‘The Walking Dead’: Chandler Riggs Answers If He’d Ever Return

Former Walking Dead star Chandler Riggs would reprise his role as Carl Grimes in a flashback or hallucination if asked, despite his premature “firing” that came when Carl was killed off midway through Season Eight.

“Great, yeah, it’d be a lot of fun,” Riggs said at Walker Stalker Con London. “I’m super down, yeah. That would be awesome.”

Riggs has since made peace with moving on from Carl Grimes after nearly eight full seasons, but the star admitted at the convention he’s yet to fully catch up on Season Nine when he was surprised to learn half-sister Judith (Cailey Fleming) now has a younger brother, RJ (Antony Azor), the first biological son shared by Michonne (Danai Gurira) and Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln).

“I am so sorry, I’m not caught up on the show,” Riggs said when asked how Carl would have reacted to his half-brother. Upon being filled in, Riggs said, “Oh! Oh, oh, okay, thank you, wow. Yeah, I have no idea. Weird. No idea.”

“I watched the first few episodes [of Season Nine],” Riggs explained, “but I’m not caught up with the rest of the season yet, I’m sorry.”

The 19-year-old star has kept busy: he ended a year-long hiatus from television in February when he appeared on his new show, ABC drama A Million Little Things, and has since signed to Steve Aoki’s Dim Mak Records label as an electronic music producer.

Is he jealous that Henry (Matt Lintz) inherited Carl’s comic book romance with former Whisperer Lydia (Cassady McClincy)? “No, I’ve known Matt for years, so it’s super cool seeing [that],” Riggs said.

The Henry actor was the third Lintz family member to board The Walking Dead, following sister Madison as Sophia — daughter of Carol (Melissa McBride) — and younger brother Macsen, who played Henry before the series jumped six years into the future.

“I’ve actually seen Macsen and Matt play that kind of character, and when I left the show, I was always curious to see how they were going to kind of fill Carl’s shoes and fill those storylines,” Riggs said. “It’s super cool seeing Cailey fill the storylines but it’s also awesome seeing Matt kind of fill those storylines, because again I’ve known him for so long, it’s super cool to see him kind of portray that storyline, I love it.”

Though Riggs was looking forward to playing out Carl’s role in the Whisperers arc, he enjoys his freed-up schedule and post-Walking Dead opportunities.

“Since I’m off the show, I’m able to do other things I’ve always wanted to do,” he explained.

“For eight years, from May to November out of the year, I couldn’t do anything else. And there’s a lot of things that shoot from May and November, so I couldn’t really audition for that many things. And I was pretty tied down with school and everything, and it’s really great to just kind of have an open world and do whatever I want. And now I’m on a new TV show, and it’s great to be able to do other things outside of The Walking Dead.”

The Walking Dead Season Ten returns this fall on AMC.

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