The Walking Dead's Robert Kirkman: There Was "A Lot Of Discussion" About Attempted Rape Scene

In a post-mortem interview following the season finale of AMC's The Walking Dead, series creator Robert Kirkman admitted that he had to sell AMC on last night's brutal and controversial scene depicting an attempted rape and some surprisingly gory character deaths. "There was definitely a lot of discussion," Kirkman told TheWalkingDead.com. "That's a scene that was really hard for me to do in the comics, and in the actual script for that scene in the comics it says, 'Don't worry Charlie, they're not actually going to do it, it's going to be stopped.' Scott [Gimple] and myself and all of the producers really had to sell it to AMC just to get them on board with what it was that we were trying to do, and thankfully they were. It's a harsh world, and I think AMC has really invested themselves in a realistic portrayal of these characters and what they would be doing in this world, and that was a part of it. So while it is definitely a difficult thing to portray, I think it's worth it for the integrity of the show and the realism of the show to sink to these levels and do these things and do them justice." The flipside of that conversation, of course, is the moment when Rick Grimes puts a stop to Joe's group by savagely attacking their leader with his teeth. The shock buys Rick, Michonne and Daryl enough time to make their move and survive the encounter...but it was pretty graphic, and even series star Andrew Lincoln wasn't sure about it. "Rick goes a little zombie," Kirkman laughed. "That's a pinnacle moment in the comic book series, seeing Rick get to that level where he's so savage and so brutal that he is essentially behaving like a zombie. When we started off this season, Scott Gimple always knew that we were building toward that moment and that that was going to be the climax of this season. So that was another one where we definitely had to go over how we were shooting that, what we were going to see and what was implied. Having Michelle MacLaren to direct that episode really helped us because she's such a visionary director and has done so many amazing episodes on Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones and really is an all-star director, so having her on board for this episode really helped us pull that scene off and do it right." AMC's The Walking Dead returns in October with new episodes.