The Walking Dead cast open up about the ritual they hold for departing cast members.
Looking back at AMC’s The Walking Dead, there was quite a body count. According to the fansite Undead Walking, the zombie apocalypse drama wracked up 1808 kills in their first 147 episodes. That’s a lot of actors coming and going. Some might last an episode or two, while others might survive for multiple seasons before biting (heh) the dust.
This raises an interesting question - what does the cast thing do when a character dies? According to Chandler Riggs (Carl Grimes) and Ross Marquand (Aaron), they do a special memorial service. Speaking to a crowd at Tampa Bay Comic Convention, the actors spoke about the unique ritual.
“Cast members would take the person out to their favorite restaurant in Atlanta,” Chandler Riggs said. “Then people started taking videos in the later seasons of us celebrating whoever, and they would see us come back again, and someone would be missing. The people started to put the pieces together. It became more of a private thing.”
“We would get together at someone’s house or something and do a celebration. It was a way to send them off. When you’re working with each other for that long, and you have scenes with each other, you go through a lot. There’s a lot of hot days, there’s a lot of stuff you’re going through together. It’s always an emotional thing to see each other off.”
“It was a cool concept too,” Ross Marquand mused. “I think we should all adopt this in our personal lives too. You get to say the nice things about someone while they’re still with us. It was so nice to say, ‘I really love this about you,’ and you’re like, ‘Wow, I never would’ve heard this unless I died.’ I think it’s a cool concept, and they were long. They lasted five or six hours, but they were nice.”
The Walking Dead ended its run in 2022, but the franchise is still going strong with numerous spinoffs, including The Walking Dead: Dead City and The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon. It sounds like there will be plenty of cast ‘memorial services’ for years to come.
