ALSO: Check out our Season Two preview, as well interviews with actor Jon Bernthal and executive producer Robert Kirkman.

Bullz-Eye: I know you won’t remember me, but we met fleetingly at the New York Comic Con, during the press roundtables.

Norman Reedus: Oh, right on. (Laughs) The craziness that is Comic-Con…

BE: Yeah, there’s no way you’d remember me in the middle of all that. But it was a good time nonetheless, so it’s good to talk to you again. And I’ve had a chance to check out the first episode of the new season…

NR: Oh, yeah? What’d you think?

BE: I think I should’ve gone straight on to the second episode.

NR: (Laughs) Awesome!

BE: So when you leapt into Season 2, how enthused were you to get back to work? It seems like it’d be a lot of fun to do.

NR: It’s a blast. I wanted to go a month early and just wait for everybody to show up. It’s such a fun job. It’s by far my favorite job I’ve ever done. The crew and the cast, everyone is so tight there. We’re all just one big family, for real. I just wanted to get back to it. I’ve never really had an acting experience that’s just so…fun. It’s so engaging. I’m really into it.

BE: Do you get used to the humidity down in Atlanta pretty quickly?

NR: You know, you kind of just suffer for the show. The heat and the surroundings are definitely a character on the show, so we’re out there surviving for our lives already. But, you know, I…I’m in Los Angeles right now, getting ready to go back to George to finish the season. But it started getting cold the last night we were there, and I shot ‘til about 4:30 in the morning and took an 8 AM flight to California, so I was exhausted. But it was freezing. It didn’t feel right. I prefer the heat.

BE: I think it was Steven (Yeun) who was telling the story about how he actually passed out his first day of filming.

NR: Yeah, he did. He had a long running scene, and he just sort of fainted. It was pretty crazy. Of course, we all teased him uncontrollably forever after that. (Laughs)

BE: So do you have to get into a Daryl mindset when you go back to work?

NR: Yeah, you know, it’s interesting, ‘cause last season, it was all ‘fuck you, I hate you,’ and this season you sort of see Daryl form alliances with certain members you wouldn’t necessarily expect. Damaged people recognize other damaged people, so they have a kindred spirit going on. It’s not just so one-noted this season. He really kind of bounces all over the place, and it’s really interesting. It’s like he needs a hug, but if you tried to hug him, he’d stab you. He’s really fragile, like a little kid in a lot of ways. You see certain members of the group trying to tell him his worth, that he’s worth more than he thinks about himself, and you find a little bit about his back story, his family history, and you see how truly damaged this guy is. It’s interesting to play all those levels. It really makes for an interesting day of work.

BE: Yeah, I mean, I wouldn’t call him a delicate flower or anything, but even in the first episode of Season 2, he feels like a slightly different Daryl than we saw last season.

NR: Yeah, but, you know, even last season, I tried to tear up between squirrel throws and whatnot, just to make him still be, like, he lost his big brother. Even assholes have big brothers. I tried to make him more than just an angry guy. It was, like, show some reasons why he’s so angry and damaged.

BE: On a related note, I actually got to have dinner with Michael Rooker late last year.

NR: (Laughs) Oh, yeah! That’s funny, ‘cause he keeps texting me. He’s, like, ‘Come on, we’re going to the gun range right now,’ and I’m, like, ‘I can’t, ‘cause I’m at a motorcycle shop getting my motorcycle fixed.’ He’s, like, ‘Stop being a poopybutt.’ He actually called me a poopybutt.

BE: You know, I believe that.

NR: He did. I was, like, “Wow, that’s not very Rooker of you.” (Laughs) He’s an awesome character, an awesome guy, and a great actor. I’m looking forward to seeing everything he does.

BE: When it comes to the zombies, I know you see them all the time, but do you ever hit a point when you suddenly think, “I know they’re just people in makeup, but, damn, these guys are pretty scary”?

NR: You know, it’s wild, ‘cause you see a zombie having a cupcake or a cigarette, and then five minutes later you see them in character. Those guys who are playing zombies, they’re actors. I think people sometimes think they’re just people in zombie makeup, but when they turn it on, they really turn it on. They’re doing such a great job at being scary. It’s interesting, ‘cause the way Greg does the makeup, he’s so good with the effects that when you see a zombie, you actually feel sorry for it. But it’s actually scarier to be in a fight with one when you feel sorry for one.

