Fear the Walking Dead Rises at the Dawn of the Zombie Apocalypse

Welcome to the beginning of the end of the world.

Tucked away within eastern Los Angeles, where the 5 and the 10 freeways merge, is the community of El Sereno. Often overshadowed by the nearby downtown skyscrapers and the glittery star power of Hollywood, it’s the oldest neighborhood in the metropolitan area, full of middle-class families and diverse culture. It also happens to be ground zero for the beginning of the zombie apocalypse in Fear the Walking Dead, AMC’s highly anticipated new “companion series” (as the network calls it) to The Walking Dead.

But on this particular sunny July afternoon, the screams of terror that one might expect to hear coming from a show like this one are instead replaced by squeals of joy coming from inside a rainbow-colored bounce house inflated on the front lawn of an old single-family home. The streamers, balloons and table piled with presents signal the start of a young child’s birthday party, but attendance is alarmingly slim. “We’re getting a bunch of cancels because of that bug going around,” the hostess explains to neighbors Madison Clark (Kim Dickens) and Travis Manawa (Cliff Curtis), who notice another perspiring pale-faced neighbor struggling to pack up his car between coughing fits. “Slowly, civilization starts to fall apart before our very eyes in our very own neighborhood,” Dickens explains between takes. “And when bad things happen, they happen pretty quickly.”

Fear the Walking Dead goes back in time to explore the early days of the zombie outbreak through the lens of a new urban setting and a fresh cast of characters. “Since the beginning of The Walking Dead, the question that I’ve been asked the most is ‘What’s happening in the rest of the world?’” says AMC president and general manager Charlie Collier. “Now, we’re about to see a totally different story, and yet, at its core, this is a character drama just like the first one. These are real people who are going to be pressed in real ways, and then the world starts to turn.”

Robert Kirkman, cocreator of the Walking Dead comic book and TV series, teamed with executive producer Dave Erickson (Sons of Anarchy) for the six-episode first season, which will begin to fill in the blanks during the five-week period that original series protagonist Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) was in his coma. The duo set out to tell the story of a blended family led by Madison, a widowed high school guidance counselor struggling to raise her drug-addicted son, Nick (Frank Dillane), and ambitious teen daughter, Alicia (Alycia Debnam-Carey). Madison finds strength and companionship in fiancé Travis, an English teacher who has his own strained relationships with ex-wife Liza (Elizabeth Rodriguez) and son Chris (Lorenzo James Henrie). “We start off with a slow burn in our first few episodes because we had the opportunity to explore the dysfunction that comes with family,” Erickson says. “We also wanted to have characters who were completely ill-equipped for the apocalypse.”

Even as domestic drama heightens, the producers thought it paramount to ensure that the central bond between Madison and Travis was strong. “They are the love of each other’s life,” Curtis says. “Madison is in some ways more of a pragmatist, while Travis is more of an idealist, and who they become through the sequence of events throws up some very big challenges in their relationship.”

In addition to introducing new characters, the producers wanted to move the action away from the Georgia backwoods of the original series and explore the disintegration of a major American city. They settled on Los Angeles because it syncs up with the show’s theme of shifting identity and reinvention. “Los Angeles specifically is a place where you go to reinvent and cast aside your old self to become someone new,” Erickson says. Just don’t look for any shots of the Hollywood sign or Walk of Fame. “You won’t be seeing any L.A. landmarks during the course of the show,” he says. “But the ocean is important. There’s something interesting about having your back literally at the edge of the continent during the apocalypse.”

The diversity of the city also allows viewers to follow families with different perspectives, like the Salazars, whose barber patriarch, Daniel (Ruben Blades), immigrated to the United States from El Salvador to provide a fresh start for his family, including daughter Ofelia (Mercedes Mason), who has very much embraced American culture. “This young woman sees herself as her parents’ protector and guide through the world,” Erickson says of the clan, who will be introduced in the second episode, airing August 30. “The relationship between father and daughter is going to become quite important [in terms of] coming to understand the human side of your parents.”

