They can’t all be as good as Melissa McBride …

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We’re now seven seasons deep into AMC’s The Walking Dead (said in requisite gravelly voice), and it’s safe to say that the vast majority of casting decisions made by TWD’s powers that be are spot on.

From main cast members like Andrew Lincoln, Melissa McBride and Lennie James to actors that played one-time characters in bottle episodes, like John Carroll Lynch’s turn as psychiatrist turned cheesemaker Eastman in Here’s Not Here, the casting and acting is by and large brilliant.

But every now and then they stumble and make some quite questionable choices indeed, creating characters that seem to serve no purpose in the show and casting actors that seem hard-pushed to bring them to life and stick out like a sore thumb amongst the show’s more talented cast.

On the upside, 70% of the characters coming up are dead or presumed dead, so at least TWD had the good grace to kill off most of their casting mistakes.

The other 30%, however? It might be time to script a sticky end for them and do away with their bad acting once and for all.

10. Overzealous Shadowboxing Woodbury Extra

Singling out the performance of a presumably non-professional extra might seem like a low blow. While it’s true that an extra’s acting by no means needs to be as good as the show’s main cast, there is actually more to the role than just hovering around in background filling out space and when an extra’s performance – however small it may be – is distractingly bad, it kind of cheapens the whole thing.

Case in point: an extra from Season 3 who shall henceforth be known as ‘Overzealous Shadowboxing Woodbury Extra’. Cast your mind back to The Suicide Kings, in which the nutjob Governor orders brothers Merle and Daryl Dixon to fight to the death for sh*ts and giggles.

While they’re being egged on by a crowd of rowdy Woodburians, there’s a particularly enthusiastic extra whose taken her blood-baying motivation a bit too far with a bit of laughable shadowboxing. She’s supposed to be showing the savagery at work below the seemingly idyllic Woodbury, but comes off looking more like a drunken T-Rex than brainwashed, jeering spectator.

She’s not the only distractingly bad Woodbury extra, of course. There’s also the would-be Woodbury defector who can’t convincingly shake her head in horror and the sleeveless top wearing dude whose fist pump is similarly over the top. But this one was bad enough to be immortalised in GIF form for evermore.

9. Chandler Riggs – Carl Grimes

It might be a bit mean to hate on child actors, and while it’s true that Chandler Riggs is improving the more experience he gets, there’s still something a tad cringey about his performance as Carl Grimes. Or as Rick says it, ‘Corrrallll’.

The funny thing about Riggs is that he often does a great job with his more dramatic, darker scenes, like after Lori’s death or when he and Rick think Judith has died after the fall of the prison. But in scenes that call for a more natural style (or as natural as someone can be in a zombie apocalypse) then he seems to fall flat. It kind of makes for an inconsistent, hit and miss performance that makes his character less believable.

Riggs is still developing his craft though, so there’s a good chance he’ll get better as Carl’s story progresses. Moreover, of the other kid actors on the show he’s definitely the best of the worst.

8. Travis Love – Shumpert/Vatos Extra

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We’ve already gone over how distractingly a bad extra can be, and that’s even more the case with a bad actor in a redshirt role. Sure, they’re only distinguishable from extras in that they get a line or two before inevitably being killed off but in the casting hierarchy they’re still more noticeable and therefore required to give a halfway convincing performance.

Season 3’s Shumpert, aka the Bowman for his archery skills, played by Travis Love, is a perfect example. In case you need a refresher – and you’d be forgiven considering how little he did – Shumpert was one of the Governor’s henchmen alongside Martinez, and suffered a rather unceremonious offscreen death in Season 4.

All the actor really did was stand around looking tough, menacing and weary. Which is kind of understandable considering he was under the thumb of the increasingly crazy Governor but he could’ve given the role a better go with a more, shall we say, nuanced range of facial expressions.

