Fear the Walking Dead’s Dwight and Sherry Reunion Nearly Didn’t Happen

Dwight (Austin Amelio) and Sherry (Christine Evangelista) found each other again on Fear the Walking Dead, but something nearly kept them apart: scheduling conflicts. After Sherry fled Negan’s (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) Sanctuary on The Walking Dead, Dwight followed his “honey” across the country — and across TV shows — to tearfully reunite with Sherry on Season 6 of Fear. “Alaska,” aired in 2020, also reunited the two co-stars for the first time since a Season 7 episode of The Walking Dead in 2016. 

“I was really excited that that scene could even happen in the first place because I didn’t think our schedules were going to line up, and then they told me she was coming back,” Amelio said during a panel at Atlanta’s Fandemic Tour. “I was like, ‘This is awesome, we actually get to maybe someday find each other,’ and then it happened. Actually, we shot that our first day back.”

Until the Colman Domingo-directed episode, Evangelista recalled, “I hadn’t seen [Amelio] in years.” 

“That was the first thing we shot, literally the first thing,” Amelio said of “Alaska,” where Althea’s (Maggie Grace) search for Isabelle (Sydney Lemmon) ends with Dwight finding Sherry instead. “It was kind of crazy and cool to complete the puzzle.”

“To know she was coming back was awesome. I was really, really excited about that. It’s rare, it’s really hard to do in the business,” he said later. “People are always on shows and movies, so it’s really hard to have that line up. It was sort of like a cosmic appointment, I feel like.” 

Evangelista added it was “really lucky” the stars aligned to reunite Dwight and Sherry over on Fear. “It’s rare, almost impossible, to revise a character that you played how many years ago — five, six years ago — and get the chance to tell the story of how much that character has evolved and changed and grown, and in this case, hardened.” 

The Sherry actor previously explained scheduling conflicts impeded her return to The Walking Dead. Dwight appears for a final time on the mothership series after he’s banished by Daryl (Norman Reedus) in the Season 8 finale, and he crosses over to the spinoff to search for Sherry in Season 5. 

“I knew, over the years, there was some [idea of] trying to go back to The Walking Dead at some point,” Evangelista told Insider in 2020. “I know there were some scheduling things and I think when they transitioned Dwight over to Fear the Walking Dead, there was going to be, I think, a conscious effort to really unite them in a way that was just really earned and really dramatic. So I think the timing really worked out.”

The since-canceled Arrangement “was a very grueling schedule for me,” Evangelista said. “It was a very big commitment.”

Season 7 of Fear the Walking Dead returns with new episodes Sunday, April 17 on AMC and AMC+. Follow @CameronBonomolo on Twitter and @NewsOfTheDead for TWD Universe coverage all season long.