While the writers of the show have plenty of human stories to mine, the undead will still take center stage. Producers tapped The Walking Dead special effects makeup supervisor Greg Nicotero once again to perfect the visual aesthetic of the freshly turned zombies, which the Fear characters refer to as the “infected” rather than “walkers,” as they are called on the original series. The cast also had to get used to acting opposite their bloodied and rotted costars. “It was really horrible,” says Dillane, who shot his first scene with a young woman (Lexi Johnson) made up as a flesh-eating zombie. “I remember her turning to me and being in horrible, horrible shock. It’s not like anything anyone’s ever seen before, so I found it really difficult to work alongside.”

Although Fear’s timeline sets it at the beginning of the apocalypse, Erickson says the exact cause of the outbreak or the pursuit of a cure will not be addressed. Also, the families will have to catch up to what the audience already knows, such as learning how to handle the infected, including avoiding bites and scratches and discovering whether or not the humanity of the zombies can be preserved even as their bodies deteriorate. “We have our characters confronting friends, colleagues, family members—people whom the day before they’d be getting coffee with and now, for whatever reason, this person is trying to tear their throats out,” Erickson says. “I think the first instinct for most people wouldn’t be to kill but either run or find some way to help these folks, assuming they’re sick. There is an emotional toll and psychological trauma that goes with that.”

Back on the show’s El Sereno set, the sun is setting as Debnam-Carey prepares to shoot her inaugural encounter with one of the “infected,” and her excitement is palpable. “This is a fun day for me because it’s my first zombie experience!” she says with a laugh. “A lot of scenes are so hard to navigate because you don’t know how your character is supposed to react. There are no rules.”

Well, maybe one: Don’t expect a crossover with Rick, Daryl, Michonne or other characters from The Walking Dead mothership any time soon. “You’d love to find a way to conflate those two narratives at some point, but obviously there will be issues of geography and timeline, so there are no plans to do so right now,” confirms Erickson, who points out that Fear’s first season will take place over the course of just three weeks. Still, the actors can’t help themselves from planning their own dream cameo situations. “I think Madison and Rick would get along, since he is my favorite,” Dickens says. Adds Debnam-Carey: “I’ve thought about how Alicia and Maggie [Lauren Cohan] would be a great team.”

The cast has also thought about the immense pressure and expectations to follow TV’s second most watched scripted drama (after NCIS.) “It’s pretty daunting because you really want to please this loyal and amazing fan base,” Dickens says.

This will be AMC’s second gamble at franchise expansion this year, after the successful launch of Breaking Bad prequel Better Call Saul. “It is a fool’s errand to predict numbers,” says Collier, who has already renewed Fear for a 15-episode second season. “I hope people come into Fear expecting it to be its own thing as opposed to comparing it to The Walking Dead.”

And new viewers won’t need prior knowledge of the original series. “If you’re one of the seven people in the world who have never seen The Walking Dead, you can come into this show fresh,” Erickson promises. “It’s just another badass story that lives in this larger world that Robert created.” Clearly, as all hell prepares to break loose in the City of Angels, the only thing left to fear is Fear itself.

Fear the Walking Dead premieres Sunday, Aug. 23, 9/8c, AMC

America’s Favorite Felt Heroes Return to TV in ABC’s The Muppets

It may not be easy being green, but it’s about to get a lot more fun for the world’s most famous amphibian when the Muppets make their overdue return to TV this fall.

“It’s wonderful, isn’t it?” marvels Kermit the Frog, ringleader of the beloved menagerie at the center of ABC’s The Muppets. Indeed it is. The latest entry in the crew’s anthropomorphic oeuvre—a gag-packed, behind-the-scenes look at a late-night talk show, hosted by Miss Piggy, natch—is a joyful mash-up of The Office and The Larry Sanders Show, as performed by felt animals. Including, literally, Animal.

“We are doing something that hasn’t been done before—two shows at the same time,” Kermit says. “One of them, the most important one, is a late-night show called Up Late With Miss Piggy.” The other is a backstage documentary being filmed about the making of Piggy’s chatfest, but if you ask the Up Late hostess, it’s really all about her. Like most things.

“You know, the fans always want more these days, and so we decided, actually I decided, to let a team of documentarians follow me wherever I went,” the ageless blonde diva says. “I’m completely comfortable with giving my fans an all-access pass.”

