Not surprisingly, AMC has announced that fan favorite Yvette Nicole Brown will step in as the host of ‘The Walking Dead Season 9 Preview Special’ and the after-show chatfest, ‘Talking Dead’. This follows the accusations that the previous host Chris Hardwick was emotionally and sexually abusive to his ex-girlfriend Chloe Dykstra. Brown was announced last week as the moderator of ‘The Walking Dead’ and ‘Fear the Walking Dead’ panels at Hall H at SDCC and before that, she appeared on ‘Talking Dead’ 15 times and impressed fans with her passion for the series and her thorough notebooks filled with insights. She also hosted the first season of Syfy’s ‘Cosplay Melee’ and has served as a guest host on ‘The View’, ‘The Talk’, ‘The Chew’, ‘The Real’ and is a frequent guest on various talk and game shows, including ‘The Gong Show’ and ‘The $100,000 Pyramid’. When Dykstra went public with her accusations, fans almost immediately rallied behind super fan Brown to replace Hardwick.
AMC released the following statement:
“Yvette Nicole Brown will step in as an interim guest host of The Walking Dead Season 9 Preview Special on August 5 and Talking Dead when it returns following the premiere of Fear the Walking Dead on August 12, as we work to complete our assessment related to Chris Hardwick.”
In the meantime, San Diego Comic-Con will take place this weekend and Brown will be there, along with Andrew Lincoln, Danai Gurira, Melissa McBride, Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Norman Reedus. As for Hardwick, he may appear unofficially, as his wife, Lydia Hearst will be present for the ‘Z Nation’ panel on Thursday, July 19, at 5pm.
The ‘Fear the Walking Dead’ panel takes place on Friday, July 20 at 10:15am.
Alycia Debnam-Carey, Colman Domingo, Lennie James, Danay Garcia, Jenna Elfman, Maggie Grace, and Garret Dillahunt join executive producers and showrunners Andrew Chambliss and Ian Goldberg, executive producers Scott M. Gimple, Robert Kirkman, Gale Anne Hurd, and Dave Alpert, and special effects makeup supervisor and executive producer Greg Nicotero to discuss where the series left off in the midseason finale and what to look forward to when the show returns August 12. Panelists will also participate in a Q&A session and offer an official sneak preview of the second half of season 4.
The ‘Walking Dead’ panel takes place the same day, at 12:15pm.
‘The Walking Dead’ and ‘Talking Dead’ will return in the fall, but as for whether Hardwick or Brown will return to host remains to be seen.
