SPOILERS: Fearnet Talks To Emma Bell About her Experience on "The Walking Dead"

[JamesG]

Exclusive: Emma Bell Talks "The Walking Dead"
11/22/10
by Joseph McCabe


Since guest-starring in a string of genre TV shows in 2009 (among them "Supernatural", "Dollhouse" and "Ghost Whisperer"), Emma Bell has become one of the hottest actresses in horror – with starring roles in director Adam Green's Frozen, the upcoming Final Destination 5, and of course the zombie TV sensation "The Walking Dead".


I caught up with Bell this weekend, during a break in shooting the latest Final Destination, and she chatted about her bittersweet experience of filming "Walking Dead".





Warning: The following interview contains spoilers. Read on at your own risk.















Your "Walking Dead" character, Amy, met the Grim Reaper on last night's episode.

It was a unique moment for the show, because her death was the first major death that happened on screen. It really drove home the horror of the situation for the show's core group of characters.


Oh good. That's great to hear. That was sort of the intent. She's not as big in the comic as she is in the show, which has been really lovely for me. That they made her a little bigger in the show.

But that was sort of the intention. You see people die and become zombies, or you see people die, but you have no history with them. You don't know who they were or what their life was like before they were zombies. So I think you're right.



In the fourth episode when the camp is attacked and my character gets bitten and I eventually die, hopefully the loss of the character, especially for my sister, but also for everyone in the camp, it is sort of the first time that a death hits everyone really hard, someone that everyone at camp cares about passes on.

It's a very sad moment. I remember watching it during an ADR session and I was really happy with how it came out. I think it's very sad and touching.











Can you talk about when you first joined the project?


I was so happy when the project first came along. I met Laurie Holden, who plays my sister, and we just instantly bonded. We really are like sisters. We talk all the time and we actually have a lot in common.

Then coming on to the set, Frank Darabont was there for the first episode, and he's just amazing, and he really set the tone for the whole show.

Andrew Lincoln and Sarah Wayne Callies and Jon Bernthal and Jeff DeMunn and all these amazing actors that we got to be with every day, it really became like a little family.




I said this in another interview, but I think it's really true – when you're playing a group of people who have survived a tragedy… At the end of the day, we get to go home to our warm holes and have normal food, but being in that situation for twelve hours a day, you really start to bond with people who are going through a similar experience with you. They become your family.

So it was an amazing experience. It really was. We all really got along and we all hung out on weekends and got dinner, and I've seen several of the cast members since I've been away from the set. It was lovely.

As we shot, I was getting more and more sad because I knew eventually that Amy was going to have to die and I almost felt like I was really leaving my loved ones. It was a very hard thing.







I heard you suggested ways in which she might remain on the show.

I would go up to the producers and be like, "What if she comes back as a ghost and she's always around Andrea?" They said no.

Then I'd say, "What if I came back as a guardian angel and I kind of steered the group around?" And they said, "No. It's not gonna happen." [Laughs].










Iis it bittersweet to be part of a show that's become a huge hit but as a character that's killed off in the first season?

Yeah, totally. In a way, sure. I knew when we were shooting it that it was going to be a huge hit. I could just tell. It was just one of those projects where you could tell.

Of course the team behind it was just stellar, and I knew that it would have a huge fan base, because the comic had such a huge fan base. Just the whole genre of zombie is huge. So I knew it was going to be huge.

That's part of the reason why I was sad, because of course you want to stay and grow with the family you created.






On the other hand it is bittersweet because I am so lucky and honored to be part of the first season of something. I feel like the first season of a really great show is usually the best season to be a part of. Because even if you're not in all the other seasons, the first season is what all the fans remember, those characters.

So I think that hopefully my character will live on, and that people will remember me, that I'm not just some person who came in for a season in the middle of the plot. I'm one of the original cast members, which is really cool.



And who knows? There may come a chance for Amy to come back on the show, in flashbacks or something else. Nothing hard has been written about Amy. So don't write her off yet. [Laughs].







Did you shoot any scenes that weren't televised? That might surface on the DVD?

I don't think so. I think that they pretty much had every single scene that they wanted, and they knew how it was going to play out.

I haven't actually seen all the episodes, but for the first three episodes that I have seen, every seen that was written and shot is in that episode. They were pretty together on that front.

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[AB]

It's a shame she was killed off in sunday's episode.