She’s in good hands (no pun intended). The Muppets comes after multiple attempts to reboot the franchise. “It happens every 20 years: 1976 was The Muppet Show, 1996 was Muppets Tonight, and now this one,” points out Debbie McClellan, vice president of The Muppets Studio. “We had a lot of people trying to bring the gang back in some form.” The popularity of the recent films The Muppets and Muppets Most Wanted certainly helped audiences get reacquainted with Kermit and Co. Among their biggest supporters was executive producer Bill Prady (The Big Bang Theory). “I started talking about this particular project 10 years ago, and eight years ago we even shot some test footage,” he says of his previous stalled pitches. “Back then, the feeling was that the timing just wasn’t right. Now, apparently, it is!” It’s also right that the obviously patient Prady be the one to bring the Muppets back to primetime: After all, he got his start writing for Muppet creator Jim Henson in 1982 after leaving his job (and eventual BBT inspiration) as a computer programmer.

“Jim was producing a show about technology at the time—though it wound up never getting made—and I was hired to be a production assistant and researcher because I had that computer background,” he says. “The Muppet offices in those days were in this amazing townhouse on a residential street on the Upper East Side of New York City. Imagine what the Muppet-iest old New York mansion would look like if you got it exactly right. It was like going to Kermit the Frog’s house every day!”

After working with writers like Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy) and several Sesame Street scribes on that project, Prady moved to the company’s licensing and merchandising department, cranking out copy for everything from Muppet-themed computer software to the packaging for Kermit the Frog plush toys. “I looked around and said, ‘I will take any job here. Any job.’”

That willingness earned Prady the attention of Henson, and he quickly moved on to penning Muppet comic books, jokes for the Dial-a-Muppet phone line (yep, that was a real thing) and episodes of 1987’s Fraggle Rock: The Animated Series before landing a full-time position on 1989’s The Jim Henson Hour. That anthology featuring the icon’s top-tier Muppets as well as newbies (who remembers the semirobotic Digit? Exactly) vanished after nine episodes, but it solidified Prady’s place in the puppet-verse. “My Muppet experience,” he recalls fondly, “was working with Jim Henson every day.” Fittingly, Prady earned an Emmy nod in 1991 for cowriting the tribute special The Muppets Celebrate Jim Henson following the legend’s passing the previous year.

Of course, a lot has changed since Henson unleashed his globally adored puppets. Originally introduced in 1955 on Washington, D.C.’s daily Sam and Friends sketch series, several of the characters soon found a home in 1969 on Sesame Street (a Children’s Television Workshop production, and separate from The Muppets Studio), while a new batch of Henson creations was featured in regular bits on the first season of Saturday Night Live in 1975 and 1976. Along the way, there have been eight feature films, countless guest appearances, TV movies and specials, the aforementioned Jim Henson Hour and 1996’s equally brief Muppets Tonight.

No matter the missteps, it has always been the group’s comedy-variety hit The Muppet Show, which ran from 1976 to 1981, that remains the gold standard. The show was filled with celebrity guests, goofy sketches and fresh furry faces like Gonzo and Fozzie, and the backstage mayhem at Muppet Theater was weekly, wickedly funny proof that these creatures could appeal to kids and their parents. In fact, one of the two pilot episodes for The Muppet Show parodied the growing amount of sex and violence on TV at the time. “The Muppets can go on Good Morning America and Saturday Night Live…on the same day,” McClellan says. “We don’t talk down to our audiences, and we’re never mean to each other. We speak to the fans with a smart, sophisticated humor. That, I think, has always been the key to the Muppets—that kind of comedy.”

For the new series to work, the producers looked to the past for an idea on how to drive that comedy. “When The Muppet Show came on in the 1970s, the dominant form of entertainment on TV was still the variety show,” Prady explains, citing everyone from Sonny and Cher to the Smothers Brothers. “The Muppet Show was mocking [that format]. If Jim Henson were alive today, he wouldn’t make a variety show, because that’s not what’s big on TV. He’d look at the mock-documentary style that came to the U.S. from England—The Office and Parks and Recreation and Modern Family—and say, ‘Let’s try to make fun of that.’”