Even when he did get a bit of dialogue – the highlight of which was “Martinez, we got biters!” – it wasn’t all that great. Convincing enough yeah, but hardly an Emmy award winning performance.

Fun fact: Travis Love also played a Vatos Gang extra (the seemingly scary but actually lovely group looking after abandoned nursing home residents) in Season 1 – a role in which he also stood around looking tough and not saying much.

7. Multiple Babies – Judith Grimes

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To date, a grand total of sixteen tiny actresses (seven sets of twins and two-thirds of a set of triplets to be precise) have played the character of Judith Grimes since her first appearance in Season 3. This constantly evolving cast of babies is proof of how hard it is to write an infant character into a TV show, especially one set in a zombie apocalypse.

After going against comic canon and not killing off Judith during the fall of the prison, you’d assume the powers that be had made an executive decision to set her up as a central character. But thanks to pesky child labour laws, whichever baby actor is playing Judith can’t actually be on set that much. Essentially, she’s less of a character and more a prop trotted out every now and then just to remind us viewers she’s still alive and kicking.

Not to mention the fact that kids this young simply can’t act. Any appropriate reaction like looking scared or bewildered is just pure happenstance. Judith’s casting and the performance of the actress(es) who play her will only be more of an issue in future seasons too. Either TWD’s casting department need to find a pair of young twins that are amazingly good at acting (unlikely), or just keep Lil’ Ass Kicker as a background prop which will be a hell of a lot more difficult to explain away the older the character gets.

Would it be absolutely heinous to suggest it may have made better sense to have killed Judith off back at the prison – or at the hands of mad Lizzie or that random Termite that had murderous designs on her in Season 5 – and just done away with the character entirely?

6. Liz E. Morgan – Tina

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You’d be forgiven for forgetting who the hell Tina is considering the record speed with which she was introduced and dispatched and the rather forgettable performance by actress Liz E. Morgan behind her. But to refresh your memory, she’s the diabetic sister of ole iron face Dwight’s wife Sherry who made her first and only appearance in Season 6’s Always Accountable.

Like Shumpert before her, Tina was just a lowly redshirt and arguably inserted into the plot to help Daryl look like a hero. But that’s still no excuse for bad acting, and to be fair she got a good amount of screen time in that episode so it’s not like she didn’t have anything to work with.

But instead of making an impact as a feisty diabetic lass who’s somehow managed to survive the apocalypse against the odds, Morgan gives a wishy-washy performance that’s far from memorable. In fact, the most memorable part of it was her death scene which was one of the show’s more laughable deaths to date.

And if you can’t convincingly get eaten by zombies, then you really have no place being a part of The Walking Dead.

5. Christine Woods – Officer Dawn Lerner

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There was a lot riding on the performance of actress Christine Woods as Officer Dawn Lerner – the stern, stoic and slap-happy main villain of Season 5’s Grady Memorial Hospital arc, who oversaw her group of rampant rapist lawmen and not so merry band of slaves with an iron fist.

As the show’s first real female villain (Lori Grimes and mad Mary the cannibal Termite aside), Woods really had to put on a good show to hopefully pave the way for more non-male antagonists in the future.

But in the end, Woods’ was a rather unconvincing pop at villainy that swerved maniacally between sincere, morally conflicted good cop and power-tripping bad cop punctuated by cheesy dialogue delivered in the most trite fashion.

In her defence though, Woods’ character was responsible for killing off the even more annoying Beth Greene so there’s that to thank her for at least.

4. Major Dodson – Sam Anderson

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Maybe it’s because Sam is the reason his mother got devoured by zombies, which in turn made Rick chop her hand off, which in turn made his brother shoot Carl through the face … but Major Dodson’s pale, wide-eyed ‘I can’t handle the zombie apocalypse’ thing got annoying after a few episodes.

