The Walking Dead writer and consulting producer LaToya Morgan opened up about her experience working on the show’s eleventh season from home in a BuzzFeed interview earlier this week. Her writers’ room, headed by executive producer Angela Kang, was directed to start working remotely on March 13th as AMC delayed or paused their productions in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
Precautionary measures have dealt a heavy blow to fans, who hold their breath as they await the show’s season 10 finale, which currently hangs in limbo because VFX-related post-production issues cannot be resolved from home. As the current season is struggling to wrap up, Morgan and her colleagues have now set their eyes on the next chapter, which they’re writing over Zoom.
“I think Zoom offers a great opportunity to check in with people visually. Seeing everyone’s faces, even if it is in those Brady Bunch boxes, you’re like, ‘Okay, you’re safe. We’re all going to get through this together,'” Morgan told BuzzFeed News. “So it’s reassuring in a sense.”
According to Morgan, these online sessions typically last about four or five hours and involve six to nine writers.
“Of course this is all disruptive in certain ways, but at the end of the day we’re still able to do our jobs,” Morgan continued. “We are tremendously fortunate and lucky that we’re able to do that, and any burden or small technological glitches that we have really pale in comparison to the work that’s being done by all our essential workers, our doctors, our nurses, our mail carriers. So we’re able to endure.”
Like many other television networks, AMC had been preparing to send their workers home for quite some time; Kang had informed The Hollywood Reporter that they were “very well set up to work remotely” as early as March, when the first social distancing guidelines were being announced.
When exactly principal photography on The Walking Dead‘s eleventh season will commence remains up in the air. While the episodes had once been scheduled to be shot in May, actor Jeffrey Dean Morgan, who plays Negan, mentioned production on the show has essentially become “a big waiting game” at this point.