And we bet he’d be proud. The 10-minute trailer Prady and company pitched to ABC, with its legalized marijuana joke and edgy innuendo-laden gags, is both nostalgia heaven and as sharp and relevant as ever. That’s thanks in large part to the decision to give the Muppets actual backstories—Fozzie is dating a human! Rowlf runs a tavern!—and set them in the real world, while also honoring their Muppet Show roots as the most diverse cast working in showbiz. That’s right: The entire puppet posse is on staff at Up Late. “Kermit is the executive producer of the show and he deals with the very difficult host in Miss Piggy,” laughs cocreator Bob Kushell. “Fozzie is the sidekick and warm-up act, Gonzo is the head writer with Rizzo the Rat and Pepe the King Prawn working for him, and Scooter is the talent coordinator/scout.”

In addition, a parade of celebrity guests will be visiting Piggy’s show. (The original series featured Julie Andrews, Johnny Cash and Elton John, to name just a few.) Up Late’s “live” studio audience will include those beloved balcony curmudgeons Statler and Waldorf, the house band will be Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem, the Swedish Chef is handling catering, and Sam the Eagle is sure to be hawking around the wings now that he’s landed the perfect gig in Standards and Practices.

It’s a roster that should entice the most jaded star (and animal control officer), yet at least one key player involved seems to be looking down her snout at the assembled employees. “You know, if I had been hiring, it would’ve been a completely different staff,” confesses the notoriously picky Piggy. “The one thing I like is that Fozzie does my preshow warm-up, and he’s absolutely horrible at it. That’s a good thing for me, because he sets the bar low and then people can enjoy moi even more.”

Miss Piggy’s disdain may be related to issues more personal than personnel, and it is so far the only sign of backstage drama as Up Late—and The Muppets—heads into production. “Coming together to develop and create this world has been such an amazing process,” says Kushell, speaking for, we assume, the show’s human contingent. As for the rest of the Muppets, it sounds like they too are all about making sure their new show reestablishes the rainbow connection with fans. And Kermit, for one, is thrilled to have at least some of that pressure off what he calls his “nonexistent shoulders.”

“You can do anything with them,” he raves, always so supportive of his zoological crew. “And many of them just work for food. That’s always nice.”

Better get busy, Chef!

The Muppets premieres Tuesday, Sept. 22, 8/7c, ABC.

Goodbye, and Goodnight: Jon Stewart Signs Off From The Daily Show

After 16 years, 19 Emmys and more zingers than we can count, The Daily Show host Jon Stewart steps away from his desk on August 6. We asked friends and former colleagues to pay tribute to the man of the hour.

John Oliver
Senior British Correspondent
2006–2013
In terms of political comedy on television, Jon Stewart is not just the best there’s ever been; he’s the best there ever will be. To say I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing now without him is a huge understatement. I wouldn’t even know how. He taught me everything. If he ever needs me to hide a body for him, I’ll do it. Hopefully, he never needs that, but he is from New Jersey, so you never know.
It’s hard to pick a favorite segment [from my time on the show], because they were all fun. I must have dressed up like a Victorian street urchin at least 10 times. I had electoral results projected onto me while wearing a green, skintight bodysuit. I broke my nose fighting the Confederate army in a field piece. I had beans and toast rain down on me in the studio. And I shaved a heart into my chest. I honestly can’t even remember the context of that last one, but I did it. Trying to make Jon laugh every day was the best—and probably most important—part of the job.
Then there was the matter of filling in for him in the summer of 2013. He just called me one weekend and asked me to do it. I instinctively said yes, and it wasn’t until I got off the phone that the gravity of what I’d just agreed to sank in. He believed in me far more than I believed in myself. I think that might actually still be true. —As told to Oriana Schwindt

