The Walking Dead: No One Expected Success
The Walking Dead and Fear the Walking Dead have blown up into a worldwide phenomenon, but that wasn’t always the case. Lennie James (Morgan Jones on both shows) recalls how no one expected the show to live past its initial season.
“One of the things that people forget now that Walking Dead has turned into what it turned into, arguably one of the biggest shows in the world, is that when we were first doing the first season — I knew that the first episode of the first season — at that point, they didn’t know they were going to get a second season, let alone that it was going to turn into what it turned into,” James said at Comic Con Honolulu. “In fact, the general feeling while we were doing the pilot was, ‘This probably won’t go anywhere. But if it does, we might give you a call and you might come back.’ So that was all I knew right at the beginning.”
Season 1 grabbed everyone’s attention back in 2010, but it wasn’t until seasons 2 and 3 that the show really exploded.
“It was only really in Season Two and then when it went onto Netflix and people caught up on Netflix that it turned into the phenomenon that it’s turned into now,” James said. “But at the beginning, you know, they said, ‘This character comes back in the comic book, so he might come back in the show.’ But if I got a dime for every time someone said, ‘Your character’s coming back,’ I’d be a millionaire.”
Norman Reedus (Daryl Dixon) was also advised not to do the show.
“It was like one of those scripts you get and everybody’s like ‘don’t do it,” Reedus said. “Yeah, it was a stretch, I mean it was out there ya know, but I saw a guy looking for his family, that was the real story, and it paid off.”
What would we have done without Daryl Dixon?
Thank goodness everyone was wrong about the show failing. My Sunday nights would be very lonely without The Walking Dead.
The Walking Dead season 9 premieres October 7 on AMC.
sources: screenrant, comicbook
When Beth “grows up” she wants to see her creations appear on the screen and stage. In her free time, Beth blogs about her love of craft beer and writes screenplays. She received her bachelors in journalism from Youngstown State and received her masters in communication from The University of Akron. She is honored to be a part of the FanFest family.
