Chandler Rigg The Walking Dead

Characters get killed off on ‘The Walking Dead’.  It’s kind of the entire premise of the show.  But it doesn’t mean that the actors that play them are always happy about it, but rarely does the behind-the-scenes dirt become common knowledge.  Usually, the actor portraying the most-recently killed character pops up on ‘Talking Dead’ afterward and smiles and thanks the cast and crew, and perhaps goes off to tour the convention circuit signing autographs for fans.  And while Chandler Riggs has remained out of the spotlight, his father, William, famously took to social media to lambast Scott M. Gimple, the then-showrunner of ‘The Walking Dead’, over what he considered the poor treatment of Chandler when the show unexpectedly decided to kill off his character, Carl Grimes.

He is back, hoping to shed a little more light on the situation.  It appears that after a conversation with Gimple, Chandler Riggs was under the impression that he would be on the show for 2-3 more years at least.  Accordingly, Riggs bought a house close to the shooting location for the show near Atlanta, GA and enrolled at the University of Georgia.  William wrote, “Just to clarify once and for all: Chandler didn’t want to leave the show.”  But he says that just weeks later, Chandler and his parents were called in for a meeting with Gimple, where they were told that Riggs would only be needed for a few more weeks because Carl was being killed off.

William went on, writing:

“It was the middle of June, his 18th birthday was coming up in a couple of weeks, 5 episodes were filmed, and they asked for my wife and I to both be at a meeting with Chandler – which was a little odd.  It made me nervous but he and his manager assured me it was to plan for filming schedule, etc. Scott Gimple was the only one there and he told us that Carl would be gone in a few episodes. Chandler was absolutely devastated. I was disappointed Scott had been dishonest with a 17-year-old making life decisions and waited to tell us.”

You can read the entire post below:

Perhaps the producers should have waited a bit before deciding to take Carl out, as his death on the show was soon followed by the announcements that fellow leads Andrew Lincoln and Lauren Cohan were exiting the series.  And just Friday, it was made known that Danai Gurira was also leaving after a “handful” of episodes next season.

But for a large number of fans, the death of Carl was the last straw anyway, as the show’s ratings have plunged to series lows.  Make no mistakes, though, those ratings may be low for ‘The Walking Dead’, but they’re still rock solid and among the strongest of any program on TV.

How do you feel about Chandler Riggs being fired out of the blue after being told otherwise?  Are you still tuning in to ‘The Walking Dead’, or is this show now dead to you?