***

Kristen Schaal
Senior Women’s Issues Correspondent
2008–present
I always felt like Jon Stewart was my boss—a very good boss. Especially with the topics I tackle as the senior women’s issues correspondent, there’s room for so much discussion. He gives notes, and he’s in it from the pitch to the very last rewrite. But he’s doing it in such a way that you feel like it’s a collaboration. If he has a note on something, he guides you to it in a way that you don’t feel like you’re being given a note, but rather that you’re discovering it from his point of view.
Still, I have always been shy around him. He would crack jokes and I would try to crack some back, but there’s such a reverence. I am on the show only a handful of times a year, so I didn’t have an everyday way of getting used to him. But in the last couple of years, I’ve stopped being shy around him, which is a good lesson for me: Get over it…because [eventually] they’ll leave.
I’ve also learned to look at things much deeper because of Jon. It’s so easy to get a topic and just have a knee-jerk reaction to it. But he’ll take it and really inspect it. He makes sure that he is careful with things, and that’s something that has gotten lost in journalism and in the way things are reported today. I think that’s why people want to tune in to The Daily Show—that, and he knows what’s funny. He knows how to take a bill about getting rid of funding for rape victims and make people laugh while they’re taking it in. Comedy is a powerful tool for putting everybody on the same page, and he’s a master at doing that with topics that are important to our whole country.
One piece we were both on board for was a segment about abortion funding. There was this bill that was getting passed that said federal funding wouldn’t pay for abortions, even if the woman was a victim of incest or rape. So I was discussing how much money the Republicans were saving by not protecting these victims and how it came down to two-tenths of a penny per taxpayer. That was the one where I thought, “Oh, this is what I’ve been working so hard for.” I think they even took the language out of the bill the next day, and I was like, “Whoa, this feels really powerful!”
But then they put it back in a couple of weeks later. —As told to Gregory E. Miller

***

Samantha Bee
Most Senior Correspondent
2003–May 2015
Since Jon first announced he was leaving The Daily Show, I have lived in a near-permanent state of misty. So when approached to write a tribute to him, I wasn’t sure my tear ducts could take another hit. Jon, if you’re reading this, go no further, because it’s about to get weepy, and I know you don’t really seek this kind of unabashed praise.
When Jon gave me my shot on the show, it was transformative. He took me from the brink of giving up show business entirely to a place from which a solid career could be built. Working for him was like working in the best comedy training ground a person could ask for. And though I mostly remember those first months as a general feeling of “Oh my God, don’t f— this up” and “Seriously, don’t f— this up,” Jon always had my back. I don’t mind saying that working my ass off with the single goal of making Jon laugh forged my comedy spine out of molten steel.
Oh yes, and then he hired my husband, Jason Jones, as a contributor, too.
As a boss, Jon explicitly urged—no, required—me to explore my passions as a performer, and when I fell apart from it or just needed to sit in his office and cry about it, he was patient and caring without fail. And did I mention how unbelievably supportive he was when I started having kids? I know—working for Jon was quite literally an embarrassment of riches.
So hearing the news that he was leaving The Daily Show was a bit of a gut punch, for sure. And while, yes, I had a job there and all that, my actual first instinct was to react as a fan, because I am a Jon Stewart superfan. It just feels so weird. I completely get [why he’s leaving], but it still feels weird.
And now here I sit dehydrating from all the tears, gently wizening like a raisin, happy for Jon, missing him already and forever grateful.

***

Rob Corddry
Correspondent
2002–2006
Jon Stewart taught me how to write a joke. On my first day I was paired with a writer to work on a bit for that night’s show. I wrote what I thought was a pretty funny script—I don’t remember what it was about, only that I was particularly proud of a line that included something about Rico Petrocelli baseball cards.
Jon read it and, though he gave only a few notes, the resulting script was completely different—and very, very funny. In less than five minutes, he had squeezed a lump of newbie crap into a diamond of perfect clarity. I remember Jon saying, “Cut this Rico Petrocelli stuff.” I realize now that I hadn’t actually written any jokes, only overly specific details and vaguely funny references. I had been writing sketch comedy for years, but it was during that note session that I learned what a joke actually was.
Jon never sat us down and said, “This is how you write a joke.” But the five years I spent watching him take a general idea, zero in on what makes it funny and then plot a course to the biggest possible laugh changed my life in a profound way. I’ve worked with a lot of funny people since, but no one has approached the same process as effortlessly or with such uncommon instinct.
Obviously, I would be nowhere near where I am now if it weren’t for Jon. To say that my Daily Show pedigree earned me the capital to make Childrens Hospital is an understatement. Jon taught me how to make Childrens Hospital. And I still try to channel him when I sit down to write. But I no longer try to figure out what Jon would say about a joke; instead, I try to imagine how he would go about writing it in the first place. I’m honored to have worked with Jon, and I’m forever grateful to him for allowing me in the club at all. But it’s bittersweet, because I know I’ll never work with anyone as smart or as goddamn cool ever again. Thanks, Jon.

