The Walking Dead's Emily Kinney Talks About Beth's Singing

Although some major events took place in the life of her character Beth Greene on Sunday night's episode of AMC's The Walking Dead, the post-show interview with series regular Emily Kinney focused less on what might happen to her for the rest of Season Four and more on her character's propensity to sing at the drop of a hat. Kinney, who is herself a musician and who has been known to play concerts at The Walking Dead conventions like next weekend's Walker Stalker Con in Chicago, has found herself the object of derision fairly often when Beth sings in what's usually such a dark and dour world. "The kidnappers will just dump her on the train tracks the moment she starts to sing," another reporter joked with me earlier this week. "'Get ouuuuuuttt!'"

So it's no surprise that the singing comes up in this week's interview...but the fact that Tom Waits gets more name drops than Andrew Lincoln may be a little odd. "[The singing scenes are] a good way to give a glimpse into Beth's life, in a way," Kinney said. "With the kind of music a person listens to, you feel like you really know somebody. When I first meet people, I send some songs to them. So I think having Beth sing on the show is a good way to let people feel like they know a bit of her inner life. This season I sing another Tom Waits song to Judith, 'I Don't Wanna Grow Up.' Beth is definitely a Tom Waits fan." She added, "I'm sure she's aware of Top 40 music because she's a teenager, but I'm sure she goes off and searches for something else, too. I've definitely thought that since she's from Georgia, there's some music from there in her collection. But I think her taste is a little more indie, too. I think she's influenced by whatever her mom was into — and that's why there's that 'Parting Glass' style of song."