Alicia Witt Joins The Walking Dead As Robert Kirkman Warns "People Gotsta Die"

The Walking Dead makes its midseason premiere Sunday, Feb. 14 on AMC

By Chris Harnick Feb 04, 2016 6:15 PMTags
E! Placeholder Image

There's a new face coming to The Walking Dead. E! News has learned Alicia Witt will join AMC's zombie apocalypse drama.

"Proud & overjoyed to get to announce to you today: I'm joining one of the greatest shows ever made," she tweeted. "#TheWalkingDead! @WalkingDead_AMC #TWD"

Details about her mysterious role are being kept under wraps. Witt, whose other TV roles include Friday Night Lights and Justified, will also appear on Nashville. On the ABC series, she'll play Autumn, a country music star who's paid her dues. Witt shot to fame for her work on Cybill and later popped up on many TV shows including Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Two and a Half Men and Ally McBeal.

The real question is: Has she come to The Walking Dead just to die? The show did that with Ethan Embry in the season six premiere. And as executive producer and comic book writer Robert Kirkman so eloquently put it, "people gotsta die."

"I like to say, ‘people gotsta die,' because you want people to—you never want to lose that…if you go too long a period with characters surviving and being safe, you lose that element of, ‘Oh my god any of these characters can go at any moment,'' Kirkman said on Inside the Actors Studio airing on Thursday, Feb. 11 on Bravo. "It's a tremendously powerful engine that drives this whole thing and it is very emotional, but in comics it's me and the artist going, 'I guess those lines on paper don't exist anymore. Oh well.' I mean it's very emotional for us because we love the characters, but there isn't that added element that the TV show has where these are our friends that we see every day, but it doesn't stop us. We don't care."

The Walking Dead returns Sunday, Feb. 14 at 9 p.m. on AMC.

Watch: Which POTUS Candidate Would Survive a Zombie Apocalypse?