The highly anticipated "Walking Dead" companion series, "Fear The Walking Dead," makes its debut on Sunday night chronicling life at the start of the zombie apocalypse.
"TWD" creator Robert Kirkman came up with the idea for the series, and in a new interview with Access Hollywood, Executive Producer Gale Anne Hurd explained more about the brand new drama.
"Robert's whole approach was that the mother ship, 'The Walking Dead' series, is not only inspired by, but often involves storylines and characters from his underlying comic book and he wanted to explore other arenas in the world where those characters exist, but... a lateral area. So in other words, an urban environment like Los Angeles with entirely new characters, where there is no -- and nor do we intend to have any -- overlap," Hurd told Access.
PHOTOS: ‘Fear The Walking Dead’: Scenes From Season 1
"Fear" looks at life before society dissolved and fighting walkers/biters/roamers was an everyday occurrence like it is in "TWD."
"The other thing is that a lot of viewers who are not readers of the comic book wondered what was going on during the time that Rick Grimes was in a coma and so we are exploring the world in Los Angeles, as opposed to in Georgia, or in the mid-Atlantic or the Southeast during a period that 'The Walking Dead' doesn't cover," Hurd added.
Asked if there were ever any thoughts of looking at the dawn of the zombie apocalypse from an international locale, Hurd said they focused in on Los Angeles from the start as it provided the perfect backdrop for these new stories.
"From the very beginning, we really were focused on Los Angeles because it's a city of reinvention, it's a new city and it's such a large metropolis that it feels very, very, very distinct," Hurd said.
Setting the show in LA allowed the "FTWD" team to show "a neighborhood of working class people, ordinary people, who don't have specific skillsets that enable them sort of automatically, to be a leg up in surviving any kind of apocalypse" in the same way as Rick Grimes, whose background before the apocalypse was law enforcement, Hurd said.
As revealed in the first three minutes of the series, which were released on AMC's website on Thursday, Nick, played by Frank Dillane, is the first main character to encounter a walker (though they are referred to on the show, according to cast members, as "the infected"). It happens after he wakes up in a haze in an abandoned church that looks like a drug den.
Kim Dickens as Madison, Cliff Curtis as Travis, Alycia Debnam Carey as Alicia and Frank Dillane as Nick (Frank Ockenfels 3/AMC)
PHOTOS: ‘Fear The Walking Dead’: Cast Portraits
Having a character with problems like Nick, who is an addict, is something those involved in the show wanted to explore.
"It's not something we've dealt with on 'The Walking Dead,'" Hurd said. "But [they are] contemporary issues that many families deal with -- whether it's someone who's suffering from an addiction or a mental illness. And that complicates one's survival as a family unit, especially a blended family in difficult times, and yet it is not uncommon."
Nick is part of the central family in the story -- the son of high school guidance counselor Madison, played by "House of Cards'" Kim Dickens, and the brother to Alicia ("The 100's" Alycia Debnam-Carey). Cliff Curtis plays Travis, Madison's partner and a teacher at the high school. Travis has an ex-wife, Liza Ortiz (Elizabeth Rodriguez), and an estranged son, Chris (Lorenzo James Henrie).
When "FTWD" begins, the show follows the characters as they deal with the growing outbreak that turns the dead into the undead.
"We're going day by day initially with the apocalypse as our characters are experiencing it. I mean, it's not obviously in real time, but we have quite a few characters that we establish in the first episode as well as in the second episode, so we get to see what they're facing, the choices that they make and how they affect the other people in this blended family and what will become an even more blended family as the season goes on," Hurd said.
"Fear The Walking Dead" premieres Sunday night at 9 PM ET/PT on AMC.
-- Jolie Lash
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