BE: With the second season, can you speak at all to whether it feels different without Frank Darabont having as much of a presence? I mean, I know he’s still involved, but…

NR: You know, we all love Frank, and we all just totally admire him, but the second season just picks right up and goes so smoothly. Glen (Mazzara) is doing such a good job, and he has respect of all the actors. All the directors that come in are doing such a good job. We’re so close out there, such a tight group, that when we go to work, we all know exactly what we’re doing, we know each other characters so well that I’ll be in a scene with a bunch of actors, and one of the actors goes, ‘What do you guys think? Should I try it this way?’ And not everyone has an opinion, but everyone has each others’ back and wants them to be the best that they can be on the show. That tight family groove…we’re on point and kicking ass.

BE: How trying is the part of Daryl from a physical standpoint?

NR: It’s definitely physical, but it lends itself to the character. The onl episode that really felt out of place was the CDC, and that’s because we were in doors and in the air conditioning. It just didn’t feel right. Part of it is the bugs, the dirt, the heat, the sweat…it’s all part of the show. We’ve all grown very fond of working under those conditions. It’s weird, but it’s true.

BE: So was Daryl always destined to ride a motorcycle, or did that come about because you ride?

NR: You know, I think there was talk of me on a horse, but if you’ve ever seen me on a horse, it’s pretty pathetic. (Laughs) So that probably had something to do with it. But, you know, there’s a motorcycle there, and I didn’t ask if it was Daryl’s or Merle’s motorcycle, but they both ride it. I do like motorcycles. I have a Triumph Scrambler down in Georgia, and I have a Harley here in Los Angeles, so I do ride. But, hey, you know, it’s an efficient way to get around on no gas during a zombie apocalypse. (Laughs)

BE: I wanted to ask you briefly about the autopsy scene in the season premiere. How was that to film? It seems like it would’ve been pretty gross, real or not.

NR: I have to say, I could’ve shot that gross scene all day. (Laughs) I was like a little kid in a candy store. When you put your hands into it, it made a slurping, burping sound. They put little tubes of hot air to blow in our face to show that there’s gas going through the innards of the zombies. It was disgusting, but it was a blast. I went elbow-deep in that stuff, but I could’ve played around all day long.

BE: As far as the other cast members, I’m sure you enjoy them all, but do you have particular folks who are your most favorite to work with?

NR: Melissa McBride is one of my favorite cast members to work with. That girl…I keep telling her she’s one nervous breakdown away from becoming Meryl Streep. (Laughs) She’s such a good actress, you can just read everything in her face. I love watching her work. I really love watching Jeffrey DeMunn work, too. He’s really good. I’m really impressed with what Chandler (Riggs) has been doing. I like working with all of them. They’re all really, really good actors. I find stuff in them every day that they pull out where it’s, like, high-fives all around.

BE: So from your standpoint, do you feel like Season 2 is at least as strong as Season 1?

NR: The second season’s stronger. It’s stronger than the first. Hey, I don’t know if it’s just because we’re so invested in it and now we’ve gotten used to these characters, but AMC was ballsy enough to do a zombie show, right from the beginning, they put up six episodes to see how it would fare, to gauge  interest and see how it would do. And it did so well that I think the second season lends us to getting into the characters more. We sort of set up the tone of the world in the first season, and in the second season, you really find out who these people are, and that’s the backbone of the show, really. It’s not so much the zombies. They can kill you, but so can the people sitting right next to you. The second season is where the alliances form, where you find out who you can trust and who you can’t trust. It’s kind of like “Survivor.” (Laughs)

(NOTE: Portions of this interview appear in the print edition of TV Week Magazine.)

ALSO: Check out our Season Two preview, as well as interviews with actors Jon Bernthal and Norman Reedus.

Bullz-Eye: I know you don’t remember me, but you and I met briefly when you were doing the press roundtables at the New York Comic-Con.

Robert Kirkman: Oh, good! I hope I did okay.

