With the latest spinoff, the bad guy on AMC’s “The Walking Dead: Dead City” is no longer Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s once-notorious Negan, but Zeljko Ivanek, who plays the Croat.
“I’ve taken over the franchise for the moment,” Ivanek joked. “The character’s backstory is folded into the Negan story. At one point I was a trusted disciple of his and fully in the inner circle. He used me for intelligence and as a torturer, and at some point, I just went too far even for him, so I was cast out into the wilderness. Years have gone by and now my character is in Manhattan and trying to establish a Negan-like fortress and community and trying to pull him back into this world.”
This is just the latest iconic show for Ivanek, who is known for everything from “Homicide: Life on the Street” to “Oz” to “24″ to “Big Love” to “Madam Secretary” to his Emmy-winning role on “Damages,” in addition to his roles on Broadway.
It’s a memory from his stage career that came to mind when asked about a worst moment.
My worst moment …
“I was in my 20s and I was doing a Neil Simon play called ‘Brighton Beach Memoirs’ on Broadway. This was 1983. And one day the stage manager mentioned that Mary Tyler Moore was going to be at our opening night party because our producers had produced a show for her just a few years before. And I said, ‘Please, please, you have to introduce me.’
“Not only had I liked ‘The Dick Van Dyke Show’ and ‘The Mary Tyler Moore Show,’ but more importantly when I first came to New York, I barely knew anybody. I was very much on my own and I was very isolated. And one of the things that got me through those first few months was that a local TV station would run back-to-back episodes of ‘The Mary Tyler Moore Show’ at 1 or 2 in the morning.
“Not only was it still funny and the acting was so good, but it was suffused with this sense of camaraderie and a sense of belonging. And for that hour I felt like: These are my friends and my family. These people. This world. And I kind of got to end each day feeling a little less alone — which is a line Mary actually says in the final episode of the series. It meant a great deal to me.
“So we come to the opening night and the opening night party was in the beautiful grand lobby of Radio City Musical Hall. And at one point the stage manager comes over and takes me up these stairs and introduces me to Ms. Moore.
“I don’t remember what I said at first. I’m sure I tried to say something about how much I admired her, or how wonderful I thought she was. I don’t remember any of that.
“But I do remember the last thing I said. In trying to convey how thrilling this was for me and how much it meant to me, what came out of my mouth was: ‘I can now slit my throat and go to heaven.’
“It’s possible I said ‘slit my wrists.’ I’m not sure either one is better.
“And she went from smiling to suddenly having this look of utter horror on her face, as if I might literally do this in front of her right then and there.
“I beat a hasty retreat and went home and I’m thinking, why would that come out of my mouth? I have no idea where that came from. It was just in the moment and I was feeling so thrilled and discombobulated and that was somehow the phrase I resorted to. You get so gassed up to meet someone like that, that your mind is just a scramble.
“But here was a woman I loved and admired so much and I made her feel terrible. That’s what I was obsessed with — that for no good reason at all I made her feel bad. I think there are two or three things total that haunt me that way.
“Cut to: A few years later, a friend of mine invited me to a Broadway opening. And as it happened, he had worked for MTM, which was Mary Tyler Moore’s production company, and the company was either a producer on the show or helped finance it. They had organized a small dinner party afterwards for eight or 10 people and she was going to be there. And I was included.
“We go to the restaurant and we’re sitting around a large round table and she’s sitting directly opposite me. And I’m biding my time thinking this is my chance to make up for our last meeting. When we finished eating, the conversation broke up into smaller groups.
“So I got up and walked around to her and probably kind of leaned down or knelt down, and I started to say, ‘Actually, we’ve met before. I’m the one who, at the ‘Brighton Beach’ party, said to you, ‘I could now slit my throat and go to heaven.’ And before I could segue into my apology (laughs) she got that same look of horror and fear on her face — with the added element of ‘Oh my god, he’s back.’
“She was alarmed and panicked, and there was no way I could finish the sentence. And from that moment it all became a blur and I beat a second hasty retreat (laughs). It was just awful and I thought: Oh my god, I have done it again.
“Cut to: A few years later, I was doing a Peter Brook production of ‘The Cherry Orchard’ at BAM (the Brooklyn Academy of Music) — with, by the way, the one and only Mike Nussbaum, a Chicago actor — and one night after the show, there was an announcement over the PA saying that Mary Tyler Moore was at the show tonight and would like to meet the cast and congratulate everybody, so when you’ve changed into your street clothes, please come down to the green room.
“I’m trying to remember if I was thinking: Oh, here we go again, third time’s the charm, this is my chance to redeem myself! Or was it like: Oh my god, I don’t know what I’m going to say in that moment when she sees me.
“So I went down in the green room and she went down the line and was shaking hands and congratulating people. And she got to me and somebody said, ‘This is Zeljko Ivanek,’ and she put out her hand and smiled.
“And I shook her hand.
“I smiled back.
“I took a breath (laughs) and I said, ‘It’s a pleasure to meet you.’ And the smile stayed on her face and she moved on, little knowing she had just dodged a bullet.
“And I felt like the curse had finally been broken.
“I felt relief that she wasn’t still living with this trauma. And also because I didn’t dig myself even deeper. I think I was just relieved I didn’t compound the injury once again.”
Did Ivanek debate whether to bring it up again the third time?
“I think I was trying to figure out, how much of a moment am I going to have here? And she was being very sweet to people, but she was going at a good pace down the line and not really lingering. And we were all shoulder to shoulder and the closer she got, I thought: I can’t launch into this!
“But it definitely was a debate for a moment in my head. And I thought, if she comes up to me and doesn’t instantly recognize me, the better part of valor is to just bluff it out. Just say ‘So nice to meet you’ and let it go.”
The takeaway …
“We all think about meeting an idol and I feel like the takeaway is: Be careful what you wish for, because it may turn out that you’re the one that doesn’t live up to your expectations! It’s such a charged situation to meet someone who is so meaningful to you.
“But also: There’s a time to leave well enough alone and stop trying to dig yourself out of the hole. Let it go.”
