As his last season races towards its conclusion, we sit down for a spoiler-filled discussion with the departing showrunner about his work.
Of all the possible explanations for the show's unprecedented success, the most compelling is its unpredictable nature. It's simply impossible to guess what's going to happen from one episode to the next with any degree of accuracy, as demonstrated by the sudden death of lovable prisoner Axel a few weeks back.
Using that death as a case study - why did someone have to die at that moment, and why did it have to be Axel? - Mazzara provides us with a revealing insight into his creative process.
“When The Governor shows up,” he explains, “he's not there to invade the prison or launch a major attack, he just wants to send a message to these people. And as he's doing that, he will look ineffectual if it does not result in a death. You know, we want to have a big gun battle, but he's not invading, so he's just going to snipe at somebody, and that's going to result in a death. Otherwise he looks completely impotent.
“Now the question is, whose death? To be very honest, I didn't want to kill off any of the major characters. We obviously didn't want to kill Rick. Carol was on the chopping block, but I didn't want to kill Carol, because we have a story coming up with her. We looked at the possibility of killing Beth. I don't think that actor knows that... but I felt that would have had too big an impact on the group. It would have just devastated poor Herschel. It would have taken him down a path I didn't want for the rest of the season. And we were already dealing with Maggie's feelings about her sexual assault by The Governor, so we didn't want to complicate that with mourning for her sister.
“We talked about killing Carl in that episode! We really did... unfortunately, you know, by the process of elimination, we got to Axel. Now I like Lew Temple's performance of Axel very, very much, and we were just starting to find that character and develop him in a way that we loved. And we probably could have had more stories with him. But The Governor was the main character in that piece. We needed to make sure he was not ineffectual. Because otherwise he's not a bad guy that could possibly take out our guys.”
If The Governor doesn't “take out our guys” by the end of this season, he'll have to do it under someone else's watch. Mazzara's run is coming to a close, and 'The Walking Dead' is about to welcome its third showrunner in four seasons. There was a time when fans wouldn't have noticed, but they seem to know everything that happens behind the curtain now. Is that increased attention a good thing?
“I think so!” Mazzara laughs. “I think the showrunner deserves it! They're driving the creative vision of the show. So even though it is a collaborative medium, the showrunner is the equivalent of the director of a feature film... there's no aspect of the show that I'm not involved in, that I don't approach from a position of authority.
'The Walking Dead' Season 3 premieres every Tuesday at 7:30pm AEDT on FX, exclusively on FOXTEL, less than 33 hours after US audiences. Read the full transcript of this interview at scenestr.com.au.
