Photo: Dimitry Loiseau(NEW YORK) — Sarah Wayne Callies, who played Lori on The Walking Dead, is ready to bring back her character’s much-quoted phrase, “Stay in the house, Carl!”
The line, which Lori often yelled protectively to her young son, started as a practical way for the writers to limit the on-set hours of the then-child actor Chandler Riggs, who played Carl. But in the age of COVID-19, Callies has seen it take on a new meaning.
“This whole ‘Stay in the house, Carl’ thing has become a bit of a call to arms in the social distancing world,” Callies tells ABC Audio. “I posted something about it the other day and I just sort of thought it would fly under the radar and it got this incredible response.”
Since she’s now telling her own two kids to “stay in the house,” Callies has come up with a creative way to stay occupied.
“In our self-quarantine isolation mode, I’ve been digging through my VHS collection and I’m doing, like, a classic movie film festival for my kids,” she says. “…So hopefully my children will be like proper cinephiles with an actual education by the time this is all over.”
You can spend your time at home checking out Callies’ new NBC show, Council of Dads, which premieres tonight at 10 p.m. ET. Callies says the family-oriented show contains an important for these challenging times in which we’re living.
She quotes a line from the show’s pilot: “‘We’ve got this, we can do this, we’re a family. You grab the people you love and you hold on for dear life.'”
“I feel like what I want people to take away from this show is exactly that: a sense that we can do this,” Callies says.
Copyright © 2020, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.