***

Rachael Harris
Correspondent
2002–2003
My time on The Daily Show was shorter than most other correspondents because I went and got married. I, not being as strong and as smart as I am now, left the show prematurely in 2003. If I have one showbiz regret, it’s leaving that show early.
While I was on the show, Jon was recently married himself. He’s super loyal, and what I liked the most about him was that he was very aware that people had families and lives. So he was really supportive of my decision to leave. He brought me into his office and said, “Look, we would love for you to stay, but I can’t tell you not to go get married.… Just think about it.” That was awful because he was speaking the truth, and I knew he was right. But I had to go.
In my career, being on The Daily Show has given me credibility. Just knowing that Jon Stewart hired you sets the tone of “Oh, OK, she gets it.” Everyone who works on the show has a point of view about comedy, has a very similar sense of humor and is interested in current events and what’s happening in our world. From the top down at The Daily Show, there’s an attitude of “This is fun and exciting, and aren’t we really lucky that we get to joke around about this stuff for a living?” We got to have an impact and help people learn a new perspective, and we got to bring it to them in a very funny way.
It’s different when you see Lester Holt bringing you the news and Jon bringing you the news. He’s not some broadcast news anchor—it’s Jon just being himself, and I think that’s why I like to watch and why we all like to watch. You trust him. When he said “Jump!” or “I want you to do it this way,” you never questioned it. And that’s not at all out of fear. It’s out of complete and utter respect. —As told to Gregory E. Miller

***

Larry Wilmore
Senior Black Correspondent
2006–2014
I’ve been lucky in my career. I’ve worked with a lot of funny people—the funniest person I know is Eddie Murphy—but by far, the smartest, most insightful mensch of a guy is Jon. He’s like a combination of Walter Cronkite, Jesus and Johnny Carson. I say Johnny Carson because he has that same generosity for other performers, and that’s part of his legacy. He doesn’t have an ego when it comes to letting other people shine, whether it’s Steve Carell or John Oliver or Stephen Colbert or any of the others who have come up through the show over the years.
I came in during a transitional period. Colbert had left the year before; Rob Corddry left the day I got there. John Oliver and Aasif Mandvi and Rob Riggle had just started.
Me, I pretty much auditioned to be a correspondent on the air. The rehearsal went horribly. It’s just the crew there, and you have those great people like Colbert and Ed Helms in your head, so your first try is kind of stiff. I felt like the crew didn’t even want to look at me. You know how you don’t want to name farm animals because you might have to eat them later? That’s what it felt like.
Right before the taping, Jon brought me in and we went through the segment line by line, and we got it sounding a little more natural. But I was still nervous—you don’t want to let Jon Stewart down, for Christ’s sake! And just before we performed the segment for the audience, he put his hand on my arm and said, “Larry, just look in the camera and f—ing give it to America.”
It was one of the nicest things anyone could have done right before you’re about to get one of your biggest shots: to put a hand on your arm and say, “Just do it.” I’ll never forget that. —As told to Oriana Schwindt

***

Lewis Black
Contributor
1996–present
Jon Stewart and I were both working in the comedy clubs in New York City when we met. He was funny, and my first thought was, “Why does a good-looking guy need to do comedy?”
I have always found the business part of this business to be a complete f—ing mystery, but Jon has a real sense of it. A lot of The Daily Show’s success had to do with being in the right place at the right time and Jon being the right person. He turned the news world on its head.
He’s the one a lot of people turned to and trusted to help them focus on what was important in the news. And he did it at a time in which the flow of information was drowning what the facts were. Somehow his humor and satire became a way to look at what those facts might be. There was so much news programming, and there was more and more and more while he was on the air. There’s 24 hours of CNN, 24 hours of BBC, 24 hours of MSNBC, 24 hours of Fox News. Plus the nightly news and all the morning news stuff. It’s, like, 150 hours of news in a 24-hour day, and he created a filter and a form of insulation from it.
And he didn’t let this s–t go to his head. He’s a great lesson, I think, in terms of when you do walk away. You see it in athletes, when they go out on top. He learned as much as he could; he went as far as he could with this. He has other things to do. When you’re that funny and smart, there are other roads. He had the intelligence to go and seek them and realize he couldn’t follow them while he was doing what he was doing on The Daily Show. And so, like I’ve said about Stephen Colbert: You ain’t seen nothing yet. —As told to Oriana Schwindt

