NICOLAS CANTU talks ELTON, video games, and the apocalypse.

Nicolas Cantu is a bright, young actor with many future roles ahead of him! Here, he talks to me about video games, wanting to work with Jim Carrey, and we’re manifesting to the universe a role on Stranger Things! Fingers crossed.

And yes, he is still filming in Richmond, check back later!

Let’s dig into the world of ELTON ORTIZ.

LORETTE: HOW DID YOU GET THE AUDITION FOR THE WALKING DEAD: WORLD BEYOND?

NICOLAS CANTU: I got the audition like I got any other audition. My agent sent me the sides and said: “We want you to go read for this!”

“Sure, I’ll do it!” (Nicolas’s reaction.)

CANTU: Seeing The Walking Dead: Three in the files and in the script and everything else. (gasps.)

“Oh my god this is awesome! I really hope I get this one! I get that way with some auditions. This is gonna’ be so dope.”

LORETTE: I’M THE SAME WAY!

CANTU: So I did my best, and they liked me, and I’m very thankful to be working on the show.

LORETTE: WHAT WAS THE AUDITION LIKE? WAS IT LIVE OR SELF-TAPE?

CANTU: I went in person, which is such a foreign concept now with Covid and everything being through self-tapes. I miss it so much! I really do miss in-person auditions. It was a very fun audition.

CANTU: They didn’t give away character names. The scene that they had me read was not connected to anything that you see in the show at all. But it was still very fun and it was a cool scene to do.

ON MOCK SIDES

CANTU: Yeah! Yeah. I think they had him named Miles or something, but it followed the beats of Elton. And they were trying to get that character, but it was just not related to anything at all.

CANTU: I don’t even think it was implied that there was an apocalypse! It was a completely different scene. Yeah.

LORETTE: THAT’S INTERESTING. WERE THERE CALLBACKS?

CANTU: Yeah. I think I did one audition, and then my callback was with Matt (Matt Negrete, showrunner/creator)

LORETTE: WOW, SWEET.

CANTU: That’s when I met Matt, and he liked what I did! I was Elton Ortiz and it’s been a journey, it’s been a ride.

AUDITIONS AND SHOW BIZ IS A GAME OF LUCK.

“The mind-set that really helps me, because when you’re in this industry–of course there’s a lot of rejection. To get the audition: “Wow! That’s a lot of luck! Not everybody auditions! You get a callback, that’s even more lucky! Oh my God! You just keep that in mind as you go forward.”

LORETTE: WHY DO YOU THINK ELTON HAS SUCH A STRONG BOND WITH SILAS?

CANTU: I don’t want to say that Elton is as much of an outsider as Silas, but he sympathizes with that aspect of his life. It’s two bros! Bros going through the apocalypse! Killing zombies! Going at it! Me and Hal are very much good friends in the real world, so that translates into our characters too. We just got great chemistry and he’s such a wonderful guy!

LORETTE: WHAT HAS BEEN YOUR FAVORITE PROJECT SO FAR IN YOUR CAREER?

CANTU: This has definitely been so fun and my first series-regular role on a t.v. show. To start out with something as huge as The Walking Dead, getting to know all of the fans and being part of the universe–it’s been incredible.

CANTU: I can’t really pick a favorite because I’ve also done other roles that are so fun for different reasons. This one’s definitely one of them! I played Gumball in The Amazing World of Gumball. That was a voiceover show for Cartoon Network. That was fun!

CANTU: I did a Lego: Star Wars cartoon, where I got a Lego figure of the dude that I voiced! That was awesome There’s so much cool stuff, so I can’t really pick a favorite.

WE ALSO DISCUSSED HAVING THE POP FIGURES MAKE AN ELTON POP. GET TO IT, MERCHANDISING!

CANTU: Yeah! Yeah! That would be awesome! Hey merchandising! Come on, get on the phone! (pretends to hold phone) Let’s do it!

ON HIS FAVORITE VIDEO GAMES AS A POPULAR STREAMER

CANTU: Yeah! I haven’t been streaming a lot recently, but I still am playing games. Recently, I’ve been playing a lot of CS: Go. It’s a competitive first-person shooter. That’s very fun to play with friends.

CANTU: Ghost of Tsushima is a Playstation game, you’re a ninja or samurai.

LORETTE: THAT SOUNDS FAMILIAR.

CANTU: You try to take back your island from a bunch of Mongols (Mongolians). That one’s super fun.

CANTU: I played The Last of Us: Part ll over quarantine. That was incredible! The Last of Us is one of my favorite games, and the sequel was A1.

LORETTE: WHO WOULD YOU LIKE TO WORK WITH THAT YOU HAVEN’T YET?

CANTU: Pfft! This is always a tough question for me. Whenever I get into the–I don’t know what to call it. It’s like this imaginary thing where I’m trying to come up with something. Immediately my brain is:

“Okay! A billion people. Here we go, everybody all at once.” (on everyone he wants to work with)

CANTU: Jim Carrey was very much an inspiration to me when I was very young and getting into acting. I love all of his movies. It would be cool to just meet him, give him a fist bump.

