By Mikey Taylor

Kevin Galbraith is a zombie fan first and foremost. He recalls his first experience watching a zombie film at age 11, Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, and being somewhat traumatized by a scene where the zombies tore open a characters stomach, which resulted in him arming himself with a pipe and running home.

He has transitioned from fan to actor portraying several walkers on the series The Walking Dead, most

notably the Swamp Walker that kills Dale.

Gailbreath admits that Dale was his personal favorite character and finds it ironic that he was involved in a scene that has visual connections to the scene that got him hooked on the undead in the first place.

He spoke to me about his experiences as a featured zombie.

ZAM: So was it hard to kill your favorite character?

Kevin: So, it came around to killing Dale, we did the scene at night when Dale was in the field. It took two nights to film that. It was all the death scenes, it was all the devastating parts, it was all the main characters coming in and out from every direction saying “Oh my God, Dale you’re dying” “ Oh why, oh why” and all that.

Doing it in that order was very strange but also very fortunate, because it motivated me to hate the shit out of Carl. We filmed the scene of him throwing locks at me after we filmed me killing Dale.

So we did two days of the Dale in the field scene, and my emotions and personality were in pieces on the ground all over the place, and then we did the Carl scene, so it was all reversed from the finished product.

From a psychological point of view, it made me hate Carl that much more. It made me want to drown him that much more.

(The article appears in its entirety in Zombie Apocalypse Monthly Issue 5 and can be downloaded for free at http://www.magcloud.com/browse/issue/456057)