'Fear the Walking Dead' Cast: We Don't Use the Z-Word on Our Show

Or the W-word, either. The cast of The Walking Dead companion series Fear the Walking Dead told Yahoo TV at Comic-Con that zombies and walkers won’t be a part of their show, at least not in the early days.

Since the series is set in pre-apocalypse Los Angeles, and unfolds the story of how the world in which walkers will eventually exist comes to be, the, um, people-craving beings who’ll soon be lumbering their way through the streets will instead be referred to as…

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“Humans that have been infected by a very mysterious virus of which we do not have any understanding,” says FTWD star Cliff Curtis, who plays Travis, a school teacher whose family is at the center of the story in the new series. “We’re banned from saying it’s a zombie show.”

Adds Deadwood and Sons of Anarchy alum Kim Dickens, who plays Madison, the guidance counselor at the high school where Travis works (and also his fiancée), “The audience gets to know the show by this family… it’s like you’re immersed in this family, which is sort of a fractured family. We’ve been married before, kids from other marriages, and we’re coming together as sort of a second family… and then we meet the dawning of the apocalypse.”

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“It’s kind of a scary, very serious, dramatic version of The Brady Bunch,” Gang Related and Trauma alum Curtis jokes.

Dickens: “No …”

But that doesn’t prevent either of them from taking the chance to hum The Bunch theme song, because, who wouldn’t?

Fear the Walking Dead premieres Aug. 23 at 9 p.m. on AMC.