When he called out Gwyneth Horder-Payton in an email to AMC exec Denise Huth — in reference to either the director’s work on Episode 3, “Tell It To the Frogs” or the Season 2 premiere “What Lies Ahead” — Darabont called her footage “fundamentally fucked,” and compared her mind-state to that of The Majestic actor Allen Garfield, whose work was allegedly affected by a stroke that no one was aware he’d suffered.
Of course, we can’t easily tell just how strained things were on the set of The Walking Dead during its first season, although it’s hard to believe Frank Darabont would have been so hardcore in his emails without having that angst bleed into his day-to-day behavior.