About two months ago, rumblings of ‘The Wire’ star Lawrence Gilliard Jr. joining the cast of ‘The Walking Dead’ for the next season started to emerge. As talks finalized, the rumor was that he was to play a character named Roy Stark, but as time went on, we learned that the actor would actually be playing Bob Stookey, a Woodbury resident haunted by his past as an army medic. Now, after all the talk of the actor and his character, we can now check out the very first picture of the new guy at the prison.
Along with this exclusive first look, Entertainment Weekly also provides some new information about Bob. While he appears in both the comic book and the ‘Road to Woodbury’ novel, the TV version of the character has been changed up a bit. This is nothing new as the show has definitely taken many liberties with the characters throughout their three seasons, so why stop now? Anyway, new showrunner Scott M. Gimple sheds some light on Stookey:
“His backstory is not entirely the same as in the comic and the novel. I think he’s seen things go bad over and over, and winding up in this stable place doesn’t shake him from his experience. He struggles with that.”
Actor Gilliard also chimes in by explaining that there’s more than meets the eye when it comes to the addition to the group that was brought in by Daryl Dixon about a week before the events of the fourth season:
“You can see there’s something deeper and darker that’s going on with this character, just from the first episode. We don’t really know what it is. We just know he’s got some issues that he’s dealing with.”
Just like most news coming out this week, we’re likely to find out more about this when ‘The Walking Dead’ takes the stage at San Diego Comic-Con later this week, so stay tuned to see if we find out more information about Bob Stookey after the panel on Friday.
