THR: Darabont's run was nuanced, while Mazzara's was fast-paced. How do you envision your run being described?
Gimple: I'm trying to take a greatest-hits approach and take the best of both those runs and run with it. As far as my own personal stamp, it's more of what we do here already with character-driven stories and really delving into these characters while having some amazing, horrible scares and exciting sequences but all in service to a greater story that builds. A phrase that I've been caught using a bunch is "cumulative storytelling." It's about having everything stack up so it means something. When The Walking Dead has been its best, all that stuff is happening at once: the emotion, action, horror, scares. I'm very proud that I was able to write an episode where a little zombie girl could walk out of a barn after a horrific zombie execution and have people cry. That's one of the proudest things I've ever done.
THR: As a big fan of the comics, what kind of relationship do you have with Robert Kirkman when it comes to adapting his source material?
Gimple: Kirkman is more about departures from the comics than I have been in the past. His approach is more like, "Oh it's all good, we've seen that in the comic. We can mix it up." I've been more hardcore about keeping true to the exact story of the comic. Kirkman wound up loosening me up a little more about it, as far playing with different things going in different directions. To tell you the truth, at this point with where the story is, anybody who's a big fan of the comic would see that we have to. It's funny, in some ways the things that divert from the comic this year have actually served being closer to the comic in some way. There's going to be some looping around to the comic and remixing. That's how I essentially look at it: It's a remix of the comic.
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