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Cape Town - The Walking Dead’s companion series, Fear The Walking Dead has finally come to SA. The long-awaited, super-sized second season premiered on AMC (Dstv channel 140 and channel 115 on StarSat) on Monday at 3:10 CAT – minutes after the AMC U.S. premiere – but will be aired again later on Monday evening at 20:00 for those who aren’t night owls.
Watch a new teaser video for season two of Fear the Walking Dead here:
In the following interview, FTWD executive producer Dave Erickson reveals some exciting details for the first time about the new season.
How is Fear the Walking Dead different from The Walking Dead and is it easy to become hooked on if you’ve never seen The Walking Dead?
It’s definitely easy, and you don’t have to know anything about The Walking Dead to become hooked on FTWD. Speaking with lots of people - with the actors, the producers and some viewers - they all agree that the way we approached the story means you don’t need any prior knowledge of the comics or the other series.
"But we’ve structured it in such a way that if you are a fan of the original graphic novels and you watch The Walking Dead, you’ll immediately recognise the mythology and you’ll see how the stories are layered. But you’ll also appreciate the different approach that FTWD takes; the different point of view it has.
Each family in season one experienced some tremendous loss. Will this unite them in season two and does it help them try to figure out how to survive?
Well, it’s interesting because one of the things that was important to Robert Kirkman when we started to develop the drama was the theme of violence and how each of the characters would approach it. And that doesn’t just mean the "deaths" of the walkers but how would each of the characters react when they had to put a walker down?
By the end of season one, they’ve experienced a zombie horde and most of them have had to fight one of the infected and put a walker down. So it becomes a question of the effects of that violence and about the morality of each person - how will they learn to process everything as we go into season two.
Strand said at the end of the season one: “The only way to survive a mad world is to embrace the madness.” So how does this actually play out in season two?
I think a big theme for season two is that once we’ve established that the world is really gone, once we’ve established that there’s no turning back, what kind of person will each of the characters become? Will they be able to surrender to it? Will they be devoured and consumed by the apocalypse or will they change their base nature? Can they really continue to fight against it and try to hold onto their humanity?
It’s a fragile but violent rebirth for each of the characters going into season two and I think you’ll see elements of that ‘madness’ in a number of characters.
What was it like to shoot in Mexico?
Well, shooting in Baja, we have a crew that is partly American alongside a lot of technicians and artists who came out from MexicoCity and a lot of folks who are working locally in Baja. It was a giant endeavour and, as far as I can recall, there really hasn’t been anything like this done for television before. It was new ground for all of us, for the writers, for the directors, for all the producers and for the network. That’s a really rewarding feeling and I think we’re going to give the audience an experience that they haven’t had before.
I think that diversity is deeply embedded within the entire show. We have an incredibly diverse cast and crew and I think it gives us a very interesting edge and a different perspective. It makes for a really rich show.
Is there anything else that you’d like to share with fans about the upcoming season?
I think the most intriguing question is this: We all know that we’re going to be on a boat because we saw that at the end of season one but... where are the characters going to go?
I think we’ll quickly realize that the ocean is no safer than land and that there’s a very different level of adversity and threat on the water. It forces the characters to set their sights on a destination. But where will that be?
That’s the intriguing question for the first few episodes of the new season: what harbour can the characters find and when they get there, will it be safe or not?
