DEAD MAN WALKING

THE WALKING DEAD IS LOSING ITS MAIN STAR, ANDREW LINCOLN. SHOWRUNNER ANGELA KANG EXPLAINS HOW THE SHOW WILL GO ON

What does The Walking Dead

look like without Andrew Lincoln? Even though it started with the story of Rick, the show very quickly grew into an ensemble. We’ve got Norman Reedus as Daryl, Melissa Mcbride’s Carol and Danai Gurira’s Michonne. It’s really exciting to tell more stories with them.

The new series takes place a couple of years after the previous one. How does the time jump change things?

It opens up a new chapter. Everything looks different and it gives us the opportunity to start our characters in a new place; to reset. Fans that have been on this journey for eight seasons will be rewarded for paying attention to things that have been seeded in before. But for viewers who have lapsed or want to come in on something new other than war, this is a really interesting

part of the story where our characters are dealing with how you rebuild, as the world itself degrades.

How does Negan feature in Season 9? What I’ll say about Negan [Jeffrey Dean Morgan], which I’m really excited about, is we’re going to show sides of him that have not been part of the show up to this point. He’s been in a different situation and we get to see a different Negan.

And the zombies? We’re starting to see that zombies, which have been degrading over the show, are even more degraded than before. Greg Nicotero and his great team have come up with some amazing make-up enhanced by our fantastic VFX team. We have one with part of its cheek rotted out. That’s one of the guilty pleasures of this show: watching these monsters ambling around that are also works of art. JAMES WHITE