‘The Walking Dead’ Showrunner on Scott Gimple’s Input, Expanding Universe

The Walking Dead showrunner Angela Kang has near complete freedom in her creative decisions, despite Scott Gimple overseeing the entire Dead universe from a chief content officer position.

Following Season Eight of The Walking Dead, Kang stepped into the showrunner role, filling the throne filled by Gimple for four years before her. Gimple simultaneously moved to a role which was described as overseeing the entire franchise, including the sibling series Fear the Walking Dead and potential expansions in the future. Speaking to ComicBook.com, Kang explained that her role as showrunner is no different from any before her, when the chief content officer role was non-existent.

“Just in terms of the day to day, [Scott Gimple is] very busy with the universe,” Kang said. “And so, he doesn’t have much to do with the day to day. We do work in the same building, as does Fear The Walking Dead, although he has stuff all over so he’s been flying back and forth, I fly in back and forth. So we try to check in with each other at least once a week and just do even a lightning room, to go, ‘Here’s stuff that’s going on.’”

In her freshman year as showrunner, Kang is not afraid to admit that she has had to seek advice from those with more experience. “He’s been really great as just a person who sat in the chair, and so he gives me advice when I’m like, ‘What do I do with this weird situation that came up?’” she explains. “And he’s like, ‘Oh yeah, a thing like that happened in Season Five and here are some options of what you might think about.’”

While Gimple is not exactly hands on with the creative aspects of The Walking Dead in Season Nine, he has been instrumental for Kang’s progression while offering her free range — a privilege earned after years of writing scripts for the AMC show. “He’s been very great about just encouraging me to develop my own vision of the season,” Kang said. “He’s like, ‘I can’t tell you what to do, you’re the showrunner. You are the one who knows the story better than anybody.’ He’s an executive producer on the show, so as with all of our executive producers, I do pitch him episodes, he reads outlines, he sends notes. But it’s a similar thing to the rest of our executive producing team, which is great.”

Of course, as the Dead universe looks to expand with more TV shows and movies on the horizon, the series which started it all has to be made aware of what sort of events will be taking place within its universe for continuity’s sake. “In terms of the universe stuff, because he’s working on so much of it and it’s going and the things are moving along, I’m not really involved in that part of it,” Kang said. “There are certainly things where he goes, ‘Hey, a head’s up, here’s a thing that might touch your world or bump up against it. Here’s some mythology stuff I’m working on.’ So, we definitely have those conversations, we had one of those conversations today. But I think just because this is the flag-ship show, I think of course anything related to the universe in some way intersects, the form that will take … there’s different things in the air.”

Fear the Walking Dead airs Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on AMC. The Walking Dead returns for its ninth season on Oct. 7, 2018. For more updates and insider info all year long, follow @BrandonDavisBD on Twitter!