After a summer spent filming at the MAC, ‘Z Nation’ season four premieres at the Garland Theater

On any given day this summer, a trip to the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture was a trip to a beauty salon in a post-apocalyptic world.

Or a visit to Northern Lights, an NSA listening post in the Arctic.

The museum’s parking garage, at one point, housed eight feet of toxic sea foam that blew off Lake Michigan and covered Chicago.

And the surrounding Browne’s Addition neighborhood was actually Zona, a zombie-free island inhabited by billionaires who built faux Victorian mansions for themselves.

In short, “Z Nation” was back in town.

The premiere party for the first episode of season four, much of which was filmed in and around the museum, will be held Friday at the Garland Theater. The premiere party is a fundraiser for the MAC.

The SyFy action/drama/comedy show is set three years after the ZN1 virus has caused a zombie apocalypse. A group of survivors must transport Murphy, a former convict thought to be the only person to survive a zombie attack, from New York to a government research lab in California, as his blood contains antibodies that are believed to be the cure to the virus.

Karl Schaefer, who created the show with Craig Engler, brought filming to Spokane after seeing the variety of landscapes the city offers.

Over the course of the show’s four seasons, Spokane has doubled as New York City, Philadelphia, Seattle and ghost towns. The Spokane River has doubled as the Mississippi, and the Palouse Falls has doubled as the Grand Canyon.

“It’s like the world’s biggest backlot,” Schaefer said. “There’s so many different looks that you can get here.”

The state’s film tax incentive and local production company North by Northwest also made filming in Spokane an easy choice.

The partnership between “Z Nation” and the museum began after Schaefer and MAC Executive Director Wes Jessup discussed a “Z Nation” exhibit that featured props, costumes and art from the show.

When visiting the museum with production designer Vincent DeFelice to begin piecing together the “Z Nation: Behind the Camera” exhibit, Schaefer realized that the museum’s modern architecture and the nearby Campbell House could easily double for Zona.

He then realized that with no summer show planned for the museum, the crew could turn the galleries into a “mini Universal Studios,” building sets and filming in and around the museum.

As part of the exhibit, visitors got to watch filming as it took place, and “Z Nation” cast and crew participated in a series of panels at the MAC.

“It was a clash of cultures, that’s for sure,” Schaefer said. “The museum is all about being careful and preservation and things being just so, and a film crew is none of those things. We’re sort of creative destruction is our mode. But it worked out great in the end for both parties.”

Jessup agrees, calling the trade an adventure and a learning experience.

“The needs of a museum, the needs of a film crew, sometimes they go together, sometimes not so much,” he said. “We had to do a lot of navigating but in the end, we were really pleased with the end result and the way things turned out.”

Jessup also praised museum staff for their willingness to try something new, and said “Z Nation: Behind the Camera” helped bring a younger audience to the museum.

Since the crew started filming in Spokane, fans young and old have clamored at the chance to play a zombie on “Z Nation.”

At the first zombie audition, the crew expected 50 people to show up. Instead, around 800 wannabe zombies answered the call.

“There are a number of people who are fascinated with zombies, and I think they’re in the zeitgeist now,” Schaefer said. “It’s a stand in for what’s the absolute worst that could happen.”

Schaefer said “Z Nation” uses a core group of 25 zombie extras and a another 300 to 400 extras to portray the estimated 2,000 zombie appearances in a season.

No matter the filming location, be it a junkyard near Northern Quest Resort and Casino in 102-degree heat or face down in a murky pond near Cheney, the zombie extras are all too happy to be part of the show.

“They can be having the worst times and they don’t care,” Schaefer said.

Another big part of the show, according to Schaefer, is the character of Spokane. “Z Nation” would be a different show if it were filmed somewhere else, he said, because Spokane has an edgy sense of humor about the Pacific Northwest not found in Seattle, or Canada, which pushed to host the show after its early season success.

“Every single person on the crew gets the joke, and that makes a big difference and contributes to the joke,” Schaefer said. “The idea with the show all along was that it feels like the people making it were having fun and were cracking up just off camera and that if you got to make a zombie show, you would do crazy stuff like this too. That’s sort of the charm of the show.”

“Z Nation’s” ability to bring the horror of a zombie apocalypse to the screen without taking itself too seriously has charmed viewers since its 2014 debut.

If ratings hold up during season four, Schaefer is confident the show will have at least another season ahead of it.

And when the time comes to film that season, after such a great experience this summer, Schaefer is enthusiastic about the idea of returning to the MAC.

“I would do it again next season if they wanted to,” he said. “If they don’t, we might rent our own stage space and set up a museum next to it.”

Building their own MAC won’t be necessary though, as Jessup is also open to the idea of working with “Z Nation” again.

“To what extent we’ll continue to work together, we’ve made some really great friendships and working relationships with their staff and crew so my hope is that there will be future opportunities,” he said.