KALAMAZOO

— Even as a kid, Steven Yeun said he was fiercely independent.

Yeun, who graduated from Kalamazoo College in 2005, will portray Glenn in the premiere of the new AMC series “The Walking Dead.” Based on the comic written by Robert Kirkman with art by Charlie Adlard, the show is about a pandemic that has caused the world’s dead to rise and feed on the living.

Glenn is a pizza delivery boy with few family or friends. Yeun, 26, said Glenn’s character is resourceful and thinks he’s invincible, but is also struggling to find what to do with his life when the zombies show up. Battling the undead is one way to prove himself.

“I heavily identify with this character,” Yeun said during a phone interview from Los Angeles. “It goes hand-in-hand with how I grew up. I always had a chip on my shoulder and didn’t like it when people told me what to do.”

Yeun majored in psychology at K-College, but discovered an appreciation for performing when he went with a friend to watch Monkapult, an improv group of K-College students, his freshman year.

If you watch

“The Walking Dead”

What:

Premiere episode of TV series based on the comic series, featuring Kalamazoo College graduate Steven Yeun

When:

10 p.m. Sunday

Channel:

AMC

Connect

www.amctv.com/originals/The-Walking-Dead/

“It blew my face off,” he said. “I was like, ‘Holy smokes, I want to do this so bad. I didn’t have an acting bug at all until that.”

He tried out for Monkapult, but was rejected “because I was terrible,” Yeun said. He took the improv class at K-College — the last one before the college stopped offering it — and worked on performing. His sophomore year he became a member of Monkapult. He also dabbled in theater. The experience gave him confidence and loosened him up, both as a performer and as a person, Yeun said.

After graduating, Yeun told his parents — Je and June — that he planned to forgo medical or law school and move to Chicago to pursue improv comedy.

“They weren’t very happy, but they were supportive,” Yeun said of his parents. “They said, ‘You have two years.’”

Shortly after moving to Chicago in 2005, Yeun said he hooked up with Stir Friday Night, an Asian-American sketch comedy group. He later became an understudy for Second City, the infamous Chicago improv group, and started teaching improv in 2007.

For years, Yeun said he’d been telling friends he was going to move to Los Angeles to further push his career. In October of last year, he made it happen

.

“I was still real scared and real worried,” he said.

Yeun said he secured a spot with what appeared to be a major project, but the pilot was never picked up. But “the stars aligned absolutely perfectly” because it allowed him to audition for “The Walking Dead,” which he knew well as a fan of the comic book

.

“It’s been a blessed year,” he said. “Everything kind of happened, it had to be fated.”

“The Walking Dead” is produced and directed by Frank Darabont, who has produced and/or directed several films, including “The Green Mile” and “The Shawshank Redemption.” Yeun also said AMC’s success with dramas, such as “Mad Men,” helps make the series an intriguing show that’s not just about fleeing zombies.

“It’s really about the people,” he said. “The zombies happen to be the affliction, the cause of the apocalypse. But it’s not just us running from the zombies, but people figuring out who they are when they’re pushed up against the wall.”

Contact John Liberty at

or 269-388-8579.