Exclusive: iZombie Star Rose McIver On The Comics, The Differences and What's The Same

When iZombie comes to the small screen in 2015, it will be arguably the least-faithful comics adaptation of 2015 (Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Agent Carter notwithstanding, since they aren't based on a specific story or set of stories).

That's actually okay, at least on principle, with iZombie co-creator Chris Roberson, who has said as much a couple of times since it became obvious that Liv Moore would lead a very different story than his Gwen Dylan starred in when the show was a Vertigo comic by Roberson and Mike Allred.

ComicBook.com had a chance to speak with series star Rose McIver over the weekend at Comic Con International: San Diego, and pick her brain (ha) about how to honor the comic, even though the premise of the TV show is so wildly different.

Can you give our readers a quick overview on Liv?

She dies and comes back as a zombie and she needs to eat brains in order to survive. And when she eats the brains, she sees memories of what happened to that person before they died and she's inadvertently able to solve crimes, which becomes a new focus for her.

What differentiates you from other, or more traditional, zombies?

We have full-body makeup for as much as is exposed. So I have white skin that gets even whiter, I get paler, my eyes get redder and darker circles; I get rabid -- there's some sounds we play with and mannerisms and all sorts of things that happen to bring out this kind of rabid zombie behavior.

Have you read the comics?

Absolutely. I read the comic and we all were able to draw from that as well as these amazing scripts we've been working with. So it's been a plethora of resources. We've been very lucky.

Have you filmed anything beyond the pilot yet?

So far we've just shot the first episode. We're going up to Vancouver in just three weeks and we're going to be shooting until the end of January and hopefully building a really exciting season.

What, tonally, are you guys doing to keep consistent with the comics even though you're telling a very different story?

I think the sense of humor and sarcasm that I saw in Gwen's voice when I read the comics, that very much feels like it's still apparent in the series.

I think the general concept of her struggling with her identity as a zombie we can definitely feel in the show, and I think Diane is our zombie expert who's been able to bring the genre side of it all to the show.