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For 10 years, AMC’s «The Walking Dead» has envisioned what an apocalyptic world would look like if everything was suddenly thrown into complete disarray.
It included confusion, mass hysteria, martial law, and the raiding of stores for food and goods. But there was one thing «TWD» universe chief content officer Scott Gimple and showrunner Angela Kang didn’t consider until the coronavirus pandemic shut down production across its zombie shows in March.
«She and I have been working on this for more than 10 years now. How the hell did we never think of toilet paper being an issue?» Gimple told Insider.
«We’ve given our lives to the apocalypse and we never once considered toilet paper,» added Gimple.
Gimple is referencing how people rushed to panic buy toilet paper and started stockpiling it as coronavirus cases increased in the United States earlier this year. As a result, toilet paper online and in-store sales increased 845% over a two-day period in March, resulting in shortages across the nation and limitations on how much customers can purchase at once.
Some early moments on ‘The Walking Dead’ feel weird to revisit now because of parallels to the pandemic
Both Gimple and Kang have been a part of the main «TWD» series since season two. He said it’s strange to go back and look at some scenes from earlier seasons of the show in the age of coronavirus.
Recently, fans began sharing a scene between two characters, Maggie (Lauren Cohan) and her father, Hershel (Scott Wilson), where she yells at him about getting back into quarantine on season four.
speaks volumes in 2020 pic.twitter.com/gCEZd3xbEi
— TWD Out of Context (@ooctwd) September 23, 2020
No, «TWD» wasn’t predicting the outbreak.
On the show, Hershel was the group medic who wore a cloth mask to protect himself during a deadly flu outbreak as he continued to treat patients. Maggie, knowing her father was more susceptible to the virus, wanted him to stay in a different area with those who were at higher risk to contract the illness.
The exchange between Maggie and her father is a strange scene to watch in 2020 when frustrated millennials have expressed concern over parents who refused to take the coronavirus seriously.
«I know the scene you’re talking about and, yeah, it’s pretty weird,» Gimple said of watching that scene now. «I mean even face masks were a big part of it.»
How the pandemic has changed ‘The Walking Dead’ universe moving forward
Right now, the crew is in pre-production for a bonus six episodes of «TWD» season 10 before they film the show’s upcoming 11th and final season. Earlier this month, AMC announced the series will end in 2022.
The pandemic has forced the writers and crew to rethink how they can safely tell stories about a fictional apocalypse. You can’t exactly have large groups of zombies around the large ensemble cast all at once.
On AMC’s recent «The Walking Dead Universe Preview Special» Kang described the six episodes as a character-driven anthology with episodes focusing more or less on individual characters.
«They were conceived as great stories, but they kept in mind the safest way to do it,» Gimple said of the extra six episodes that will air early next year. «What I find fascinating is with those constraints, these are six of the best scripts we’ve done. Sometimes those constraints, those limitations just heightened the creativity and heightened the intensity.»
Apart from the main show, Gimple says they have been thinking about the pandemic in terms of story lines as they’re outlining other «Walking Dead» spinoffs like «Tales of The Walking Dead.» The forthcoming spinoff will focus on current and past characters from across «TWD» universe so they’ve been revisiting the start of the zombie apocalypse.
«There are some real differences between what happened in the walker apocalypse and what we’re facing now,» Gimple said. «There was no big illness in the walker apocalypse. It’s not like people were getting sick. People began to rise.»
«Where there’s overlap in this walker apocalypse and the pandemic is just the amount of confusion and misinformation that went around and some people taking advantage of that. I think that’s an aspect that we’re finding to be a very big parallel,» Gimple continued. «Because ‘Tales’ jumps around the timeline, we’ve been talking a lot about the beginning of the walker apocalypse and we’re right in the middle of this pandemic and it’s actually being informative towards what the differences were.»
Could we see survivors trading toilet paper as currency on one of «TWD» shows in the future? Don’t count it out.
«The Walking Dead» season 10 finale airs on AMC on Sunday at 9 p.m. and will be followed by the premiere of limited series «The Walking Dead: World Beyond» at 10 p.m. You can follow along with our «Walking Dead» coverage here.
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Source: insider.com
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