AMC’s The Walking Dead shared a look at Norman Reedus and Melissa McBride discussing how long “The Book of Carol” was secretly in play.

While we’re not looking to bring up any ugliness from the past – especially with AMC’s Norman Reedus (Daryl) and Melissa McBride (Carol)-starring The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon: The Book of Carol set to hit our screens on Sunday, September 29th – it’s still hard to forget a lot of the ugliness heading into and even during the first season from a lot of folks making a whole lot of assumptions about why McBride didn’t join the series from the start. In many instances, Reedus ended up becoming the focus of a lot of the “Caryl” fans’ ire. But now? It’s a huge lovefest! In fact, the TWD social media account posted a clip earlier today of the interview the two gave, revealing what went into keeping Carol’s return a secret and how long McBride’s involvement has been in play.

Image: AMC Screencap

Speaking with Mr. Feelgood in support of his film The Bikeriders, Reedus shared that he had a number in mind in terms of how much longer he sees himself portraying Daryl Dixon- adding what it is about the spinoff series that keeps him coming back. “I think maybe six or seven more years. The ‘Daryl Dixon’ spin-off has given me an opportunity to take the show in a direction that’s different to the original show. I didn’t want to make the same show again in a different location. I wanted to reinvent it. And they let me, with the other like-minded people involved, invent something new. So it feels fresh to me. It’s in a different language. It’s shot a different way. It’s not really about zombies, and who’s going to get bit this week, it’s completely different. So, as long as I keep reinventing it, it’s fun,” Reedus shared.

Having the series take place overseas and uniquely represent the country that they’re filming in are important factors for Reedus. “We went to Paris, and we didn’t want to make an American show and drop it in a European country, not have it reflect anything of the place that we were filming it at. So we wanted the French people to look at it and feel like it was their show, too. And it worked. French people love the show. So I’m excited for them to see season two,” Reedus added.

During the first season of AMC & AMC+’s The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon, Daryl (Reedus) washes ashore in France and struggles to piece together how he got there and why. The series tracks his journey across a broken but resilient France as he hopes to find a way back home. As he makes the journey, though, the connections he forms along the way complicate his ultimate plan. The new season picks up where the first season left off, following Daryl and Carol (McBride) as they both confront old demons while she fights to find her friend and he struggles with his decision to stay in France, causing tension at the Nest. Additionally, Genet’s (Anne Charrier) movement builds momentum, setting Pouvoir on a violent collision course with the Union of Hope in the fight for France’s future.

The second season stars Reedus, McBride, Charrier, Clémence Poésy, Louis Puech Scigliuzzi, Laika Blanc Francard, Romain Levi & Eriq Ebouaney. Back in November 2023, we learned that Manish Dayal (The Resident) had been cast as Ash, an engineer from Boston who moved to the family weekend house in Maine after the onset of the apocalypse. Ash lives by a strict schedule based mostly around his daily flights in a retrofitted single-engine plane and mysterious visitations to his backyard greenhouse. Showrunner David Zabel, Scott M. Gimple, Greg Nicotero, Angela Kang, Brian Bockrath, Daniel Percival, Jason Richman, and Steve Squillante join Reedus & McBride as executive producers.