Emily Kinney returned to The Walking Dead universe in a special role. The actress played Beth Greene in The Walking Dead: Dead City, which explored an alternate reality where Maggie (Lauren Cohan) and Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) did not experience the zombie apocalypse. In this “what if” version, Maggie is reunited with her sister Beth, a character who was killed off in the fifth season of the original AMC series more than a decade ago.
“It was so much fun,” Kinney said of returning to the role she ended in 2014. “Even though so much time had passed, I felt like I fit right in. The whole experience felt like a celebration,” the actress added.
The 41-year-old actress confessed that the proposal to revive her character was a complete surprise, despite having developed a close friendship with Scott M. Gimple, content director for The Walking Dead, over the years.
“I was in constant contact with Scott, and he remained very enigmatic. He didn’t mention anything about it,” Kinney said. She had initially announced her return to the TWD universe alongside Cohan during a panel at San Diego Comic-Con in July, highlighting that she really had no idea about the invitation.
“My agents and managers asked if they could send the script and if I would be interested. I started reading it and immediately started crying,” he continued, expressing his fascination with the opportunity to explore a different version of Beth. “I thought, ‘Oh yeah, of course I’m going to do that. It’s really cool,'” Kinney said.
In the alternate reality of Dead City, Beth is a rising singer living in New York. Maggie visits her from her farm in Georgia to attend an evening musical performance. The series The Walking Dead had already shown the character as a guitarist and singer, using music to lift the spirits of survivors.
Kinney, who also works as a musician and songwriter, said it was simple to return to the role as the character has never completely left her over the years.
“I’ve always felt very connected to Beth and the Walking Dead universe,” Kinney said. “I constantly attend comic book conventions, and people always ask me about it… It’s something I revisit often, so the process was pretty smooth.”
“I feel like we defined who Beth was by being a singer, more artistic many years ago,” she continued. “When we found ourselves in this alternate timeline, it was relatively easy to imagine what she would have been like in her early 30s if the zombie apocalypse hadn’t happened.”
For longtime fans of The Walking Dead, the sisters’ on-screen reunion provided an especially gratifying moment that eagle-eyed viewers may have noticed.
Actress Emily Kinney reprises her role as Beth in a “what if” episode of Dead City that imagines a life without the zombie apocalypse. She became emotional when reading the script, revealing that she immediately started crying. Kinney also contributed to the episode’s music, performing one of her original songs that connects to Maggie’s narrative.
When Beth died in TWD season five, Maggie was about to find her and hug her, but she couldn’t. The hug between the sisters in Central Park, New York, in Dead City, represented a reunion that had been expected for more than 11 years, offering fans an emotional outcome that never happened in the main timeline.
“I don’t know if it was a direct reference to season five, but yes, I consider it a hug that could never happen,” Kinney said of the moment between Beth and Maggie. “For me and the character, it was very gratifying to see my sister again… When we were separated in the zombie apocalypse, I never had that reunion. So it was quite satisfying.”
“I love working with Lauren,” she added of reuniting with Cohan. “I feel like doing scenes with her has always been very easy. She’s a great listener and scene partner. It’s always been simple to do more emotional scenes with her, and it’s always felt very natural for her to be my on-screen sister.”
The reunion was equally significant for Cohan, who said Kinney’s return allowed both the characters and fans to find some kind of closure to Beth’s story after so many years.
“It’s particularly special and potent because we never see these characters have a chance to grieve,” Cohan, 44, said in a separate interview. “You get to mourn Beth even more because you’re celebrating her in the episode, knowing, just imagining, what Beth could have done.”
At the end of the episode, when Beth sings, viewers briefly hear Kinney perform an excerpt from one of her original songs, “Reasons to Stay Alive”, an idea that the actress herself presented.
“The song I sing before the Christmas carol is mine,” Kinney said. “In the script, it just said, ‘Beth sings a folk song.’ Once I agreed to come back, we met with showrunner Seth Hoffman and music composer Ian Hultquist, and asked, ‘What song should she sing?’ And I said, ‘I’d like to suggest my song’ because it sounded perfect.”
“The song popped into my head immediately when I read the script,” she continued. “They only show the ending, but if you read the lyrics, it lines up with what Maggie is going through in the episode, including a divorce and a lack of money for the farm. It seemed to fit the narrative perfectly.”
Although the episode marks a reunion for Beth, Kinney revealed that this Dead City appearance wasn’t the first time she’d heard about a possible return to The Walking Dead universe.
“No one had mentioned it to me directly, but I know that both showrunner Seth Hoffman and Scott Gimple, when pitching ideas, raised the possibility several times over the years: ‘How could we reincorporate Beth?'” Kinney recalled. “I know this idea has been under discussion for some time.”
Kinney mentioned that there have also been talks of her returning to the original Walking Dead series before it concludes its 11-season run in 2022.
“As we approached the season finale of the original The Walking Dead, I remember there was a question about… was there a way to bring back a lot of the old cast members, maybe in a dream sequence?” Kinney recalled. “I don’t think it ever actually came to fruition. But I remember showrunner Angela Kang reaching out to gauge people’s interest and availability. This was the first time there was a concrete offer.”
“It’s nice that it wasn’t just a dream or something,” she added of her guest-starring turn in Dead City.
Regarding the possibility of seeing more of this alternate reality TWD in the future, Cohan joked: “I don’t think anything is off the table.”
While there is no information about Kinney’s possible return to Dead City or another part of the TWD universe, the actress is working on new music, including an EP titled “I Cried When You Died,” inspired by her time on The Walking Dead, set for release on September 18.
“That’s what everyone tells me when they see me at the airport or something,” Kinney said, referring to fans’ reactions to Beth’s death. “In a way, it became a joke among my friends.”
“It’s funny because I didn’t know I was going to get this offer when I made them,” Kinney said of the TWD-related songs, which she sent to Gimple in case they could be “useful” in the show’s universe. “I wasn’t ready to start my next album yet. And I was talking to my friend Ben, who produces a lot of my stuff, and we decided, ‘Let’s record these songs. Everyone’s been asking for them.’ So I randomly recorded ‘Struggling Man,’ ‘Hold On,’ all the songs that Beth sang on the show.”
The EP will also feature a song called “Steven’s Weed,” named after The Walking Dead’s Steven Yeun, who played Glenn Rhee, Maggie’s husband, before his brutal death on the show in 2016. Kinney explained that the track addresses “a time when I smoked a little too much of Steven’s weed.”
In addition to Dead City, Kinney’s next original album, “A Bright Green Dot of Hope,” will be released next year, and the actress will also return to acting in a project she describes as a “creepy romantic comedy.”
“We’ll see what comes next,” Kinney said, grateful to fans who continue to show support long after Beth’s story on TWD ends. “We do so much work as actors and writers that people never see a lot of auditions that no one watches. The way Walking Dead fans have embraced my music or watched TV shows I’ve been on, becoming an audience for my work, is lucky and something really special. I’m really grateful for that.”
