Robert Kirkman, Executive Producer, of The Walking Dead recently chatted with Collider about the hit TV series. Here a a couple of excerpts from the interview.
On how life has changed since The Walking Dead has became a hit: "Not very much. I guess in all of the obvious ways. I can afford more diapers for my children. If I want to buy a complete set of Garbage Pail Kids on Ebay I don’t have to ask my wife so hard. For the most part, it’s mostly the same. I keep my head down and I just work on comics for most of the time. I’ve relocated to Los Angeles to work on the second season. So I’m living there for year. I’m like on a trial basis. I’m going to the writer’s room everyday and that is very different. Otherwise, I’m just working on comics, and that is pretty much the same."
On what his role in the writers room is: "Frank [Darabont] is definitely the show runner and he is in the room everyday too. I’m an executive producer on the show, but I just consider myself to be one of the writers. I sit there with everybody else and I throw out ideas with them. I haven’t had to shoot anything down thankfully, but everybody in the room shoots things down. So it’s not like I’m sitting there going, 'We can’t do that!' and everyone else is going, 'Oh, what the hell. It’s Robert! Okay!' That just doesn’t happen. Everyone in the writer’s room is really well versed in the comics. They know what the show is and they know what the show needs to be. So it’s really like 8 people sitting in a room talking about the show and coming up with cool ideas for it. It’s really a lot of fun."
On how the story for the season evolves: "We start with the season and then we work our way down. So we go, 'This is what we want the season to be. This is where we want to start and this is where we want to end. This is where we want each character to start and end.' We then start breaking that down by episode. Where did all of these events take place and in what episode do they fall in? Then, we sit down and once we have done that we are like, 'Okay. This episode is a little light. We need more for this and more for that.' We start beefing up each individual episode. Then, we go off and make the episodes. That is how the process is."
On a trip to KNB to see the effects that Greg Nicotero has come up with: "We went to KNB and did a tour of their facilities. We talked to Greg Nicotero and saw some of the cool stuff that he has planned for the second season and just different zombie stuff. We discussed with him all of the key zombie moments that we have thought of for the second season so far just to give him a head’s up on what kind of stuff he is going to have to do. I do have to say that maybe because it’s just 13 episodes instead of 6, but it seems like there is twice as much zombie stuff going on in every episode even though we do have a lot more character development and stuff too. I think the second season is going to be really cool. Aside from taking field trips to the KNB effects studio, we also have had the actors coming into the room. We have had Andrew Lincoln, Sarah Wayne Callies, Jon Bernthal, Steven Yeun, Laurie Holden, and Norman Reedus. Every time an actor is in L.A., we have them pop by. We just sit down and discuss their character with them. We get their thoughts and insights on what they think about the character because apparently actors make up all kinds of stuff to help them act. They think about who their character is and it really is kind of remarkable. I mean, Andrew Lincoln came in and he had this entire back story for Rick with like who his parents were, what happened in his daily life, and just stuff that he came up with to inform his decisions on how he portrays Rick. It’s all actor’s stuff. It was really cool and I was blown away. I was like, 'I’ve never even thought about who his parents were. I don’t even care.' But that is really cool, you know? So I’ll probably use that in the comic. It’s a fun process and I really enjoyed being in the room."
On raising the bar for Zombie kills in season two: "I can say, sitting here knowing what I know about the second season, that you can’t even see the bar because it’s been raised so much. There is all kinds of crazy stuff that is coming up. I’m really excited. I mean, you get 8 guys that like zombies that know they are doing a T.V. show like The Walking Dead, and they know that you can get away with the kind of things that we got away with on the first season. It really becomes just an effort to just find that thing that AMC is going to make us change. So we all sitting there going, 'Oh, they are going to make us change that!' So there is a lot of cool stuff coming up."
On the leeway AMC gives him with the violence and gore of the show: "I worry that we are getting a little too like, 'Oh, yeah. They will let us do anything' just because they have been so accommodating and seemingly breaking their own rules by allowing us to put this kind of stuff on T.V. It’s really kind of shocking, but I think it’s a testament to how successful the show has been that they have been willing go to that extra mile. They are allowing a zombie show to be a zombie show. They are not pulling punches at all, and I think that is a big part of its success. People who like zombie movies can sit down and watch this, and not feel like they are getting a light version of a zombie movie. We plan to stretch those boundaries to the test on the second season."
On his involvement in The Walking Dead video game: "I just had a meeting with them yesterday. I’m not writing the video game myself just because I don’t have time. I can say that I picked Frank Darabont for the show and I picked Telltale Games because they are very familiar with the comic book and they know what makes the comic book good and what makes the comic book The Walking Dead as opposed to just as, you know, zombies running around and cutting people’s heads off and stuff. If you want to buy a game where you run around and kill zombies with an uzi that game exists and there are more of those games coming out. They are fun games and everybody likes them, but we are not going to try and compete with those games. We are going to try to do something a little different that is a little more true to The Walking Dead. Knowing that they are that invested in changing what you might expect from a zombie game and really bringing the emotion and drama of The Walking Dead to video games makes me trust them. But I’m overseeing everything."
On what sets The Walking Dead apart from other zombie shows: "All zombie movies, books, and comics to a certain extent focus on the characters because you can’t really make a zombie a main character. I think what The Walking Dead does differently is that it takes that focus on the character and magnifies it by tenfold. There are issues of The Walking Dead that don’t even feature zombies and there are going to be episodes of The Walking Dead that will barely have any zombies, if any in them, eventually as we get through the seasons of the show. It’s really just about the characters. The zombies are much more of a backdrop than they seem to be in other things. I think it’s that intense focus on the characters, their struggles, and how they deal with the zombies. It’s not really about how often they hack a zombie’s head off. It’s about how they sad they are after they have to hack a zombie’s head off. That is really the key to it that I think we are doing."
For the rest of the interview click the source link!
The Walking Dead Season Two resumes later this year.
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