Robert Kirkman Says The Walking Dead Used Body Doubles To Keep Season 7 Secrets

It's hard to think of when the last time a season premiere has been as anticipated as the upcoming [...]

By Matthew Aguilar

It's hard to think of when the last time a season premiere has been as anticipated as the upcoming season 7 premiere of The Walking Dead, and it goes to show how effective a cliffhanger can be.

Granted, fans aren't happy they had to wait so long to find out just who Negan killed, but the method has proved effective. Due to all the attention, the team behind the show has gone to great lengths in order to prevent the secret from getting out, and Robert Kirkman touched on a few of those methods in a recent interview with THR.

"Not sending screeners out [to press] is a big one. There's a lot of extra security measures on distribution and the international dubbing and those things to help prevent the kind of leaks that we've had in the past. There has been a lot of tactics used in filming that have been used on films — monitoring actor movement and trying to do things in secret. We've employed body doubles in places to make people think that people are in places that they're not. It's pretty exciting to try and hide certain things."

While the main focus of all these protections is to keep the premiere death a secret, it's also to protect storylines, character deaths, and twists and turns in upcoming episodes.

"This is a big season, so we're not just protecting things that happen in the first episode; there are things that happen in the second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth episode and beyond. We're trying to maintain that secrecy so when people watch the show, they can have that same experience they have in the comic where you don't know what's going to happen and it comes as an exciting surprise as the story moves forward. There is a lot of secrecy surrounding this season and when people watch the episodes, they'll see why and hopefully appreciate it."

The wait will soon be over, as The Walking Dead returns to AMC on October 23.

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