RETURN OF THE ZOMBIE KING

Walking Dead executive producer and make- up FX maestro Greg Nicotero introduces a different kind of walker…

How do the newborn walkers of Fear The Walking Dead differ from those of The Walking Dead? The cool thing about Fear is that it’s one of those situations where you’re walking down the street and you see somebody who’s walking a little slower, but you don’t know, you would never think in normal life that there’s something wrong with that person.

So it’s like the beginning of Shaun Of The Dead? That’s actually a really good analogy. On The Walking Dead we push the envelope every season, because we’re a year and half after the zombie apocalypse. So we’re constantly striving to push that. What’s creepier about Fear The Walking Dead is the aspect that people don’t recognise [ walkers] immediately. They think someone might just be sick or not feel well or just look a little weird. But you would never stop on the street and go, “Oh my god, that’s a monster!” You would probably go to the opposite side of the street and avoid them.

We’ve heard the walkers in Fear The Walking Dead are less decomposed than those in The Walking Dead. But have you created some we might still see as action figures? Oh for sure. We still have an obligation to have those moments where we have the audience stop and go, “Oh my god! Did I just see that?” That’s sort of the fun of the show – pushing those moments where people see something and they have to kind of comprehend it. I think on Fear we’re able to play those moments off the characters. The characters see something horrible happening and you play that confusion and fear off of how they react.