The Walking Dead’s Big Surprise Guest Speaks Out

It’s as though we just can’t get rid of this one.After her shocking death early in the season, Rick Grimes’s wife Lori keeps reappearing in the confines of the prison where Rick and his band of survivors are holed up. The last time, in a spin on a plot point from the comic books that serve as the series’ source material, she was on the other end of a telephone. Tonight, though, she was there in the flesh (as it were) and haunting Rick from a perch above the prison’s inhabitants.What did actress Sarah Wayne Callies think about returning to the set again–and what really bad idea did she help the writers decide against? Read on, courtesy Entertainment Weekly:

The idea for this last scene went through a certain amount of geneses. I remember at a certain point instead of the way that it happens in the episode, there was talk about Lori showing up as a zombie, but her being a hallucination. And then she and Rick would have a conversation about something. And I remember being pretty vocal about that. I was like, “I think talking zombies is bad for the show.” So there are a bunch of ideas that kicked around, but we ended up here. I think the thought behind the wedding dress is, if he’s going to hallucinate his wife, he’s going to picture her the day he remembers her being the happiest. His mind is going to cast about for the most idealized version of Lori. And in a way, what is true is that I have never played Lori Grimes again after that death scene. Because everything I’m doing now — from the phone call to this wraith like appearance — I’m not playing Lori anymore. I’m playing Rick. And that was an interesting switch, to realize it’s not about who is Lori? It’s about who does Rick’s diseased mind need Lori to be right now? So Andy and I did a lot of talking about that kind of thing because it’s not about, let me come with my ideas as an actor. It’s more about, “Andy, tell me what to do because this is your character I’m playing.”I think my experience of playing Lori is a lot like my experience of coming back to set. I am a ghost. I am kind of a phantom, and a reminder of things that have come before and the era that contained Jon Bernthal and Frank Darabont. I’m a reminder of the pilot days, and it’s both comforting and unsettling — for me to be there, and for the cast. There’s a lot of big emotions that are involved with leaving a show, and coming back can be complicated. Because in some ways you’ve healed those little holes in your heart. And you come back and they kind of start to open back up.