CANTU: Cool directors to work with: Probably the Safdie brothers. Uncut Gems was a really great movie, so it would be cool to work with them. For the future, I would like to just keep doing cool things! I like to keep it broad so I don’t disappoint myself later.

TAKE NOTE. HE WANTS TO WORK ON STRANGER THINGS. LET’S GET THAT OUT THERE, UNIVERSE!

HIS FIRST DAY ON SET.

CANTU: I remember the day that I remember the most from the beginning of shooting, was when we had that plane crashed in the middle of the town. But I’m not sure if that was my first day. I think my first day was, I was in a classroom.

CANTU: I didn’t really get to see the apocalypse that much, because our characters were still at least filming in The Campus Colony.

CANTU: The first day was a bit uneventful, but after that, I started going out into the apocalypse and seeing the zombies and everything. That was so so fun.

LORETTE: WHAT WAS IT LIKE TO FIGHT THOSE EMPTIES?

CANTU: Oh, yeah! My favorite part about the show was definitely the stunts, that was definitely a highlight. When I got the role for Elton, the character sheet and the specs (specifications) said that he was a blackbelt in Karate.

My first thing was:

“Pfft, okay, dang! I gotta’ learn Karate now! Because I don’t know how to punch things or anything!”

CANTU: Before shooting I went and did two months of Karate training at a Dojo next to my house. And getting to use that knowledge in the show’s been great. Doing all of these crazy kicks! And kills! So great!

CANTU: And for Elton, it’s cool for his character too, because at the beginning of the season he’s not that great at it. But as it goes on, you see him evolve into this stone-cold killer. I’m not going to say stone-cold killer, but you get it.

LORETTE: WHY DID HE THROW ALL OF THE PAGES OF HIS MOM’S BOOK?

CANTU: I really do love that scene in that moment he rips them all out and goes to pick them up! It shows that in his time of frustration–he just came back from learning that his mom was killed by Hope. There was a lot of frustration, a lot of things building inside of him.

CANTU: When he’s looking at the manuscript again, he’s realizing his mother is not who he thought she was. She killed somebody. She is not all that she preached in that book about loving life and loving nature, she’s not all that.

CANTU: In that frustration, he rips it all out! But then his Elton comes in and he realizes that was rash. That was irrational, I shouldn’t have done that. And he goes to fix that mistake, and he finds Percy! I thought that was a very very cool scene.

LORETTE: ANY PARTICULARLY FUNNY BLOOPER MOMENTS ON SET?

CANTU: Season one–I remember. In episodes one and two, the first episode ends with Iris facing off with that empty, and then episode two starts with her facing off against that empty again.

AND.. HE FACE-PLANTED DURING A TAKE.

CANTU: When we were filming that sequence, we were supposed to run to the edge of this storm drain that she fell into. And it was very muddy and I had on these big boots, and this suitcase, square backpack thing. And I took off for one of the takes and I did a somersault.

CANTU: I flipped over! I started slipping and I was trying to catch myself and then–DOOOSH, I did a full flip. But I still made it to the edge! And I got to see that on a blooper reel. That’s what I remember.

LORETTE: WAS IT DIFFERENT FILMING SEASON TWO COMPARED TO SEASON 1?

CANTU: Very different! Season one I came on and it was this whole new world. It was super exciting in seeing this journey of going from point A to point B–it was a quest-based structure. We still keep that in season two, but there’s a lot of different stuff! And I can’t say much, but, it’s almost a new world!

CANTU: It’s great. It was so so fun!

LORETTE: CAN ELTON FORGIVE HUCK?

CANTU: (raspberry noise) There’s a lot of forgiveness that Elton has to do! Hope killed my (Elton’s) mom, Huck framed my friend. I think Elton can find it in him. I think he can! He looks at things sometimes from a different viewpoint that’s–out of body, out of himself. He has this release of ego when he’s dealing with problems like that.

CANTU: Maybe! I think so.

LORETTE: ARE PERCY AND HIM GOING TO GET SILAS AT THE CRM?

CANTU:

“When you leave us on season one, we are just going across that path. And we have that conversation about that we’re not the final generation, we’re the beginning.”

CANTU: In that moment Elton is trying to boost the morale and say: “We gotta’ help! We gotta’ fix something!”

AS FOR SOME ELTON/HOPE — PROBABLY NOT. SORRY, GUYS. THIS WAS A POPULAR QUESTION.

LORETTE: WHAT’S NEXT FOR YOU? (I DO HOPE YOU STAY IN TWD UNIVERSE.

CANTU: There’s a bunch of different opportunities there to crossover when you’re working with a universe like The Walking Dead. That would be very exciting. I don’t have any news on that right now, but I’ve been working and doing my auditions. When something else comes through, I’ll be doing that!