The kids of Alexandria are the sheltered and naïve antithesis of Carl Grimes, and not every child is going to take to the zombie apocalypse like a duck to water. But all Dodson does is look petrified and not the kind of petrified that makes you want to protect him, but the kind that makes you want to chuck him into a herd of zombies yourself. A slightly more varied performance would’ve made his short time on the show a hell of a lot more bearable.

His other acting credits to date may have something to do with it. He spent a few episodes on American Horror Story held captive by a killer clown and co-starred in fellow apocalypse-set drama Left Behind with Nicolas Cage (maybe Cage gave him acting advice?), so it’s not like he’s had a good mentor to look up to or much practice looking anything but scared.

3. Cherie Dvorak – Donna

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This article might be religiously roasting the redshirts, but The Walking Dead’s casting department really needs to up its game with them. Expendable as they may be it’s still imperative that the actor behind the redshirt can actually, you know, act. Take, for example, Season 3’s Donna played by Cherie Dvorak.

Fans of Robert Kirkman’s original comics will know that the TV version of Donna differs greatly from her comic counterpart. Her role is reduced from the mother of twins Ben and Billy (who sort of became Lizzie and Mika on the show) to that of tiny bit part killed off almost as quickly as she’s introduced.

Of course, that’s more a problem with writing but still – you have to work with what you’ve got right? And Dvorak quite frankly doesn’t. After her debut in Made to Suffer when Tyreese and other Woodbury defectors are on their way to the prison, she immediately gets her arm chomped on by a walker and proceeds to demonstrate her character’s pain by limping. An arm bite that causes acute limping? Okay.

She might just be a redshirt, but a basic sense of anatomy and a few acting skills to go along with it wouldn’t have gone amiss.

2. Alanna Masterson – Tara Chambler

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She’s been kicking around since Season 4, but after all that time it’s hard to be too taken with Alanna Masterson, aka lone lesbian of the apocalypse Tara Chambler.

Perhaps it’s because her character is written as the loveable goofball of the group who constantly fist bumps her way through the apocalypse, but there’s more to Masterson’s disappointing performance than just her awkward attempts at infusing humour into a largely unfunny character.

Her under-reactions to the deaths of Tara’s nearest and dearest are proof of Masterson’s inability to put a bit of emotion and depth into her character. After her witnessing sister Lilly get swarmed by walkers during the fall of the prison she’s more nonplussed than devastated.

Similarly in Season 6 when she gets the triple whammy of her girlfriend Denise’s death and her friends Abe and Glenn’s demise, Masterson looks more despondent and slightly glum than truly reeling from the devastating news.

Not every actor becomes a stereotypical Italian widow when their character is in mourning, but a little more reaction than ‘meh’ wouldn’t go amiss. You have to wonder if the reason why Masterson doesn’t put more emotion into her performance is because she’s not capable of a convincing emotional reaction.

1. Emily Kinney – Beth Greene

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Up until Season 4, Beth Greene was pretty much a background character in The Walking Dead content with the odd suicide attempt, playing babysitter to Judith and singing folk ditties to boost morale and that was tolerable.

But then those few bottle episodes focusing on Daryl and Beth rolled around followed by the Grady Hospital arc and the more screen time and dialogue Emily Kinney got, the more her acting talents – or lack thereof – became apparent.

There’s something grating about Beth (and by extension, Kinney). That wide-eyed and innocent, deer in headlights innocence shtick this far into an apocalypse feels cutesy and forced – I mean, by this point she’s had a couple of boyfriends die on her, seen her father beheaded and presumably killed a few gross-looking walkers and she’s still looking on the bright side? Not buying it.

If Kinney had infused her performance with a bit more grittiness and cynicism by the time her death rolled around it would’ve made for a far more believable Beth.

A couple of accent coaching lessons to realise there’s more to a Southern accent than just dropping the ‘g’ off every word ending in ‘ing’ and learning to cry without her face looking like a mixture of confusion and constipation might’ve helped too.

Agree with this list? Which other casting decisions did the show get wrong? Share your thoughts down in the comments.