The Daily Show airs weeknights, 11/10c, Comedy Central.

Shark and Awe: Summer’s Guiltiest Pleasure Returns With Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No!

Stomp aside, Indominus Rex. Jurassic World’s designer dino has nothing on the true king of hybrid menaces: the improbable and seemingly unstoppable mash-up of disaster movies and apex predators known as Sharknado. And with Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No!, the third blast of shark-infested high winds and higher camp, they’ve gone and gotten a much bigger boat.

“It’s so strange: We’re a little TV movie, and everyone is treating it like a huge summer blockbuster,” marvels Anthony C. Ferrante, the trilogy’s director, still stunned at the franchise’s ferocious success. He’s not alone. Almost everyone involved in 2013’s original Sharknado was awash in disbelief when the masses devoured the cheapo flick, which saw Los Angeles being assaulted by a cheesy, shark-tossing tornado. “I never thought the movie would even see the light of day,” confesses Ian Ziering, whose heroic ex-surfer and pun-fully named Fin Shepard has since become the series’ Bruce Willis of murderous makos. “I assumed it would come and go.”

“When I read the script, I was laughing so hard,” echoes Tara Reid, who stars as Fin’s wife, April Wexler. “It was like, ‘You gotta be kidding me.’ It was the silliest movie I have ever read.” And that was before the LOL-worthy title even happened. “Originally, Ian and I signed on when it was called Dark Skies,” Reid reveals. “Then in the first week of filming they changed the name to Sharknado, and we were both like, ‘Nooo! You can’t call it that!’ But they said to trust them, and it turns out Syfy, Anthony and the producers knew what they were doing.”

Initially, the ratings for the first airing of Sharknado “were good but not great,” recalls Syfy’s Chris Regina, the senior vice president of program strategy who oversees the network’s original movies. But a groundswell of online attention proved there was definitely blood in the water. The key was simply baiting more viewers. “So we added additional airings because of the buzz we were getting, and it exploded.”

Riding the tide of those encore presentations and the WTF fascination of social media (even Mia Farrow live-tweeted), Ferrante’s “little TV movie” suddenly became the biggest splash of that summer, leading to theatrical showings, late-night talk-show jokes, and the kind of media hype usually reserved for feature-film epics. “The first movie had very little marketing. They treated it like the regular Syfy TV movie, and there is nothing wrong with that,” Ferrante says. “Then it began gaining traction, and it blew up on the re-airings, it blew up Twitter. The thing that’s wonderful about the first Sharknado is that people found us; we didn’t force people to watch it. That is what makes it special.”

It’s also what made 2014’s sequel a no-brainer. “We had all the ingredients that we knew had made the movie a success,” offers Regina, adding that recapturing TV’s weirdest lightning in a bottle meant mixing more juice into the recipe. Sharknado 2: The Second One boasted a bigger budget, better effects and a move to the Big Apple, where the newly reunited Fin and April battled both another storm and monster expectations. Wisely, Syfy went hard with the marketing, complete with a branded presence at Comic-Con in San Diego, which helped turn last summer’s brilliantly absurd follow-up into the network’s most-watched original movie ever, with 3.9 million viewers. And again, jaws hit the ground as fast as the film’s exploding shark parts. “I thought we’d maybe get close to the numbers we did on the first one,” admits Ferrante. “I didn’t expect this to blow up a second time. Now, to be sitting here two and a half years after we shot the first movie with a TV Guide Magazine cover and a third movie where we have spanned multiple states? It’s pretty incredible.”

