When iZombie returns for Season 4 next week, the show will look very different. After all, Discovery Day -- the moment where humans found out about zombies -- has come and gone and now Liv Moore is just another zombie in a zombie world. During a set visit, iZombie star Rose McIver weighed in on how Seattle has changed now that the truth is out. She also teased Ravi's fate, the search for the zombie cure, the threat of the Prophet Angus McDonough, a sampling of this year's brains and more.

When the show returns, Liv won't be the only zombie on the Seattle Police Department's payroll. Asked if that makes Liv feel a little less special, McIver said, "Yeah, I’ve had a little bit of a funny jealous moment about that. You know, it’s great. There’s part of her that believes because of her, she’s paved the way for people to do this and to solve crimes. But, yeah, you are being held in comparison now. People know your tricks and know how it works. It’s a funny one. I would like to think, ultimately, she has a big enough heart and is happy that people are able to do this and help solve crime. But, I’m sure it presses her buttons a little bit that she’s not the only one and it’s not only her purpose anymore."

Even as Liv struggles to adjust to this new way of life, she'll have other troubles on her mind, like the search for the missing zombie cure. "Well, it’s very important in the bigger picture of the show. I feel like ultimately Liv wants to be cured," McIver shared. "It’s hard because I think she found her purpose through being a zombie, but, the inability to have children, or to have to eat brains of people who have died, for a living for her, is clearly not the long game. They are very game to find out who stole the cure. Now, that obviously there’s a wall around Seattle, risks of cures and zombies getting in and out are really threatening. It’s very much a focus of this season. It becomes more so later, throughout the arc this year."

Like McIver mentioned, Seattle has become a walled city in Season 4. As to whether or not this will contribute to the real world discussion about politics and immigration, she said, "Absolutely. I think we’ve always contributed to a dialogue in pop culture about some of the things that are going on, the issues. I think we’ve continued to do that, but, because it’s in a wider context, we’re able to look at it more socially and more community-driven. Yeah, seeing the way Other is treated, or, when you are scared, it’s all well and good to have opinions that, 'Everybody should be allowed to do everything.' Then, when you are personally affected, how much that changed. There are many shades of grey and it asks a lot of questions rather than giving any definitive answers, which I think is pretty important right now. It helps people, hopefully, to reflect a little bit on why they feel the way they do about what’s going on in the world right now."

Liv hangs with Clive Babineaux at Blaine's zombie bar in iZombie.

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Inside New Seattle's walls, Liv will be forced to juggle multiple big bads this year. "They are sort of nuanced shades of big bad and different kinds that antagonize different portions of the zombie or human population," she explained. "We have Angus, who is running a zombie church. He’s pulled out of the well and decides the words that he has heard from while he was in the well, which were actually from his son Blaine, were the words of God and he’s sort of lost his mind a little bit. He begins running this church that is very zealous and pro-zombie and anti-human."

"We see Fillmore-Graves and their approach, which certainly antagonizes many people, Liv included," she continued. "And, then we have Blaine, who is continuously this big bad that, for many reasons, Liv has to keep at bay and without too much conflict, because they have a lot of common friends and common enemies. It’s a very challenging position for her to be in. I think she still struggles with that because she clearly hates him and everything he’s done to her and the people she loves. But, he can also help her. He has friends in high places and she has to dance between those two things quite a lot."

As to the way Fillmore-Graves impacts Liv's relationship with Major this season, McIver said, "It’s really challenging. They love each other dearly. There’s a world in which they could have been a great couple and maybe ultimately are able to get to that place. But, right now, politics are very much in the way. The way I think about it is in my life, not so much with romantic relationships but with friends and loved ones, there’s a lot of political activity that people feel very strongly about in various different ways. It’s very, very hard to maintain your cool and connect and respect each other, when there’s such a decisive situation going on. There are many decisive situations going on. I think Liv deals with that with Major. She doesn’t think his approach is the right approach, or that Fillmore-Graves is, and really struggles to respect him in that time and has to assume a healthy distance in order to protect any friendship they may have in the future, or dynamic that they have."

Major doesn't appear to be as distressed as Liv and Babineaux about whatever is off-screen.

However, she'll find another man in her life soon enough. "She gets a new boyfriend, at some point, during the season," she revealed. "He’s completely different to her boyfriends we’ve met in the past. I fear for his safety, as I do for all Liv’s love interests. It’s different, it’s new and he’s a documentary filmmaker. It’s a version of a person Liv connects with that we haven’t seen before, which is cool."

