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We haven’t yet got over the jet lag and I am hoping the casting director of the Walking Dead will happen to bump into me this weekend as I would get a job straight away and not even require any make-up. We had spent most of the day at a writing seminar, but were too bamboozled and tired to stay to the end and so went home and watched more Walking Dead which is, I have to admit, dominating my thoughts. I worry there will be a real zombie apocalypse, because if there is, will anyone take it seriously? If you saw some haunted figures shuffling towards you with blood dripping from their mouths you’d probably assume it was some students up for a laugh or a PR stunt for a chocolate bar. You might even approach the zombies and try and do a selfie and when they lunged at you to bite you, you’d say, “Yeah, brilliant, on my mark 3-2-1…” The proliferation of zombies in entertainment means it’s going to be really difficult to accept the real zombies when they inevitably arrive, making their job much, much easier.
Just a basic desire not to look stupid and be taken in by an obvious hidden camera stunt would prevent me from running away or caving in the zombie’s skull. And if other people were being bitten and screaming I would assume that was part of the fun. And if someone’s head got cut off with a sword then I would assume it was all special effects. The human race does not stand a chance.
But I also wondered if anyone dressed up as a zombie has ever been attacked and killed by a concerned/paranoid/intoxicated citizen. Because everyone looks a bit like zombies to me now and because I’ve ODed on Zombie action, I fear that if a fake zombie appeared before me I might just smash them in the head with the nearest sharp object, just as a reflex. Someone somewhere must have fallen victim to this at some point. Last year after one of my Leicester Square Theatre shows a man dressed as a zombie was standing in the foyer. I didn’t know that a zombie based show was following mine and the make-up was really good. If this happened today I think I might have caved in his skull with my iPhone or fist. How would the courts have reacted to that? I mean from my perspective I was possibly saving the world, but they might argue that I should have asked him if he was a real zombie first. But what good would that do? If he was a zombie he would have used the opportunity to feed on my arm and if he wasn’t he wouldn’t have been any kind of pretend zombie if he broke character to reassure me that he was an actor. I still think it might have been a real zombie anyway and he just got a bit of stage fright what with all the people milling around, none of them taking him seriously.
I think all fake zombies should be made to wear signs saying “Fake Zombie” to avoid any problems like this in the future. Of course the danger is that one of the people pretending to be a zombie is bitten by a real zombie and then you have a real zombie with a sign saying “Fake Zombie” and there’s no way for anyone to know the truth. Until it’s too late.
