iZombie News from SDCC- Cast & Crew Interviews

I was grateful to be able to sit down with the cast and crew of iZombie at San Diego Comic-Con and pick their (delicious) brains about the characters and plot of this fantastic show.  I talked with show runner Rob Thomas at length, but the cast and writter Dianne Ruggiero were able to provide great insight about characters and drop hints about what’s to come in season two.  It sounds like the entire structure and focus of the show is shifting in a pretty interesting way.

I was dying to know what Malcolm Goodwin, who plays Clive, thought about all the weirdness happening around him.

“Q: Clive’s a detective. I’m wondering: does he suspect something more is going on, or is he completely sold on the psychic thing?
Malcom Goodwin: I think he is completely sold on the psychic thing. He bought it. I mean, that’s all he knows. It works. And there was a monologue where he did say, his great aunt, he does believe in psychics, his great aunt Debbie. Maybe Aunt Debbie may show up for season 2, I don’t know. But he did say that his great aunt Debbie was a psychic. So I think, he’s sold on it. And that’s his first time meeting Liv, he met her as a psychic, and these things actually came to fruition, they happened. That’s how he got his first collar, his second collar, his third collar. That’s his rabbit’s foot, that’s his good luck charm and he buys into it. I think he is completely, absolutely 100% sold.”

On the one hand this makes sense.  Being psychic is more believable than Liv being a zombie, but there’s been so much strange stuff happening all around him I figured he’d suspect something else is up.  Malcolm knows best, though, and I appreciate his insight.

And then we have David Anders, the man of a million incredible facial expressions (to the point it was hard to get a good picture of him). I thought Blaine was an interesting villain, but when I met David Anders I was blown away by his charisma. He’s an extremely charming person, despite the fact he keeps getting put in the role of the bad guy. Throughout the course of our roundtable he dropped tidbits about what we can expect from Blaine is season 2.

David Anders: The second season is going to be so much fun because we’re humanizing [Blaine], quite literally.
[…]
I think he’s dealing with [turning human] quite well. [Also we] don’t know if that cure is a perfect cure, a cure all. So we’re going to play with the side effects.
I feel like [in season 2] he’s going to slip further and futher down the villain rabbit hole. [He’ll be] more and more tightly wound.

Rahul Kohli was a bit more reserved about what he knew for season two.

Rahul Kohli: I’ll be real honest with you, we spent some time with the writers and had lunch and everyone was getting spoilers. I actually stayed away from the entire thing, because it’s an acting thing. I didn’t want to know anything until we were out there in character doing our stuff. So, I can’t actually tell you anything about my character or the story because I’ve been sitting there with my fingers in my ears. Sorry. It’s just a preference thing. I didn’t want to know anything, it’s too early.

But, things I do know. Obviously, we ended season 1 on a cliffhanger and I think people will be happy with where we pick up from. I think iZombie came into its own and became a stronger show. There’s a balance between the procedure element and the serialized part. We have momentum now and I think that’s where season 2 is going to pick up from.

Dianne Ruggiero was delightfully snarky.

Dianne Ruggiero: Here’s the deal: No one’s a zombie anymore, everyone is a vampire.

She then got down to business and dropped some revealing tidbits about Blaine.

Dianne Ruggiero: It picks up three months later, I can tell you that. Blaine is still mad. [We’ll see how he handles not being] a zombie.

She also talked about changes during the first season, which may come into play during the course of the second season.

Dianne Ruggiero: I think over the course of the first season we realized we wanted more mythology […] We started off some episodes […] with 40% mythology and now we’re doing 60% mythology. […] A Noir detective spends a lot of time cracking these mysteries and having the noir pattern with red herrings. If it’s only 40% of your hour, we can’t have 12 red herrings, we can have like half a red herring.

So it looks like season two will be more myth arc focused and Blaine will play a larger role.  Before meeting David Anders I probably would have been bummed about the latter bit, but he as a person won me over.  Now I want to keep Blaine around just to keep this delightful actor on the show, so I’m pretty thrilled.

I hope to bring you more from Rose McIver and her insights in the future.

Author: Angel Wilson

Angel is the admin of The Geekiary and a geek culture commentator. They earned a BA in Film & Digital Media from UC Santa Cruz. They have contributed to various podcasts and webcasts including An Englishman in San Diego, Free to Be Radio, and Genre TV for All. They identify as queer.

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