The Walking Dead season 7 actor on King Ezekiel and his tiger

'Before that trailer came out, in my head I was like, if this tiger doesn’t look good, they’re going to blame me'

*WARNING: SPOILERS FOR THE WALKING DEAD SEASON 7, EPISODE 2*

Though The Walking Dead's second season 7 installment may have been something of a relief compared to Negan's antics last week, we saw the grand introduction of one King Ezekiel (Khary Payton), leader of The Kingdom. And his loyal pet tiger, Shiva.

Highly teased in the run-up to the new season, Ezekiel's formal introduction brought with it a backstory revealing the former zookeeper's theatricality - he calls Carol a "fair maiden" - to be a symptom of his amateur acting past, now tactically used to prop himself up as a leader to a disparate community.

"That’s one of my favorite moments so far playing Ezekiel," Payton told Entertainment Weekly of the scene in which Ezekiel first reveals his pre-apocalypse self to Carol. "It might be my favorite, period, of all that we’ve done so far. It was a weird kind of slow catharsis and I’d kind of been preparing for that moment for a really long time."

"I’d done a lot of Shakespeare when I was in college and after that I’d done a lot of voiceover work doing cartoons and video games, and when I read the script the first time, they talked about Ezekiel’s physicality changing in that moment where he becomes kind of the man he was. I call it Ezekiel vs. Zeke. Like, when he relaxes his speech and just becomes a regular guy to Carol — that’s him in Zeke mode."

"[Carol] was trying to protect herself out of fear and that’s what Ezekiel saw, a woman that was scared and he needed to get her to trust him," he later explained. "In order for her to trust him, he was going to have to give her something of a secret. He was going to have to confide in her to get her to trust him. So that’s why he makes this decision and takes a deep breath and says, 'All right, I’m going to be myself for a minute.'"

The scene in question actuallly takes place between Michonne and Ezekiel in the comics, who then later become involved romantically, leading fans to naturally question whether the same might be expected of Carol and Ezekiel.

"I think there’s obviously a spark and a connection between the two of them," Payton coyly replied to the rumours. "But I think that the cool thing about relationships like this one is that it rides that fine line of — have you ever known a person and you’ve been attracted to them and you’ve known them for awhile and nothing ever happens until it does? That’s kind of the way I see this."

"There’s that chance, but it literally in my mind could happen or could not happen and both to me kind of make sense. I honestly don’t have a clue what might happen yet. Until the writers write it down, I won’t know." Payton also discussed how the show's team created the final - and incredible - iteration of the tiger Shiva, who works as a combination of both animatronics and CGI.

"Before that trailer came out, in my head I was like, if this tiger doesn’t look good, they’re going to blame me," he said. "I’m going to be the reason this whole Walking Dead thing goes down the toilet and I’m going to be the one sitting there next to that. If it doesn’t look good, they’re going to be like, 'Khary’s the reason this all went to hell.' When it stood there next to me and roared, there was no one happier, I can tell you. It was amazing. So I’m looking forward to seeing more Shiva, definitely."

The Walking Dead season 7 continues in the UK at 9pm every Monday on FOX.