EW Radio at Comic-Con in San Diego: Aliens, The Walking Dead and so much more!

Superheroes. Zombies. Kings. Trolls.

They all came together at Comic-Con International in San Diego this week, and you can geek out with Entertainment Weekly Radio hearing exclusive chats with TV and film’s biggest stars.

Hear the highlights below, tune into EW Radio (Ch. 105) for playbacks and listen to interviews on demand by typing the name of the actor or show in the search button on the SiriusXM app.

For a free 30-day trial, check out siriusxm.com/freetrial/blog.

Aliens

The stars and director James Cameron gathered to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the sci-fi sequel and reminisced about the intense action sequences — like when extra-terrestrials attacked the crew by descending through the ceiling.

“We were all full loads, everybody had their pulse rifles, and we went to town on those aliens,” Michael Biehn said. “It was a lot of fun. Shooting guns is fun.”

“I made the mistake of being to Michael’s right, so his ejector port was literally — I had to have facial reconstruction surgery,” Bill Paxton teased.

 

Gotham

Michael Chiklis promised season 3 will be a game-changer for his character, Captain Nathaniel Barnes, in the Batman origin story.

“He’s been a father figure for Jim, and he’s been trying to keep him from descending into the darkness and the dark side,” he explained. “There’s going to be some irony in that, because he’s such a zealot in terms of being law-abiding that it’s interesting in terms of what ends up happening  to him, and something crazy happens at the end of the fourth episode, and it changes him forever, and I will start to form other relationships.”

The Walking Dead 

The cast and crew of the zombie drama are notoriously tight-lipped about the script, but executive producer Scott M Gimple gave us one cryptic tip.

“It’s a weird spoiler, but I was gonna say we’re working on a moguls film lot for one of our sets, and I’m not sure we’re allowed to say which mogul it is,” he said.

Supergirl

It’s a bird, it’s a plane … it’s Superman! Tyler Hoechlin of Teen Wolf fame talked about joining the cast for season 2.

“It’s still surreal, so I’m excited to get up there and actually be on the set with the whole environment and kind of be wrapped up in it. It’s kind of one of those childhood dreams, to be able to do that. So, like I said, it’s still sinking in, but I couldn’t be more excited about it.”

 

King Arthur

Director Guy Ritchie originally had Sons of Anarchy star Charlie Hunnam pegged as Arthur’s most famous knight  for his big-screen take on the medieval fable.

“I think that the idea of me playing King Arthur had been presented to him, and for whatever reason he wasn’t particularly interested,” Hunnam said with a laugh. “I think he sort of had me maybe in mind as Lancelot down the line, and I just said screw that. If he’s willing to spend an hour with me, I’m willing to get on a plane and fly to London  just because I love Guy and I had a real affinity with the story of King Arthur.”

Kong: Skull Island 

Star Tom Hiddleston has loved King Kong movies for as long as he can remember.

“He’s an icon of cinema, and I’ve always just felt particularly affectionate toward him, and the chance to be in a Kong film is very rare for any actor,” he said, adding that director Jordan Vogt-Roberts’ “idea was so brilliant, which was to relocate it in the early ’70s, in a time when perhaps we might believe that there are unsolved mysteries on our planet.”

 

The Flash

The CW is bringing comic book fans a four-show crossover, and new superheroes are flying onto The Flash, though the stars and writer’s wouldn’t tell us who.

Why not?

“Because we like our jobs,” Grant Gustin quipped.

Vice Principals

Walton Goggins talked about going from a Quentin Tarantino set to filming season 2 of HBO’s goofy comedy.

“Walt literally came from shooting The Hateful Eight, and then the very next day his tips are dyed and he’s in high school,” Danny McBride said.

“Just like covered in blood still, trying to scrape that red off your body,” EW host Julia Cunningham joked.

“Tarantino blood, that’s hard to get off,” Goggins said. “It’s a little stank. It stays with you for a while.”

Riverdale

The dark take on the Archie comics promises a friendlier relationship between Betty and Veronica.

“Veronica’s not a villain. Betty’s very sweet and wholesome, and Veronica’s more edgy and sassy,” star Camila Mendes said. “They come together, and you’ll obviously butt heads if you have different personalities sometimes.”

Arrow

Leading man Stephen Amell nixed any notion of a musical episode of Arrow, disappointing his Hamilton-obsessed costars, who broke out into song live on air.

Hear their stirring rendition of The Schuyler Sisters below!

Legends of Tomorrow

We broke an exclusive when new addition Nick Zano slipped up: He’s officially playing Citizen Steel!

