‘Fear The Walking Dead’ Showrunner on Nick and Alicia’s Perspectives

AMC’s highly anticipated new series Fear The Walking Dead premiered last night, introducing viewers to a highly dysfunctional family at the beginning of a zombie apocalypse.

Fans of The Walking Dead have been looking forward to the new companion series that gives them a look into the beginning of the outbreak. Last night’s pilot built a solid foundation, telling the outbreak story through the eyes of drug-addicted Nick Clark (Frank Dillane) who, as the first in his family to encounter the undead, must figure out what’s real and what’s inside his head.

Showrunner Dave Erickson took some time to give audiences of last night’s premiere a deeper look into the story, including why they decided to focus on the most unstable member of the family, what’s ahead for the most stable member of the family and more.

On why they decided to tell the story from Nick’s perspective:

“In the original conception of the show, before I came on, the character of Nick was an addict. It seemed like an interesting window where you’re living in a world where it’s not necessarily a judgmental world and for most people, if you see someone behaving this way, your assumption is not, “That’s a zombie.” It’s that they’re sick or high and there has to be some reasonable, rational explication for it. What’s interesting is to have a character whose prism was a bit distorted. Who sees something and even when he confesses what he saw — Travis says it in the pilot with “You saw what the drugs saw.” It becomes a quest for Nick to find out if what he saw real or if it was just in his mind. Was it the drugs or did that really happen? For Nick, Travis and Madison, it just doesn’t seem possible. For us, and this is consistent with how the season will develop, the character who believes they saw something, they’re slowly dragging the other characters along to the realization that this is really happening.”

On how the apocalypse will impact Alicia:

“She had a very specific narrative line mapped out for herself: she was going to get out and start a life for herself and not abandon her family but put distance between her brother and his bullshit and the co-dependent relationship that Madison has with Nick. Alicia, unlike Madison whose primary goal is to protect and save her son, she has a great bullshit detector. There’s a scene in the pilot where when he talks about getting clean, and she shuts him down. It’s a visceral reaction because she’s heard and seen him say it before and she knows it’s not true. It’s going to have to be something incredibly traumatic and violent that gets his head straight. Then the apocalypse happens and something traumatic and violent does come down the pike.”

On the new term for Fear‘s zombies:

“Right now, playing off of the idea that they think this is viral and something you can catch that’s transmitted, they start to call them “the infected,” which is a nod to 28 Days Later. We don’t get into a place in the story where they’re going to start throwing names. Whether it’s biters, roamers or walkers, our characters in season one still think these people are human and sick for a big chunk of time. “Infected” made story sense for us, and as things evolve, we’ll come up with new names.”

To read the rest of what Dave had to say about the new series, head on over to Entertainment Weekly.

You can catch new episodes of Fear The Walking Dead Sundays at 9pm on AMC.

Photo Credit: AMC