BE: Oh, yeah, you did great. It was a lot of fun. I just got the Season 2 press kit, and I’m 95% of the way through the first episode, so it killed me to have to get on the phone with you.

RK: (Laughs) Awesome!

BE: So how excited are you about the premiere of the show’s second season?

RK: I’m extremely excited. I mean, you know, there’s a lot of pressure to follow up our first season. It was a big success, and, you know, knowing what I know of the second season and seeing what I’ve seen, I’m fairly confident that we’re still going to come out of the gate and impress people, so I’m really anxious to see what people think of it. A lot of hard work has been going into this season, and it’s great that it’s going to finally be enjoyed by some people. So I’m really excited.

BE: When it comes to adapting the original source material, you’ve obviously got an advantage, given that it’s yours… (Laughs) …but I’m sure it’s hard to pick and choose which bits actually make it onto television.

RK: It’s a process. There’s not really a way to nail down exactly what goes into it. But everyone in the room is familiar with the comic, and we all sit down knowing what happened in the book, and we look at where the show’s going and what the characters are doing, and we just kind of figure it all out. Sometimes we take things directly from the comic, and there are a lot of times when we’re talking about things from the comic, and things will go to different characters in the show, or it’ll spin off into something entirely new that wasn’t in the comic, but the starting point was something that did appear in the comic. So it’s an evolving process, and it’s neat to be sitting down to adapt something that I wrote awhile ago. The earlier material in “The Walking Dead” is something I wrote some time ago, so it’s good to be able to revisit that stuff.

BE: Do you have a favorite TV-only moment that really stands out for you?

RK: Well, there’s a lot of stuff in the second season I can’t really talk about that’s pretty great. I really like the fact that Shane is still around. I think that Jon Bernthal is an amazing actor, and we have a lot of great stuff coming up for him and a lot of stuff planned for the future. I think it was a really good decision to keep him around, and I think that he’s adding a lot to the show. Daryl Dixon’s character is a really good X-factor thrown into the mix that morphs the story around him in the show, because he doesn’t exist in the comic, so throwing him into those scenarios is a lot of fun to see how he changes things. But there’s all kinds of different stuff.

BE: I feel like Season 2 needs more Michael Rooker. What’s your thought on that?

RK: I would say that if Michael Rooker was in every single episode of Season 2 – and he’s not – but if he was, the show would still need more Michael Rooker.

BE: That’s a pull quote. (Laughs) If we could briefly touch on the Frank Darabont situation, what’s his current status on the series?

RK: Frank Darabont is still an executive producer, but he’s no longer the show runner and he’s not in the room. It’s Glen Mazzara’s job now.

BE: You and Frank seemed to have a really strong rapport at Comic-Con. Can you speak to the matter of his departure at all?

RK: There’s very little I can talk about, just because there were a lot of dealings between AMC and Frank directly, so a lot of it I’m unaware of. It’s up to Frank when he wants to talk about that stuff, so it wouldn’t be right for me to come out and say it. But Frank got this show off the ground, and I’ll always be indebted to him for doing that. I was definitely sorry to see him go, but it kind of is what it is. The show is a bigger animal than any of us, and we kind of just have to do what we have to do to keep it going.

BE: Would you say that some of his vision that he put into place while he was show runner is still visible in the second season?

RK: There are bits and pieces here and there that were broken in the room, but the important thing to note is that Frank wasn’t in the room alone at any point during the show. With the second season, it was Glen Mazzara and myself and Scott Gimple and Evan Reilly and Angela Kang and Frank, and we all worked together to map out this second season. So to a certain extent, sure, there are things that Frank suggested, just like there are things that everyone suggested in every episode throughout the second season, but… (Hesitates) Yeah, I think I answered the question.

BE: (Laughs) Yeah, you did. So I know you said of Season 1 that you couldn’t believe how much you’d been able to get away with in Season 1 when it came to the gore. Season 2 seems to be at least on a similar par.

RK: Yeah, I don’t know how far you got into the episode, but it’s pretty crazy.

BE: I’m at the scene at the church.

