14 DAY TRIAL // “The Walking Dead” is back on TV with a brand new season – its third to date – and, as expected, fans must have a lot of questions regarding what they just saw on the premiere. Luckily, executive producer Robert Kirkman can answer some of them.
Entertainment Weekly caught up with Kirkman shortly after the first episode aired and did not let him go until he explained at least some of the events in it.
*Please note that this article contains some spoilers so, if you haven’t seen season 3 premiere of “The Walking Dead” yet, we recommend against reading any farther.*
The first episode of the brand new season picked up 6 months after the events in the season 2 finale, a time lapse that was necessary for various practical reasons, among which the shooting schedule and the fact that some members of the cast grew in height.
“Well, part of that was the realities of filming in Georgia on the schedule that we film on. There was a lot of discussions about doing splinter units and shooting different episodes in January, so that we could do the change in seasons,” Kirkman says.
“But from a story point of view I always think it’s kind of cool to have gaps. I think once you see quite how awesome Carl is this season and how he’s grown over the winter and that we’re able to do different things with that character that we weren’t able to do before — I think that it really justifies that time jump,” the exec adds.
The fact that the actor playing Carl, Chandler Riggs, grew a bit over in between shooting for season 2 and season 3 also explained the time lapse.
“I don’t think it was quite two feet. But the actor [Chandler Riggs] grew a natural amount of inches in the time between seasons and we’re definitely applying that to the show, which I think is cool,” he says.
In the same interview, Kirkman talks about specifically making season 3 very exclusive for fans (and not at all inviting for newcomers), Daryl and Carol’s relationship and Andrea’s illness. Check it out in full here.