Cliff Curtis faces 'Fear the Walking Dead'

Cliff Curtis' character Travis Manawa, a cheerful high school English teacher, also seems distinctly unprepared for what is about to take place.

"My character is an idealist, an optimist. His default is to want to fix things," said Curtis, a New Zealand native and character actor with an extensive resume including "Training Day," "Collateral Damage" and "Whale Rider." "

Those are not terribly useful traits in the immediate aftermath of a zombie apocalypse where Travis' abilities to "fix" the situation will be mighty limited.

Curtis said his back story with Madison is not deeply explored in the first six episodes so he has to fill in the blanks. Travis, he said, has known Madison for a couple of years and has been dating her long enough to have just moved into her home. His relationship with his ex wife is still a bit awkward and tenuous. And his 16-year-old son blames him for the divorce, whether that's fair or not.

Credit: Rodney Ho

Credit: Rodney Ho

He said as crisis gets deeper, he and Madison will clash. She is more of a pragmatist. "It's going to be rough," he said. "Very rough."

While action heroes and anti-heroes (think Walter White of "Breaking Bad" fame) are the focal points of many dramas, "Fear the Walking Dead" characters are far more ordinary. And Curtis is fine he is not Daryl Dixon - yet.

"I think ordinary people can be fascinating," Curtis said. "Teaching is basically talking to people, to connect them, to think about things more. Talking and thinking in this environment, I don't know. How is this guy going to survive? That's fun to me. It's putting an ordinary character into extraordinary circumstances. There's no chance of this being boring."

Curtis was not a "Walking Dead" viewer before he was cast. In fact, he said he is not a fan of watching horror films and just had a zombie-related nightmare.

"Those monsters are terrifying!" he said. "Some of the things we've done, I've had to take a long hot shower to wash it off, to shake it out of my bones. Sometimes, it affects me. But by and large, I'm a tradesman. I get on with my work. I don't get too lost in it and let it overtake my life."

He did watch a couple of episodes of the original on a plane but decided the less he knew the better. And the producers were fine with that since his character's knowledge base about zombies is nil.

In fact, nobody on the show even references the word "zombie" on the show, which might be odd given the number of zombie-related films that had aired even by 2010. (In fact, "Zombieland" had just come out in 2009.).

"Zombies are an entertainment genre," he said. "When I hear that word, I think of Michael Jackson's 'Thriller.' There's no psychological weight to it."

Credit: Rodney Ho

Credit: Rodney Ho

Curtis said they haven't even come up with a name for zombies yet because most folks still see them as people who might still be able to be cured. "They are just infected with some strange Ebola disease we don't understand that's much scarier," he said.

There is one character on the show, a student, who in the second episode tells Madison that he believes society will collapse quickly and plans to stockpile supplies. But he splits off from Madison, preparing for the apocalypse separately from the main characters.

"I love that character," Curtis said. "I hope he comes back. He's like a young prophet!"

He said he knows zip about how season two (already guaranteed 15 episodes) will go after these first six are done.

"It's high quality," he said. "I hope enough of the core audience of the other show comes along. And I hope we find a new audience that might not want to watch the other one. We are not a copycat of that other show."

TV PREVIEW

"Fear the Walking Dead," 9 p.m. Sundays, starting August 23, AMC