I’M THE FIRST zombie that Norman Reedus ever killed on The Walking Dead. I was the zombie eating the deer in the third episode. That day, I was sitting in the trailer in zombie make-up with Norman and we’re talking. The next day, I’m in the van with Norman going to set and he’s like, “Hey, I haven’t seen you in ages! How’s it going?” I said, “Norman, I was the guy in the zombie make-up yesterday!” Years later, on the last day of [filming] The Walking Dead, I shot a little video of me and Norman on set. We talked about 12 years together, all the stuff that we had done. Like when the scripts would come out and Andy [Lincoln] and Norman would come over to my house and we would read them together. We’d been in the trenches together for over a decade.
The Walking Dead changed my life in a million ways. Frank [Darabont] and Gale [Anne Hurd] gave me an opportunity to do something that I had never done before. It allowed me to explore every element of filmmaking that you can. I was hired about a year before The Walking Dead went into production, because we had sculpted a bunch of zombie busts for Frank. After Season 1, Frank and Gale called and said, “You’re more than a make-up effects supervisor. We want you to be a producer — you bring a perspective we value.” Then in Season 2, I was given the first episode I ever directed, when Jeff DeMunn is killed. After that, I was the Grim Reaper! I remember calling Melissa McBride during hiatus once, and she was like, “Why are you calling me? Am I gonna die?” This of course included one of the The Walking Dead’s biggest shocks. Steven Yeun’s death in Season 7 was controversial, and to be honest, the show changed as soon as that happened.