“I’m three days in, the first episode, and so far I’m just kind of patiently waiting for the action to start. I’m doing all the laying the groundwork for Nate,” he said, before learning he’d accidentally spoiled his identity.

“I’m gonna get killed off next episode,” he joked.

 

Last Man on Earth

The cast couldn’t share any spoilers about next season of Fox’s wacky apocalyptic comedy besides teasing a “change of scenery.”

Plus, star Kristen Schall is hoping for some on-screen nudity.

“I want to show these t**s before they go away, and nobody wants to see ’em. No project I’ve worked on wants to see my t*ts,” she said. “And I would like to show you them, for the money.”

 

Sherlock

Good news  for fans of the BBC’s modern-day take on Arthur Conan Doyle’s detective books: Creators Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss really could make the show forever.

“It won’t be done to us. We’ll just carry on writing whether or not the actors show up, just in a baseman somewhere making our own fanzine of our own show that isn’t on anymore,” Moffat joked.

 

iZombie

Who’s the best rapper in the zombie comedy? We’ll let the cast argue it out in the clip below, but Rose McIver did promise to battle Rahul Kholi behind the scenes.

“She’s written a rhyme or two in her day,” costar Malcolm Goodwin said.

“Mmhm,” McIver replied. “They’re a little explicit for your ears.”

 

Powerless 

On NBC’s series set in the DC Universe, Vanessa Hudgens, Danny Pudi and Alan Tudyk play employees at the insurance company responsible for cleaning up superheroes’ messes.

As for what powers they’d want in real life, Hudgens picked teleportation.

“You’d be like, ‘You know what sounds good? A pizza from Rome. And then you’re in Rome, you get pizza and then you pop back,” she said.

 

Lego Batman

The caped crusader himself talked about a rarity in animated movies: Getting to record his voice-overs in the same room as costar Zach Galifianakis.

“I think we had to, because for Zach, he’s such a terrrible performer, and he has no sense of what he’s doing, and he’s such a marble-mouth,” Will Arnett quipped. “I used to joke with Zach all the time years ago, I was like, ‘How did you become an actor? You can’t even talk properly, Your enunciation is terrible.’ He loves stuff like that.”

Archer 

The animated show about the wannabe James Bond spy has had plenty of outrageous plots over seven seasons. The actors couldn’t say what season 8 holds but shared their dream episodes.

“I think that we should have a Christmas special,” Judy Greer suggested. “We’ve never done that!”

“It would just be a lot of drunkenness,” Aisha Tyler said.

 

Dead of Summer 

Zelda Williams reflected on playing Drew, a transgender character on Freeform’s retro summer-camp thriller.

“At the end of the day, I’m also still cis gender, so in that sense I’m never going to be the portrayal that they deserve and rightfully should have in the long run, and I hope that they continue to tell these stories so they can,” she said. “But for what we were doing, and especially it being the 1980s so Drew is not taking hormones, wouldn’t have been able to, and wouldn’t have surgery, he’s living as a man but still has to deal with the fact that he has to hide the fact that he’s physically female, and that’s really, really hard.

 

Preacher 

There’s a question only Ian Colletti (on behalf of his character Arseface in AMC’s gory comic-book adaptation) can answer: What’s hell really like?

Well, the actor deftly avoided any spoilers.

“I think whether he’s gonna come back or not and where exactly he is — I’m not sure I can really necessarily talk about — you know, in Preacher this is kind of a universe where everything can happen, and what we see hell as, I think is yet to be determined and will be as the season progresses, and we’re gonna see even more of that next season,” he said.

Bates Motel 

The Pyscho prequel series set the stage for Hitchcock’s classic thriller in season 4. Spoiler alert for anyone who hasn’t been to the movies in 50 years: Norma died, meaning she’ll eventually become the rotting skeleton posed in that creepy rocking chair.

“When I read it, I didn’t think it was going to be as serene as it ended up being, and I thought there was so much power in that.,” star Vera Farmiga said of shooting the scene. “I thought it was going to be bloody.”

The Exorcist 

Geena Davis stars in Fox’s new spinoff of the 1973 supernatural masterpiece and remembered the first time she saw the petrifying possession of little Regan.

“I was probably about 13 or something and family friends took me to the drive-in, and I had only ever seen G-rated movies made by Disney. My parents were very, very conservative,” she said, laughing. “And my world was just changed forever. I was horrified.”

Robot Chicken

After spoofing Star Wars, the writers of the Adult Swim cartoon got a call from Lucasfilm — and thought they were about to be sued.

