The Walking Dead - Interview with Showrunner Glen Mazzara

After Frank Darabont left The Walking Dead, you seemed to come out of nowhere. But you did come from somewhere, right?
I’m from New York. I grew up in Queens and my father was a physician at St. Vincent’s Hospital — which you know just closed — for 46 years. So I went to NYU undergraduate then for a Master’s in English, and got a summer job at St. Vincent’s. I was a ward clerk handling everything in an intensive care unit. I like to describe it as being Radar O’Reilly [from M*A*S*H*] on speed. Then I switched over to NYU Medical Center. We renovated their emergency room and then I coordinated construction projects. We built their ten-day surgery ORs. It was a very complicated job.

But not exactly where most English grads end up.
Well, I wanted to write, obviously, so I was trying to figure out what kind of writer I wanted to be. I wrote a play that was workshopped at Brown, and someone explained to me that hospital administration was a lot like television production. Tight schedules, people with different agendas, and of course there was no money, so you’re working with tight budgets, and you are always waiting for a cardiac arrest. You are on pins and needles. So I started writing TV scripts and harassing people in Hollywood. First I was calling people in New York: “Do you have a cousin in Los Angeles?” And then I’d call the cousin. And he’d say, “There’s this guy.” I did that for four years. And finally, in 1998, my first pitch meeting was at a show called Nash Bridges with Don Johnson. I walked into the room wearing a black suit and tie because that’s what you wear to a job interview in New York. I didn’t know you don’t wear that in Los Angeles. So I walked in and met Carlton Cuse, who went on and became one of the showrunners for Lost; John Worth, who just did The Sarah Connor Chronicles; and Shawn Ryan, who created The Shield. Shawn was actually wearing a hockey jersey. And I started pitching a very gritty, Sidney Lumet–style Nash Bridges. I [pitched that Nash had an old case that he fucked up on] and Carlton said, “Hold on a second, it’s Don Johnson, he doesn’t make any mistakes. What else do you have?” I started panicking. I literally had a panic attack. They took me to another office and put my feet up and they gave me an ice pack.

Source: Full interview @ Vulture

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