RK: Oh, so you saw the autopsy scene, then? (Laughs) Yeah, it’s pretty crazy. There’s more of that kind of stuff coming up in the second season. It’s really kind of ridiculous. We’re definitely crossing some lines and breaking down boundaries and all kinds of crazy stuff. It’s a constant battle to try and come up with something that AMC won’t let us do.

BE: Did it surprise you when you realized how open they were going to be about it?

RK: Yeah, absolutely. I know when we were talking very early on about the first season, I was very excited because I thought, “We’ll get to be able to do our R-rated crazy zombie gore, but we’ll edit that into the show for the DVD release,” so the DVD would be something special. You might have to watch a tamer version on TV, but at least you get to see the full craziness on DVD, and that’ll be a good system. That’ll be kind of cool. But as we kept going and moving into the show, it became clear that all that stuff was just going to air, which got even more exciting. I was, like, ‘Oh, so we don’t have to do the DVD thing? That’s pretty crazy!’ And any time there is any kind of talkback, we constantly have “Breaking Bad,” which is doing just absolutely crazy stuff, so we can say, “Aw, well, you just blew up a guy’s head in ‘Breaking Bad,’ so surely can we make a zombie piñata that explodes!”

(NOTE: Portions of this interview appear in the print edition of TV Week Magazine.)

ALSO: Check out our interviews with actors Jon Bernthal and Norman Reedus and executive producer Robert Kirkman.

It’s no secret that AMC has endured a difficult year filled with one PR nightmare after the next – including public contract disputes that suspended production on Season Five of “Mad Men” and threatened the future of “Breaking Bad,” as well as audience backlash over the season finale of “The Killing” – but it suddenly felt very personal when Frank Darabont, creator and executive producer of “The Walking Dead,” was unexpectedly relieved of his duties only a few days after promoting the show at San Diego Comic-Con. Though the network never gave a clear reason for his dismissal, it’s believed to have something to do with forced budget cuts for the second season, which came as a surprise to Darabont after the show set a new cable ratings record in its debut season.

But despite all the backroom drama and concerns that Darabont’s absence would spell trouble for the hit zombie series, AMC was insistent that “The Walking Dead” was in the capable hands of his replacement, Glen Mazzara. Then again, Darabont was already hard at work on the show for months before getting the axe, and mapped out the entire season prior to his departure, so audiences may not notice many differences (if any at all) until the show’s third season. It should be noted, however, that Mazzara is no slouch when it comes to making great TV (having previously spent five years behind the scenes on “The Shield”), and he’s still working with the same team that Darabont put together, including zombie experts Robert Kirkman and Greg Nicotero. In fact, based on the first two episodes alone, it’s pretty clear that fans have nothing to worry about.

When we last left Rick Grimes and the rest of the survivors, they had just escaped the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta by the skin of their teeth and hit the road once again in search of a new refuge. Though they don’t actually arrive at Hershel’s Farm – the provisional sanctuary featured in Kirkman’s comics – until the second episode, the season premiere has more than enough going on to keep them busy, including a tension-packed opening sequence where the survivors must hide from a herd of zombies after Dale’s RV breaks down on the highway. There’s plenty of action and gore as well, with one survivor wounded pretty badly in the aforementioned attack, another one shot in what is likely the first of many “holy shit” moments of the season, and a truly disgusting zombie moment that some people might not be able to stomach. Oh yeah, and fan favorite Daryl kicks a lot of zombie ass, but I’m guessing you already knew that.

Of course, the series is first and foremost about the relationships between its large cast of characters, and although some viewers might bemoan the slower pace of these early episodes, it allows for a lot of great interactions – particularly involving the Rick, Lori and Shane love triangle – that will only make you even more invested in their survival. And if there’s one thing that AMC can never take away from Darabont, it’s the amazing job he did with laying down a strong foundation on which those characters could grow. Because while he may no longer be around to captain the ship, Darabont’s fingerprints are all over “The Walking Dead,” and it’s the main reason why the show will continue to operate at such a high level of excellence. It may not have gone down exactly the way we would have liked, but the audience still comes out the winner in the end.

“The Walking Dead” returns to AMC on October 16th at 9/8c with a special 90-minute premiere. Can’t wait that long? Check out a sneak peek of the new season below.