‘Fear The Walking Dead’: Characters Will Have To Decide Between “Bad Decisions And Worst Decisions”

Fans of Netflix’s Orange Is The New Black will automatically recognize one of the characters from AMC’s new drama, Fear The Walking Dead. Elizabeth Rodriguez plays Aleida Diaz in Orange Is The New Black, an inmate who is sharing her time in prison with her daughter. In Fear The Walking Dead, she will play the part of Liza Ortiz, another mother, just this time she is protecting her son, Chris (played by Lorenzo James Henrie).

Everyone knows that being a parent is one of the hardest things to do, making the right decisions for your children, and, at times, making the tough choices that are right at the time. But what if the zombie apocalypse had just hit? How hard would parenting be then? When Elizabeth Rodriguez sat down with Entertainment Weekly to talk about Fear The Walking Dead, she thought it came down to making choices between “bad decisions and worst decisions”.

“There’s a line that one of the characters says and it’s incredible because you always go back to it. A doctor says ‘You have to make choices between the bad decisions and worst decisions, which is it going to be?’ and that’s what I think happens all along the storyline.”

A lot of the promotional items for Fear The Walking Dead have focused around Liza’s ex-husband, Travis (Cliff Curtis). But, Liza may actually be a godsend to him, his new girlfriend, Madison, and Madison’s children as Liza is actually a student nurse. As a result of this, the end times that occur in Fear The Walking Dead will not only be told from the perspective of characters who have no idea what is going on, but also from the perspective of someone who sees the outbreak from the front line.

“As a nursing student, in the coming episodes I end up finding that is what I can do… And I end up seeing things on a grander scale and discovering other things that the rest of the family doesn’t know about. I end up leaving my family and becoming really fancy in this story. [Laughs]”

However, it is her ex-husband who first notices things are not as they seem and manages to alert Liza and their son. “Travis knows things first. He has seen some things, then he comes looking for Chris, at which point Chris is in the middle of a demonstration and I end up going with him and we never come back to what we knew as our home or reality,” Elizabeth Rodriguez told Entertainment Weekly.

While Fear The Walking Dead may fall within the zombie genre, Rodriguez is adamant zombies are not the central theme. Her family and how they all deal with the crisis at hand is more important to the story than what the crisis is actually. A sentiment that has been echoed consistently since the show’s inception.

“It isn’t about zombies. It could be anything. It could be any sort of seemingly apocalyptic event, whether it be war, terrorism, a tsunami, a coup. I think it’s about what happens immediately that causes people to come together, and human instinct to protect our closest, nearest, and dearest.”

Fear The Walking Dead will premiere on Sunday August 23, 2015 on AMC.

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[Image credit: AMC]