The Road was one of them. I just thought that is a modern parable. I mean that’s what it is: It’s a kind of classic parable and that’s the closest thing I can equate it to. I think there’s a simplicity, a directness, and a poetry in that book. Certainly the script had it and I hope we’ve managed to capture that in episode 10.”

Lincoln's committment to the character has always been evident, so good for him for feeling the material so completely.

What did you think of the episode? Let us know in the comments section.