Instead, they learned George Lucas loved the episode, and he invited the cast and crew to his studios.

“It was really fun,”  Breckin Meyer said. “It is the equivalent of getting the golden ticket to go to Wonka’s factory, no joke. And then George oddly enough walks around going, ‘Make a wish …” and he sings. It’s crazy.”

Scorpion 

Wage shippers, star Katharine McPhee is on your side.

“I don’t think anyone who’s watching the show religiously doesn’t want Wage to be together,” she said. “If you watched the pilot and were invested in the pilot, how can you not want that little triangle between Walter, Paige and Ralph to kind of be a happy ending, so I’m in favor of it.”

 

Lights Out

If the stars of the upcoming horror film (which will seriously make you consider installing a night light in your bedroom) could walk the convention floor and cosplay with the masses, who would they dress up as?

Maria Bello chose Michon from The Walking Dead, calling the zombie series, “My favorite show ever in the universe, and I want to be on it.”

 

Luke Cage 

Marvel’s next Netflix series finds the reluctant superhero in Harlem, and the cinematography has a gritty, ’90s feel.

“It’s basically a Wu-Tangization of the Marvel Universe,” executive producer Cheo Hodari Coker joked.

 

The Strain 

What can fans expect from the next season?

“It goes to another level again, and just from the very beginning, just reading those scripts, I was like, man, these guys are not messing around,” star Richard Sammel said.

 

The Man in the High Castle 

EW Radio’s Dalton Ross asked the question on every viewer’s mind: Is the titular man in the Nazi-dystopian show really Hitler?

The actors assured us we’ll find out this season. As for which episode, Rupert Evans laughed and said, “We’re not going to say!”

 

Silicon Valley

The stars of HBO’s tech-centric comedy talked about last seasons’ most shocking moment.

“I think the whole season was reverse-engineered from the horse sex scene, right?” Kumail Nanjiani cracked, and the cast revealed there’s even more hilariously disturbing footage that wasn’t broadcast.

 

MacGyver 

The reboot of the classic (and famously parodied on SNL) action series is energized by the chemistry between stars Lucas Till and George Eads.

How’d they bond before shooting? A time-honored type of male bonding.

Their executive producer “texted us, ‘How is the bromance going?'” Eads joked. “And I said, ‘Well I’ve beat him up once, he’s beat me up once, so we’re going to have the tiebreaker the first day on set. Shouldn’t be a problem.'”

 

Veep

Tony Hale pointed out that the inappropriate antics of the politicians in Veep may have been upstaged by real candidates. (Cough cough, Trump.)

“The thing is, our show is becoming less of a satire and more of a documentary, it seems like,” Hale said. ‘You’re watching CNN going, ‘What?’ If Veep writers wrote that, HBO would be like, ‘Nah, too broad.”

Fear the Walking Dead

How does Fear the Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman keep plot twists a secret from his ensemble cast?

“It’s a little unnerving,” he admitted. “I know a lot of things that are coming that are really cool and really exciting, and I have to stop thinking about them because we’re at Comic-Con talking about the episodes that have yet to air.”

The Rocky Horror Picture Show 

Victoria Justice, who plays Janet in Fox’s remake of the cult classic musical, said her favorite scene to film was the Don’t Dream It, Be It routine in a pool.

“It was so fun because we’re in our gold costumes and it’s just this very sensual, sexy, weird moment, and I got to do my first ever underwater kiss with Staz, who plays Rocky, so that was interesting,” she explained.

“Is it difficult to do an underwater kiss?” EW’s Kyle Anderson asked.

“It is!” she said. “It’s very difficult.”

“Speak for yourself, Victoria,” star Reeve Carney quipped.

Moana

Disney’s next animated princess movie tells the story of a young Hawaiian girl — with a little help from Lin-Manuel Miranda, who composed the score before he became a household name as the brains behind Broadway’s Tony-winning, impossible-to-get-tickets-for megahit Hamilton.

“He mentioned he was working on this thing, a kind of hip-hop, rap version of Alexander Hamilton, and we thought, ‘Hm, good luck with that,'” the filmmakers joked.

 

Trolls

Good news for everyone who can’t get Justin Timberlake’s single of the summer Can’t Stop the Feeling out of their heads: The trolls soundtrack will include another version used in the movie and sung by the whole cast.

“That will obviously overshadow Justin’s radio hit,” costar Anna Kendrick joked. “You know, what are you guys at with those video views, like 150 million or whatever?”