Former Walking Dead actor Vincent Ward, who played Oscar in the third season of the zombie drama, was “pissed” when his character was killed off because “nobody” told him before he read the script of what would be his final episode. Oscar and other still-living inmates were discovered inside the Georgia prison reclaimed by Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) and his group of apocalypse survivors, who went to war with the Governor (David Morrissey) and the neighboring Woodbury. Because he joined main characters Rick, Michonne (Danai Gurira) and Daryl (Norman Reedus) on a mission to rescue the captured Glenn (Steven Yeun) and Maggie (Lauren Cohan), Ward wasn’t expecting Oscar to be shot dead during a raid on Woodbury in the midseason finale, “Made to Suffer,” after appearing in only seven episodes.
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“I didn’t even know I was getting killed,” Ward told Commando TV when asked if his departure from the series after seven episodes was an emotional one. “I was pissed. And the reason I was pissed was because nobody told me. I was in makeup and I saw a script sitting there, I picked up the script, and the first thing you do is you look for your name. I got all the way to the end, and it said, ‘Oscar dies.’ I was like, ‘What?!’ I grabbed the script and I just threw it down.”
Minutes later, Lincoln entered. He’d just heard the news and came to tell Ward he enjoyed their time working together, and was surprised when Ward told him no one informed him about Oscar’s death before the script reading.
“He said, ‘Nobody told you anything?’ I said, ‘No, I just read it right now.’ He said, ‘I’ll be back,’” Ward recalled. “Before I knew it, all kind of producers and people were coming in apologizing to me. Because they’re supposed to tell you.”
“But in the same breath,” Ward continued, “to their defense, when you sign your contract, they kind of tell you how many episodes you’re gonna do. But in my mind, I was like, ‘Okay, they’ve got me hanging around with the main people now, I might be around a little longer.’ No. It didn’t happen.”
Oscar was part of the original prison crew — Tomas (Nick Gomez), Andrew (Markice Moore), Big Tiny (Theodus Crane) and Axel (Lew Temple) — and was shot and killed during the raid on the Governor’s neighboring Woodbury.
“It was a mistake. The showrunner, he didn’t tell me,” Ward said. “He apologized, over and over and over. I hold no grudges. I had a great time. … I hold no grudges, but it happened. I’m human, so I’m gonna be pissed. But I was a little down afterwards, because I thought I did enough to stay around a little longer.”
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