As she figures out her love life, Liv will have a few words of advice for Clive, who has found himself in a relationship with a zombie after his girlfriend Dale was turned in the Season 3 finale. "She’s very protective of Clive," McIver shared. "They have a really beautiful, platonic relationship. One of the things I love about the show is its treatment of platonic male/female relationships and colleagues. So, for both Ravi and Clive, I think she has strong opinions about how things should be handled and defensiveness when things don’t go the way she believes that they should. Yeah, it’s a really tricky one. She can see that it’s compromising for him and I think that’s really hard as a friend to watch anybody go through. She weighs in more than she should."

Page 2: Ravi, Rom-Com Brain, Reunions & More



She also addressed another one of Season 3's cliffhangers: the moment Liv scratched Ravi to test his new zombie cure. "It’s a surprise. There’s a lot of surprise in how things come about," she teased. "It’s unlike what we’ve seen before. It allows for more humor and certainly their dynamic is not compromised. Ravi is as enthusiastic as ever to create a cure. It’s really worth watching how that unfolds. I think it would be a disservice to the show to tease too much because it really pans out in a way I think will surprise and intrigue people."

Though Liv will deal with a lot of weighty topics this season, there will still be plenty of room for fun. "Weirdly, I think it’s funnier than our seasons prior. I really do. I think that they’ve heightened that contrast quite a lot," she shared. "There’s strong drama and there’s strong comedy. It’s like I believe we have to. In the times of the most conflict and grave situations, you have to have a sense of humor about things, because how else do you get through? We feel that in this show this season. You can look forward to Major on wrestling brain and Liv on romantic-comedy brain at the same time. There’s plenty of humor that finds its way through this and I think its some of the funniest writing that I’ve experienced on the show."

For this romantic-comedy brain, McIver "watched a lot of Bridget Jones and Notting Hill and all the classics… First Wives Club…. Leading up to it. It’s really one of my favorite episodes. It’s a two-parter episode, so we get a lot of it. The devices that that provides are really funny. We see things in slow motion. We have the fans on the face. We have Liv reacting to things in a way that certainly doesn’t fly with the people around her, as often is the case... It also leans into them and makes a lot of great references to the films I grew up loving. There’s some good music choices. There’s certainly some throwback-music choices that I know are being used. It’s pretty early on in the season and I think people will certainly remind themselves of the comedy that we are capable of in the show."

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Rom-com brain won't be the only fun brain this season: Liv will also become a rapper for an episode. "That’s awesome," she shared. "Yes, gosh. I still do enjoy really good rap music, but, I had a phase as a teenager when I got really into it and thought I could rap myself. I was definitely not a good rapper. I definitely had listened to a lot and have a fairly good understanding of it and reference points. I worked a little bit with friends I knew. Again, on this show, we don’t really get a lot of time to prep, so there wasn’t a way to do a rapping boot camp or anything. Good conversations with people who knew a lot more than I did about the field. Then, working with Bisanne [Masoud] and Talia [Gonazalez], who wrote the episode, and kind of tweaking and adjusting and making sure I felt comfortable with the flow of the lyrics. It’s cool. We want to have a little bit of a twinkle in our eye about it the whole time. I don’t want Liv to be a bad rapper, but, I also want it to be clear. It’s not something she would naturally have had a grasp of, so, singling out people who take themselves very seriously about that."

Liv Moore: You wouldn't like her when she's angry.

As she discussed this season's brains, she also weighed in on those that have been difficult for her over the years. "The most unappealing one was the bigoted, racist brain… the Archie Bunker-style brain," she recalled. "I just didn’t love coming to work and playing that everyday, or, be it, a clever way of serving a certain storyline. It wasn’t as much of a joy as, for example, coming to work and playing an erotic literature writer. That was fun. That was challenging in that respect."

"Hockey-goon brain was challenging in a physical respect because I had one official day to spend on the ice in hockey skates for the first time," she added. "I hadn’t picked up my figure skates since I was 14, but hockey skates ever, so it was completely different. And, that was a very challenging thing to try and seem proficient and knowledgeable about the mannerisms and the little bits and pieces. That was a new world for me. That was challenging, but I had great support around me. We had an amazing stunt team that was also involved."

Though the truth about zombies is out, don't expect to see Liv's family return to the show anytime soon. Asked if she will get a family reunion this season, McIver said, "You know, I’d love that. You and me both. We have so many storylines that we are servicing in this show, and we have so many regulars with their own storylines, that it hasn’t made sense quite yet for that to be a focal story point. It’s definitely hovering there. I hope we come back to that soon. I am fascinated by Liv’s Dad, who he is. There was talk about trying to bring it in this season, but it’s been such a dense plot. I think the writers have focused, at the moment, on what’s going on in Seattle."


Returning Monday, February 26, at 9 p.m. ET/PT on The CW, iZombie stars Rose McIver, Rahul Koli, Malcolm Goodwin, Robert Buckley, David Anders, Aly Michalka, and Robert Knepper.