Back in 2011, AMC fired original showrunner Frank Darabont from The Walking Dead due to budgetary disagreements, which created quite the ruckus in the years to follow. Of course, the series has been getting along fine without him as the universe continues to expand and grow with multiple spinoffs. But there are still original cast members who don’t feel great about Darabont getting the boot.
One of those cast members is Sarah Wayne Callies, who played Lori Grimes in the first three seasons of the series. Her character died in childbirth. Callies was recently on Jon Bernthal’s Real Ones podcast and shared that she still feels a certain kind of way about Darabont’s firing.
“To me, it just felt like an assassination,” Callies said. “The reasons that we were given were that he’s unexperienced as a showrunner, and he’s unprepared, and he doesn’t know what he’s doing. But this motherf***er, one month before we started shooting Season 2, dropped six completed scripts in my lap and said, ‘You can learn these lines. They’re not going to change.’ And they were wonderful.”
The Walking Dead’s Sarah Wayne Callies defends Frank Darabont
Callies defended not only Darabont’s professionalism but also his creative vision for the show, stating it was much stronger than the one of the writers who eventually replaced him. “This might be a controversial thing to say… you cannot beat his writing. You can’t. And there are some really good people who’ve been writing on that show since, and I got a lot of love and respect for them. Nobody writes like Frank Darabont. That’s a whole different level.”
Clearly, Callies is Team Darabont, and in her defense, some of the show’s best episodes took place at the very start. That six-episode first season was amazing. I still remember watching it back then thinking I wouldn’t care much about a zombie show, but here I am 10 years later, still going strong.
I can credit Darabont for getting me into the series, but credit must also be given to the people who have kept it going this long. And The Walking Dead universe certainly shows no signs of stopping anytime soon; I can’t wait for that Rick Grimes and Michonne limited series, ya’ll!
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h/t Indie Wire