The Walking Dead is one of the biggest shows on television, and I’m sure there are many of you out there who would give your right eye to be in the middle of all the action as the show is filmed. But for the residents of Senoia, Georgia — the town that has played the part of Woodbury and Alexandria since season three — the novelty of filming a zombie apocalypse in the neighborhood is starting to wear thin.
Cracked has a great article that interviews a resident of Senoia simply referred to as Brittany, possibly because she wanted some anonymity before criticizing the way producers and fans treat the town. Apparently, Main Street is regularly shut down to traffic and residents have to walk through piles of trash and debris left by the props department to make the town look derelict and abandoned. The folks living in the much cleaner Alexandria area have less trash, but a rusty 20-foot fence to stare at.
And then there are all the rules put in place to keep the show’s filming schedule from getting messed up. Here’s what Brittany told Cracked:
“At one point during filming, I was actually told by a cop directing traffic that I wasn’t allowed to be out on my own lawn,” Brittany says. “When they were filming at the wall of Alexandria, we were really close to where they were shooting. Security had to make sure that nobody walked past the blocked portions of the road, so when we walked out into the yard to see what was up, a security officer told us we couldn’t be out there unless we were trying to leave.”
“There is pretty much 24/7 police presence here,” Brittany says. “They’re on the lookout for anyone trying to mess with the Alexandria wall / leftover props, or anyone who is going to disturb residents living in the homes that appear in the show, so they watch us closely when we’re walking our dogs down the street or pulling into our own driveways.”
Sounds like a fun place to live. But all that security helps too, because the fans sound like a menace of their own. They walk on lawns, look in windows, climb on things trying to see into filming locations, and run into traffic. Not quite as bad as a zombie herd, but definitely as brainless.
There are more details in the original article, but living in Senoia doesn’t sound all bad. Once the show is done with an area, they fix it up better than when they found it. They even contributed millions to build a new park. And many of the businesses in town are booming due to the number of tourists who pass through hoping for a glance at exciting Walking Dead sets like ‘that alley Glenn almost died in.’ Still, with all the restrictions and Eugene-types gawking at everything, I certainly wouldn’t want to live there.
