Resurrection: Michele Fazekas Previews Sunday’s New ABC Series

Michele Fazekas and her writing partner Tara Butters have worked together on such hit series as Hawaii Five-0, Law & Order: SVU, and Dollhouse, but around these parts, we heap the most praise on them for creating one of the most underrated TV series of the past decade, The CW’s Reaper. Now, in addition to working on an Agent Carter Marvel project for ABC, Fazekas and Butters are showrunners for Resurrection, a new drama premiering Sunday night, March 9 on ABC.

We spoke with Michele Fazekas at the recent TV press tour to find out how she would explain Resurrection to someone who may not have read up on it yet or seen a trailer.

“When I’m asked that, I’ll pitch them the start of the pilot,” she says. “An eight year old boy wakes up in a rice paddy in the middle of rural China, and no one knows who he is. He’s not talking; he’s clearly American because he’s wearing an minor league baseball shirt, and his name written on the tag of his shirt. So, he’s brought back to the States — Omar Epps plays an immigrations agent — and he has to find out where this kid came from. He’s able to glean that he’s from Arcadia, Missouri, and [he asks] ‘if I take you there, could you point out your house’ and the kid says ‘yes,’ he can. He goes there, goes to a house, and an older man (Kurtwood Smith) answers the door, and he says ‘do you have a son named Jacob because I found him? He’s okay.’ And Kurtwood says ‘my son died 32 years ago.’ Except it’s him.”

Fazekas stresses that the world of Resurrection is like the real world, but with one major difference: People are coming back from the dead. And young Jacob from the pilot isn’t the only one.  “It’s not just one person. There’s more than one person that comes back. It is isolated to this town. That’s the fantastic thing, but what the series is about, is ‘now what?’ And what does that do to the people who are living? Because it really is like going from your grief process in reverse, because the people who lost their loved ones are now put right back in that place where they were when they lost that person. So as much as it can be a happy thing, it’s also upsetting and scary. In the series, what you learn is that not everyone that comes back has good intentions… but not every person has good intentions. You come back as you were, but with little strange changes,” Fazekas teases.

Resurrection premieres at 9PM ET on Sunday, March 9. Here’s a trailer for a visual idea of what to expect from the series: