“Walking Dead” star Norman Reedus looks forward to the return of Merle
Source: GoldDerby

“Pretty much every script I flip to the end to see if I’m alive. I think the whole cast does that,” says actor Norman Reedus of his role on “The Walking Dead.” His character, crossbow-wielding renegade Daryl Dixon, was introduced early in the series’s first season, and despite the slayings of several major characters since then, he’ll live to see another day when the drama returns for a third season next fall.

Among the dearly departed was Sophia (Madison Lintz), a child who went missing in the second season premiere and reappeared as a zombie before the mid-season break. “Both personally and professionally I was bummed out,” says Reedus of the early exit of his young co-star, with whom he had developed a rapport; Lintz had taken to introducing Reedus as her boyfriend during interviews.

But he eagerly anticipates the return of another character who is missing in action: his on-screen brother Merle, played by Michael Rooker, who was last seen trapped on a rooftop during a zombie attack. “He’ll come back … I think it’s been announced; hopefully I didn’t break any rules here,” says Reedus with his fingers crossed. Because of rampant fan speculation, “The Walking Dead” keeps a tight lid on its future storylines: “I think we had a leak this season, so going on to season three we may be a little bit more like Buckingham Palace.”

Reedus also discusses his dreams of rock stardom, riding motorcycles with Lady Gaga, and his favorite moments from the last season of “Walking Dead,” including the episode “Chupacabra,” in which Daryl is badly injured and hallucinates about his brother; if nominated for an Emmy later this year, Reedus will likely submit that episode for consideration.

You can watch the video of the interview at the source.

“TWD” Burning Questions: The Cast and Creator Weigh In
Source: Seattlepi.com

The March 18 season finale of The Walking Dead, featuring an epic zombie attack on the Greene family farm and the revelation that everyone on the show is infected with the zombie virus, was so scary and shock-a-minute outrageous that it nearly made our heads explode. (Now we know how those walkers feel when they meet the wrong end of a pickax!) What’s in store for the survivors? Is there any hope left for mankind? And who was that weird hooded figure at the end of the episode sporting the ultimate Walking Dead fashion accessory – two armless zombies on a chain? We took our burning questions to executive producer (and comic-book creator) Robert Kirkman and several of the show’s top stars.

Let’s get this straight: Now all it takes to be a zombie is death itself? You can become one by dying in a car crash, keeling over from a heart attack or choking on a hot dog?
“Exactly!” says Kirkman, who isn’t taking this nearly as badly as we are. “Some sort of event took place – we may never know what it was – that led to the virus being transferred, and it is now lying in wait within everybody. Even though all our characters are doomed, the point of The Walking Dead is that they still have each other. They have their everyday lives to live, and that’s what they’ll be concerned with as we move forward.”

Suddenly we have New Rules! Does this explain why the majority of the zombies do not appear to have been killed by other zombies?
“That’s the very reason we don’t see many walkers with bite marks or wounds,” Kirkman says. “In fact, most of them are not victims of zombie attacks. If you’re almost completely devoured, you won’t turn. If you’re half devoured, like the bicycle girl we saw in the first episode, there will be enough of you remaining that you can still become a zombie. It all comes down to whether or not there’s been significant damage to the brain. As long as the brain is intact, even a severed head will come back to life.”

So how come there are no zombie infants?
Says Kirkman: “You want the truth? I don’t want to be sitting in that casting call when we tell parents we hope they won’t mind that their baby will be in the makeup chair for two hours!”

They may not have the chance to try. In Kirkman’s Walking Dead comic books – the source material for the TV series – Lori gives birth to a baby girl and eventually they both die. Should we be worried?
Not necessarily. “Certain deaths that take place in the comic books do happen on the series and others don’t, so the audience will never be certain,” notes the exec producer. Still, there’s this ominous fact: Kirkman is nearing the 100th issue of his comics, and the only survivors left from the characters we currently know are Sophia (who’s already dead in the series), Glenn, Carl, Maggie, Andrea and Rick!

Daryl saved Carol during the zombie attack on the farm in true superhero style, sweeping her away on his chopper. Will love finally bloom?
Not if Norman Reedus can help it! The fan fave who plays Daryl hopes things stay platonic, though he adores working with Melissa McBride. “I’ve fought against having Carol and Daryl hook up because there’s already too many of us doing it on this show,” says Reedus. “It’s more interesting to see these two damaged people gravitating to each other, needing each other’s friendship. But I gotta admit it would be hysterical watching Daryl put on a bunch of deodorant before he goes in for his first kiss.”
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Troy Duffy Discusses New Boondock Saints Video Game
Source: Forbes

Troy Duffy has been busy expanding The Boondock Saints franchise. The writer/director’s latest endeavor is a new video game from Critical Mass Interactive, Inc. (CMI) that will feature the voices and likeness of actors Sean Patrick Flanery (Connor MacManus), Norman Reedus (Murphy MacManus) and David Della Rocco (Rocco) from the two Boondock Saints movies.

The game is part of a bigger transmedia push that Duffy is overseeing, which includes a comic book series and a potential television series or third feature film. Fresh off a transmedia panel at SXSW in Austin, Duffy talks about what’s next for the MacManus brothers in this exclusive interview.

How did the idea of turning Boondock Saints into a video game come about?

It all seemed to go hand in glove. The Boondock property was always about — even with comic books and video games — good guys against the bad guys with lots of guns and that type of thing. It always kind of fit. We always had the idea in our head to do that as a shooter game. We just never had run into anybody that really got Boondock.

Where does this game fit in to the overall universe if we focus on the two movies?

It’s not really going to be dictated by the plot of the films, word for word. I’m sure that we can include characters, some of the worlds that were there, and some of the scenes that were there, but we want to expand that. That’s one of the things about doing video games that I hadn’t realized. For a video game, obviously, the landscape has got to be much bigger, so we’re going to have a lot more universes to go into than just following the film. It will just be an underlying theme of the film throughout.

Do you expect to have both the likenesses and the voices of the central characters from the film in the video game?

Yes. All the actors are on board.

How do you see this game tying into the broader expansion of this franchise that includes comic books?

There’s a lot of the artwork that could tie in from menu boards and stuff like that. Ultimately, there’s always been a link between comic books and video games, and comic books and movies, and then basically all three steadily becoming this sort of transmedia. There’s already a link between these things just with the fans. People like video games, comic books, and movies together. We kind of did it the reverse way. Most people would start out with a comic book, make a movie, and then a game. We started out, obviously, with a movie, then we made a comic book, and then the game. It seemed that Boondock always had that feel to it.

What role do you see this game playing in potential future Boondock movies?

I don’t know yet. That’s the part of it that I don’t know. I’m kind of diving into the deep end blind here, because I’m not a gamer. I kind of like not knowing that. I am sure, however, that from this game there’s going to be something that clicks in at some point with me to make adjustments on a possible film, television series, or whatever Boondocks direction we go, visually.

Who’s going to write the story for the game?

That would be myself and most likely CMI, but we may involve some other people in that. Right now, it’s CMI and myself.

What’s your target of when people will be able to play this?

I don’t have a target. I’d like it as soon as possible. Right now we’ve got a lot of momentum, but there are several key decisions that need to be made within the next couple of weeks.

Will you be play testing the game yourself?

In terms of actually playing the game, I’ve got my own little test group of buddies there, but I’ sure that that’s going to be done to the nth degree.

Do you know what game technology you guys will be building this game from?

No, I don’t know that.

Norman Reedus: March 2012 Flaunt Feature
Source: Flaunt Magazine

Over tomato soup on an icy night in New York’s lower east side, actor Norman Reedus is talking about road kill. He spares few details recounting the several dead animals he found along the highway while shooting the zombie thriller TV show The Walking Dead in Georgia. We’re huddled in the back of the narrow restaurant, Bread, which Reedus insists has the best soup in the city. The more graphic his descriptions—details of a moose he saw hit by a car—the harder it is for me to spoon down the chunky red broth.

The depiction sounds like a scene straight out of The Walking Dead, AMC’s original series, in which the Florida-born actor plays the crossbow-wielding, zombie-crushing, squirrel-hunting hothead Daryl Dixon. With the next half of the second season premiering February 12, the hit showhas garnered a cult following almost overnight, as has Reedus’ character, which was penned specifically for him. Daryl is a redneck with an unreliable temper and a tendency to think with his fists, obliterating zombies so effortlessly it could be a sport.

“He was written very angry and just like, ‘Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you,’” Reedus explains of Daryl. In all good fiction, however, our protagonists will be multidimensional and as The Walking Dead has progressed, we’ve seen a more complex Dixon, who comes into his own as a protector to a modest group of apocalypse survivors navigating through an unfamiliar world of flesh-eating freaks. “I’m trying to play him as a virgin who was constantly put down and had to fight for everything, as someone with a huge chip on his shoulder,” he suggests of Daryl’s personality. “In television, you kind of have to plant these little seeds and hope that those trees bear fruit. So I’m constantly trying to look for little moments and make this guy evolve.”

It’s hard to see someone as good looking as Reedus—a former Prada model—as virginal. But for two seasons now, the actor has uncannily channeled this loner zombie combatant, proving to be his most revered and strongest performance to date. In the past, he’s portrayed a hitman and Debbie Harry’s son in Six Ways to Sunday; an introverted artist in Gossip; a cocky convict in 8MM with Nicolas Cage; a chain-smoking weapon maker in Blade II; and last year he even rode a motorcycle next to Lady Gaga in her surreal music video “Judas.” It was his breakout role as the gun slinging Christian vigilante Murphy MacManus in Boondock Saints I and II, however, that put him on the map and earned him a host of ferocious fans.

He insists he doesn’t necessarily gravitate towards violent movies, but those he’s most known for tend to spill a lot of blood—ironic, given his view of mortality. “I have a fear of death. I don’t like the idea of it at all,” Reedus elaborates. “I don’t want to get old and die. My dad died when I was younger. He had a twin brother and I saw him die, too. My mom sold coffins for a little while when I grew up. She called them ‘eternal beds.’”
It was with his mother that Reedus jumped around a lot as a kid, living in places like Spain, England, and Japan before love led him to the West Coast. “I followed a girl that I met in Japan to L.A. But she immediately left me and got married.” He found work at a Harley Davidson shop in Venice, while pursuing a career in studio art, something he’s still passionate about. His acting career began accidentally, when someone at a party suggested he try acting.

Offscreen, Reedus is confidently soft spoken with a slacker drawl, leaning in to talk as if revealing a secret. He’s warm, approachable, and interacts with strangers like they’re old friends. He opens doors, says excuse me and thank you, and leaves generous tips. For the most part, he avoids anything too “Hollywood,” preferring a low profile, despite a five-year marriage with Helena Christensen, which ended in 2003. “We’re very easy with each other,” he says of his relationship with the supermodel, who is the mother of his son, Mingus. Now 12, Mingus is barely able get through The Walking Dead without covering his eyes, but the show has made him popular at school. Some of the older kids recently asked, “Is your dad Daryl Dixon? We love Daryl Dixon!”

Reedus finishes his tomato soup and we’re on to tiramisu, compliments of the house. There’s no more talk of road kill, but instead what’s upcoming. He’s just wrapped Sunlight Jr. where he’s an “asshole” in a love triangle with Matt Dillon and Naomi Watts. He also plans to fit in a horror movie before the third season of The Walking Dead, which begins shooting in April. With all the glorified gore in his onscreen worlds, I wonder what he does for fun, imagining his real life more glamorous than the celibate Daryl Dixon. “Oh, Jesus. I don’t have any fun at all. I really don’t go out that much to be honest. What do I do on a Friday night? I steal tourist’s purses. Break shit. Netflix.com.”

Norman Reedus on ‘The Walking Dead’
Source: CraveOnline

One of the stars of AMC’s hit zombie series tells us about the creation of Daryl Dixon and whether Merle Dixon will return to the show.

“The Walking Dead” made its first appearance before the Television Critics Association in January, and among the actors representing the show was Norman Reedus. I got to sit in on a roundtable interview with Reedus and ask some questions about the second half of the season, and the legacy he’s already established as Daryl.

Crave Online: Was the first half of the season more relaxing to shoot because it was more about buildup?

Norman Reedus: There’s more talk in the first half than the second half of the season, more action in the second. And it’s hardly ever casual conversation. Even the conversation is exhausting. And it’s 120 degrees outside, there’s bugs all over you and your scratches and your bruises and it’s sort of a character on the show. We couldn’t shoot the show in Los Angeles or Toronto or wherever.

Crave Online: How was the experience of doing 13 episodes this season, as opposed to doing six episodes last season?

Norman Reedus: It was great. We got to tell more stories. We got to get into characters more. Six was about setting up the world, especially the first episode. We got to learn more about our characters and each other. It was more of a commitment. I came in on the third episode of the first season, so I basically walked in, said hi and threw squirrels, right in the first hour. But, it was nice. We all got closer, and it was awesome.

Crave Online: Was Daryl always designed to become a regular role?

Norman Reedus: No, it was not. It was actually Frank [Darabont] who wrote the part for the show. He created that part because he’s not in the comic book. I don’t know. I think I was a little bit of an experiment, at first. I’m not sure. I’m glad it’s going well and I’m still on there.

Crave Online: So are we.

Norman Reedus: Oh yeah, thanks. It’s a lot of fun. It’s, by far, my most favorite job that I’ve ever been on.

Crave Online: Since there’s so much danger, do you ever worry that the next script you get could be your last?

Norman Reedus: Every time. Every week.

Crave Online: Do you have a sense of how much the fans want your character to stick around?

Norman Reedus: I literally have got three boxes of presents. My son’s room is nothing but Daryl Dixon paintings, dolls, lighters, tattoos and panties. It’s pretty ridiculous. It’s fun.

Crave Online: Do they overshadow “The Boondock Saints” fans?

Norman Reedus: The Boondocks are pretty ferocious, as well. But, I get more “Walking Dead” stuff now. It’s a bonus for me. The same group of people like both things. It’s overwhelming, to be honest.

Crave Online: Are we going to see Merle again?

Norman Reedus: Yeah, you’ll see him. He’ll come back, eventually, and he’ll probably be super-pissed. That’s going to be interesting. Is blood thicker than these new bonds he’s made? There’s going to be a lot of confrontation going on, for sure.

A Zombie-Slaying Actor Plays It Tough
Source: Metropolis – The Wall Street Journal (New York)

When zombies are chopped, maimed and decapitated on the TV drama “The Walking Dead,” there’s often a crossbow-wielding New Yorker behind the carnage.

Norman Reedus, 43 years old, plays Daryl Dixon, a character frequently at odds with the band of survivors that AMC’s hit show follows through a zombie apocalypse. His character is angry — someone who “just flipped over tables,” as Reedus sees it — and finds humans as untrustworthy as the zombies.

Speaking in Café Roma near his Chinatown apartment ahead of the show’s Sunday return, Reedus said his love of tough guy roles comes from his hard-as-nails mother, a former resident of Hell’s Kitchen who now teaches in Kurdistan.

“My mom taught high school in the Bronx,” he said. “She taught kindergarten in Harlem. So when this job came up in Kurdistan, she was like, ‘I can handle Kurdistan.’”

Reedus’s acting career bloomed late, beginning in 1997 with “Mimic.” His obsession with acting, and with New York, came via celluloid.

“The first film I saw where it seemed like an art form — the editing worked, the music worked, the acting, the directing, the locations, the extras, it all came together as a film — was ‘Midnight Cowboy,’” he said. “I was just fascinated with film after that.”

After moving to New York 14 years ago with his then-girlfriend, the model Helena Christensen, he immersed himself in the local arts scene and set up a production company, Big Bald Head, to shoot short films.

Reedus also helped establish Collective Hardware, a five-floor arts space on the Bowery, which closed in 2010. “We had edit bays in there, we had a full-floor gallery, we had a special effects company called Ill Willed that were making giant saber-toothed tigers for the Discovery Channel,” he recalled. “We had all the ingredients for make amazing art there.”

The dark themes of his zombie-survivor role on “The Walking Dead” fit with his non-acting interests. He recently showed his photographs of roadkill and taxidermy, taken during breaks in filming the series, at the Wired store in Times Square.

Reedus said he tries to disconnect from the entertainment world when he’s off the job. “When I come here, I’m with my son — I’m just daddy when I’m in New York,” he said. “I know maybe two actors in all of New York … I know Willem Dafoe.”
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Exclusive Interview: The Actors of “Walking Dead” – Melissa, Norman & Steven
Source: Assignment X

AMC’s hit series THE WALKING DEAD returns for the second half of its second season tonight at 9 PM. Based on the graphic novels created by Robert Kirkman, THE WALKING DEAD follows a small group of people trying to survive after most of the world’s human population has become flesh-eating zombies.

THE WALKING DEAD was created for television by filmmaker Frank Darabont, but after the end of first season, he was taken off the series by AMC. Executive producer Glen Mazzara is now the show runner.

The first half of WALKING DEAD’s Season Two ended with a bang, lots of them. Farm owner Hershel Greene, played by Scott Wilson, has been keeping a barn full of zombies, including family members, because he believed they were ill and could be cured. Meanwhile, most of the characters had been engaged in a search for Sophia (Madison Lintz), the missing little girl of Carol Peletier, played by Melissa Suzanne McBride. When survivor Shane (Jon Bernthal) insisted on opening the barn and shooting its undead occupants, Sophia is among the walking corpses. Carol watches as her child is shot in the head by group leader Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln).

Carol’s primary ally right now is loner Darryl, played by Norman Reedus. Steven Yeun’s Glenn started out as a nervous, underappreciated young man, but he’s found some confidence since hooking up romantically with Hershel’s daughter Maggie (Lauren Cohan).

McBride, Reedus and Yeun sit down to say what they can reveal about WALKING DEAD. Given that they’re surviving shooting together in the broiling summers ofAtlanta,Georgia and frequently covered with muck during their work days, it’s not surprising to see there’s a lot of camaraderie among the trio.

AX: So were you guys gratified, surprised, or not surprised at all when WALKING DEAD got picked up for a second season?

NORMAN REEDUS: I think we knew it was coming, yeah. I mean, we kind of kicked butt on Season One, and it was so fun and good and everyone was really into it, I think when Season Two was announced it was happening, I think we weren’t overly shocked.

MELISSA SUZANNE McBRIDE: I was surprised. Well, not surprised like it wasn’t going to happen. I was happy.

STEVEN YEUN: I was very happy.

McBRIDE: It was picked up quickly. Sixteen episodes [have already been picked up] for next season, Season Three.

REEDUS: Yeah. It feels like we’re doing something right. I remember reading the pilot in the beginning and thinking it was really going to be like something I would watch.

AX: Not asking if one is better than the other, but is there any contrast in show running styles between Frank Darabont and Glen Mazzara?

YEUN: You know, obviously, each one’s going to have their own style. I would say we’re lucky to have either one. We were very fortunate to have Frank, and it sucks what happened [in terms of his absence], but Glen really brought his own thing and he’s fantastic.

REEDUS: It brought the cast and the crew and the writers and everybody closer together, because [in Darabont’s firing] something bad happened, and we worked really hard to keep our good thing, and that’s what we’ve done. And Glen’s done a bang-up job. He’s been awesome.

McBRIDE: Yeah. It was a show that Frank worked really hard to bring to television and it was a great project and a lot of us were very happy to be there and we had a job to do. And it’s still a fantastic job, and I was happy to hear that Frank has just written a pilot [L.A. NOIR] that got green-lit for TNT. So that’s exciting.

AX: How much, if any, how much have you guys read THE WALKING DEAD comic books, or has the series diverged so much from the source material by now that it’s not relevant to what you’re doing?

REEDUS: I got into [the comics] when we first started doing the show, but I didn’t want to know exactly what happened and [the series has] become its own animal. Rick Grimes is Andy Lincoln to me now and so forth. So I didn’t really want to know the storyline so much, to keep it fresh. But I do know them, I just haven’t read them.
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“Walking Dead’s” Melissa McBride Talks About Daryl
Source: Zap2it

When we talked to “The Walking Dead’s” Melissa McBride (she plays anguished mother Carol Peletier) at the Television Critic Association’s Winter press tour, we didn’t yet know that cast mate Jon Bernthal — who plays Shane — may be leaving the show (if rumors about his plans to star in another project are true) by season’s end.

Now that we do have that information it makes this statement seem that much more interesting to consider:

“Some people are gonna die,” she told us, without embellishment.

We’re figuring she’d hardly make that kind of statement unless she meant actual cast members. Right? And as the first half of the season showed us, the show’s creative team doesn’t shy away from killing off some of its more sympathetic — and promising — characters. We lost both the utterly sympathetic Sophia, Carol’s daughter played by Madison Lintz, and Otis (Pruitt Taylor Vince in a role we’d hoped would last longer than a few episodes).

As we gear up for the second half of Season 2, which starts Sunday (Feb. 12) on AMC, Zap2it wanted to find out what’s in store for McBride’s character now that she’s essentially a mother without a child, a nurturer with no one to nurture.

“You may see Carol pick up a weapon in the second half of Season 2,” says McBride. “Let’s say that.”

Which would be kind of cool since we’ve been watching Carol’s inner strength and self-assertion slowly build throughout the series.

“She’s been through so much alone just to survive before any of this [zombie stuff] happened and women who have to deal with [spousal abuse] and come out the other side,” she says. “Even when they’re enduring it there’s a strength that none of us can touch.”

But as to that nurturing, McBride predicts (or knows) that some of that energy will be spent on fellow apocalypse survivor Daryl Dixon (Norman Reedus).

“A lot of it is going to continue to develop with Daryl and how he deals with the loss of Sophia and what it’s meant to him. He’s going to detach a little bit and she’s going to want to bring him back in to the fold of the group.”

“But, As the season progresses there are questions,” she adds. “Is that fold really so great? Do I want these people guiding me out of this? If they guide me out of this, what are they guiding me into? Some of the characters are asking if they’re better off by themselves.”

McBride was working as a casting director in Atlanta when she got a call from series co-creator Frank Darabont, who she’d worked for in 2007′s “The Mist” (along with Scott Wilson and Laurie Holden).

“It’s been kind of a fluke. You never know,” she says of her sudden steady gig. “And that’s a great lesson to hold on to — you never know what’s around that left-hand turn.”

As for more show details, this is all we could manage to pry out of McBride:

“We won’t meet the Governor this season, I know. There will be some additional new characters introduced before the season is over.”

So there you have it.

Norman talks about ‘Walking Dead’ fan favorite Daryl
Source: USA Today

Two things are a given when AMC’s The Walking Dead returns Sunday (9 ET/PT) with the long-awaited second half of Season 2:

The weary band of survivors of the zombie apocalypse (as well as fans) still will be reeling from events that occurred during last fall’s closing episode in which the horde of walkers hidden in Hershel’s barn — including Carol’s daughter, Sophia — are annihilated.

And fans will be thrilled to again hang out with Daryl Dixon, the show’s consummate hard-nosed survivalist, as portrayed by Norman Reedus— who is stalked by hordes of fans himself these days.

“It all comes down to Norman,” says executive producer Robert Kirkman, creator of The Walking Dead comics (in which Dixon does not exist). “I feel absolutely blessed he has honored our show with his presence, and the way he has come in and taken over that role and defined Daryl Dixon.”

Just who is Dixon? One cranky redneck, who’s all business when it comes to staying alive. He can hunt squirrel and silently kill zombies with his crossbow. Last fall, Dixon had the knife skills and fortitude to disembowel a zombie and search its “gut bag” for body parts.

He also started showing a softer side as he grew closer to his fellow refugees and relentlessly hunted for the missing Sophia, one of two children living with the group.

Dixon’s many-layered personality, Reedus says, is part of his appeal. “Originally, he was supposed to be this angry guy with a racist viewpoint who hated everybody, and you’ve seen him grow and become a better person. Maybe that has something to do with it,” says Reedus, 43. “Daryl is this guy who needs a hug, but if you try to hug him, he’ll try to stab you. He doesn’t want to talk about his feelings, but you can tell there’s a lot of feelings bottled up.”

Says Kirkman: “A lot of Norman’s portrayal of the character in the first season inspired all the writers to do what we did with him in the second season. We love writing him and end up doing cool stuff with him.”

The actor has always courted cult appeal. The Boondock Saints, a 1999 dark action flick in which he starred with Sean Patrick Flanery and Willem Dafoe (and 2009 sequel The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day), has spawned its own fan sites, including theboondockbetties.com. Fans “will run across the street and tackle you to the ground,” Reedus says, “but The Walking Dead has definitely opened a lot of doors for me.”
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‘Walking Dead’ Stars Weigh In On Life After Sophia
Source: Splash Page (MTV)

We “Walking Dead” fans are no stranger to death and depression on the show. From what we’ve seen so far over the course of the first and second seasons tells us that we must approach every episode with uncertainty and/or the knowledge that a major character could be offed or zombified at any moment.

Case in point: the show’s mid-season finale during which the search for Sophia ended for good. MTV News recently caught up with Steven Yeun, Melissa McBride and Norman Reedus during the show’s appearance at the TCAs over the weekend and asked them to tease what’s next for our stunned survivors.

“For my character Carol, she’s got to deal with the grief and how she’s going to move forward,” McBride said.

“I think for all of us she was a symbol of hope,” Reedus added, speaking to the gravity of the loss of Sophia. “If we could hold onto her then [we'd] maybe save a little piece of ourselves as well. Once that went down, all bets are off and everybody’s miserable and homicidal at this point, especially her,” he said, pointing to McBride.

“I think keeping hope alive for her represented, even though all the odds were against finding her alive, you just sort of cling to that hope,” McBride continued. “[Sophia represented] that unseen thing that’s going to carry you through and to have her come through the barn the way she did, I think it’s really throwing a lot of doubt on faith. What unseen thing is going to help us through this? Is it really out there?”

You can watch the interview at the source.