The zombies are coming! Yes, a new variety of undead creatures invades the airwaves this Halloween—and these monsters aren't sappy, sparkly or sentimental.
The Walking Dead, AMC's buzz-worthy zombie apocalypse series, finally premieres this Sunday night. Here's why you need to finish your trick-or-treating early so you don't miss a second of TV's scariest series since ever:
Watch Walking Because Romance Is Dead: Here's why you should go Team Zombie instead of Team Vampire this Halloween: It's true that "Vampires are so much more sexy," as True Blood's Lindsay Hahn argued at The Walking Dead premiere in Hollywood this week, but Dead's executive producer Gale Anne Hurd also points out: "I don't think people will leave TWD wanting to have sex with a zombie...but you can have a lot more fun with zombies. I think most people, if they were asked to be a zombie extra or vampire extra, they would choose zombie. They really are monsters." And really, haven't we had enough swooning fangbangers? "I think it's time for zombies, surely," asserts star Andrew Lincoln. "It's got to be time for a zombie invasion."
Watch for the Body Count: It took Bella Swan four books to (spoiler alert!) turn into a vampire, but humans become infected from a single zombie bite. In the world of The Walking Dead, the few living, non-zombified survivors are vastly outnumbered by the voracious undead—and thus spend a lot of their time re-deading their drooling compatriots. When we asked Andrew Lincoln if he kept a tally of how many zombies were killed by his character, Sheriff Rick Grimes, he laughed, "I lost count at 27. There was one busy day, and there was an invasion, and I had to shoot so many I lost count."
Watch Because It's a Feast for the Eyes: "Greg Nicotero is the most amazing special-effects artist ever," raves Laurie Holden (who plays badass Andrea) about the Emmy-winning genius who brought the zombies to, um, life. Attendance at Zombie School was mandatory for all zombie castmembers. "These are educated, authentic zombies," Laurie adds. (You can see a Zombie School video on AMC's TWD page.) "Nicotero's done an amazing job," agrees creator Robert Kirkman—high praise from The Walking Dead comic mastermind. "All the zombies are characters in and of themselves."
Watch Because Even the Actors Were Scared on Set: "There was one episode in particular where they didn't let us know the horde of zombies was going to be coming in," revealed Juan Gabriel Pareja, who plays Morales. "[We were rehearsing] and they started piling in, and that was a moment of real honest-to-god terror." Then again, says star Andrew Lincoln, "It's quite weird when you see someone having a cigarette dressed as a zombie, or going to the craft table or eating a sandwich...It has to be brains, or it really doesn't sell."
Watch Because Glenn Delivers: Andrew Lincoln is hotter than Atlanta summertime, but Steven Yeun as pizza-delivery guy Glenn manages to steal all the scenes with his ironic sense of humor. "Glenn is many fans of the comics' favorite character," Gale Anne Hurd points out, and she and Robert Kirkman told us although all the actors "look ridiculously similar to how they look in the comic book, it's almost like [Steven Yeun] was born out of the pages."
The Walking Dead premieres Halloween Sunday at 10 p.m. on AMC.