Michael Traynor Discusses Life After The Walking, The Future Nicholas Could've Had

The Walking Dead premiere did what Nicholas failed to do after several attempts: killed Glenn. [...]

The Walking Dead premiere did what Nicholas failed to do after several attempts: killed Glenn.

Several times the pizza boy faced grave danger but never more so than the time he and Nicholas were trapped on top of a dumpster surrounded by walkers. The shletered Alexandrian Nicholas decided he did not want to experience getting ripped to shreds by the undead so he shot himself in the head. Ultimately, his body fell into Glenn and prompted them both to fall into the pit of walkers.

Less than a week after Nicholas died on the AMC series, Walker Stalker held their annual Walker Stalker Convention in The Walking Dead's backyard - Atlanta's Georgia World Congress Center. At the time, Nicholas actor Michael Traynor could not say a word to anyone about Glenn's fate.

This year was a different story. Nicholas has been dead and gone for over a year and Traynor was allowed to catch up with ComicBook.com on the show floor.

"It was the big mystery of what was Glenn's fate gonna be?" Traynor said. "I had two lines of people. One were crying and in despair and the other had pitchforks and torches coming to kill me."

Being removed from the show does not mean Traynor is longer a member of the audience. He was one of the 17 million people who watched the Season 7 premiere last weekend and says it was "brutal in a sense that the heartache mixed with the gore was pretty unparalleled."

"The Walking Dead, it was really a gift," Traynor said. "When I got hired, I just hopped on a plane not knowing anything about what the role was gonna be and as the scripts kept coming and as the characters evolved, it was kind of a gift from the writers."

Had Nicholas not been cornered by an apparently infinite zombie horde in the "Thank You" episode of The Walking Dead, Traynor thinks his evolution as a survivor would have continued. "I think he has proven that he was pretty wiley when it came to fighting other humans," Traynor said. "It was just, he was terrified of those shambling mounds of death everywhere."

"I always joke that I died becoming a Nicotero treat," Traynor said, in reference to executive producer Greg Nicotero standing in as one of the zombies trying to chow down on Nicholas and Glenn.

A year later, Traynor stars in a new film called The Thinning as Mason King and recurs as a science teacher on The Fosters.

"The Thinning is like a dystopian future," Traynor said. "The idea of overpopulation is being dealt with by standardized testing."

"Mason King is a part of the enforcement organization for these tests and kind of a dark-eyed, slicked back force of nature that goes around killing teenagers," Traynor said.

The Walking Dead airs Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on AMC. For complete coverage and insider info all season long, follow @BrandonDavisBD on Twitter.

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