For Oh Hell No!, the whole gang—Ferrante, Ziering, Reid and the trilogy’s screenwriter, Thunder Levin—reconvened on the East Coast for a shoot that lasted less than three weeks, and this time, the forecast called for more madness than ever. “When we were developing this one, people were saying that they weren’t sure how we could top the second one. It was so jam-packed with stuff,” Ferrante says. “And I would say I don’t know how we can top this one. There are literally ideas for four Sharknado movies crammed into one film…and it works!”

Opening in Washington, D.C., with Fin preparing to receive the Medal of Freedom from the president (played by Mark Cuban, of Shark Tank, natch) for saving L.A. and New York, No. 3 benefited from being part of a national treasure in its own right. With the Sharknado brand so amusingly beloved, production was able to secure clearance to shoot all around the capital, lending a level of authenticity to the most unrealistic film since, well, No. 2. “We had access to some incredible places,” raves Ziering of filming at the Washington Monument and outside 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. “When you’re part of a megahit, apparently people are happy to open their doors and work with you.”

Before you can say “Beltway,” however, Fin’s celebration with the commander in chief turns cataclysmic after a massive new sharknado develops over the city, triggering a sequence Ferrante calls “White House Down with sharks—the metaphor there is that they’re terrorists,” he explains, giddily recounting how this bit allowed for a dose of amped-up, military-style action. “This story gave us a chance to have a gun-toting president, and Ian has a machine gun. It gave us the opportunity to do something we haven’t done before in these movies.”

Another first for the franchise is filming in multiple locales. With the entire Eastern seaboard under attack by sharknado cells (damn you, global warming!), Oh Hell No! goes on a road trip as Fin races to Florida, where the now-pregnant April; their daughter, Claudia (Ryan Newman); and April’s mom, May (Bo Derek), are celebrating Claudia’s 18th birthday. As with Washington, Ferrante and company were granted carte blanche to shoot extensively at Universal Studios, Orlando. Yes, there are sharks in the park.

“Sharknadoes tend to follow us everywhere, if you haven’t noticed,” laughs Reid, whose character now sports what Ziering jokingly calls a “go-go gadget” prosthetic, having lost her hand to a midair shark attack in The Second One. “So it makes perfect sense that another one would start where my husband is, then come to me!”

Just as in the previous outings, this wild ride is filled with blood and guts and goofy deaths. “We do a little more evisceration in this one,” previews Ferrante. “There is a great, amazing kill that is prolonged and agonizing for the character. But it’s really cool. We do some horrible things to the victims.”

There’s also a flood of celebrity cameos, including retired L.A. Laker Rick Fox, Playboy models Holly Madison and Kendra Wilkinson, magicians Penn and Teller, NYSNC-er Chris Kirkpatrick, WWE star Chris Jericho and talk-show host Jerry Springer. Along the way, Malcolm in the Middle’s Frankie Muniz turns up as a storm chaser working with the original film’s Nova Clarke (Cassie Scerbo, reprising her role), and, in keeping with the franchise’s family-first theme, slow-motion beach icon David Hasselhoff surfaces as Fin’s father, Gil, a former astronaut whose NASA connections could help save the world. How, exactly, we can’t even begin to explain.

“[The whole thing] is tongue-in-cheek!” Ziering says, as if anyone needs reminding that the fate of mankind is in the hands of a Baywatcher and a teen idol turned Chippendale. “It is preposterous. There are sharks in tornadoes! It’s so far-fetched, you can only suspend disbelief to enjoy it.”

And that is exactly why we love this series so much and why everyone from Syfy to Ferrante to the stars are banking on endless summers of sharknadoes. “So much of the film is a social experience with the fans, and that really helps educate us,” Regina says of gauging the potential for a fourth movie. “I have an idea of where we can go in the next movie, but they could be demanding something else after this that could change my mind.”

One mind that won’t be swayed is Ziering’s. He’s hooked, wherever the next one may be headed. “I would love to be a part of this project for many years to come,” the actor says. “It’s entertainment, and I’m having fun at the same time. So why get off a boat that isn’t sinking?”

Hmmm…Sharknado at sea? Oh, hell yes!

Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No! airs Wednesday, July 22, 9/8c, Syfy