‘Fear The Walking Dead’ Newcomers Share New Details About Their Characters

Maggie Grace as Althea — “Fear the Walking Dead” newcomer Maggie Grace said that her character Althea both has a “transactional side” and a “soulful side.” AMC

Maggie Grace and Jenna Elfman talked about their roles in the upcoming Season 4 of AMC’s “Fear the Walking Dead.”

During the show’s panel at WonderCon Saturday afternoon, series newcomers Grace and Elfman were asked to describe their characters.

“I love her,” Grace said of her character Althea. “She’s unusually capable, she has a real agenda, a transactional side, a soulful side.”

Co-showrunner Ian Goldberg teased that Althea is someone who’s kind of thriving in the apocalypse in a way viewers haven’t seen before. While Althea’s backstory is being kept under wraps, Scott Gimple — who now oversees the whole “The Walking Dead” universe — said that part of why Althea is able to survive so well in the apocalypse has to do with who she was before the rise of the dead. “She hasn’t changed that much. She is uniquely qualified to be in the apocalypse,” Gimple said of Althea.

For her part, Elfman said at the panel that her character Naomi is a survivor who is in heavy trauma. “She’s skittish,” the actress said of her recluse role. “She needs a community, but there’s a lot of liability in a community.”

“Naomi’s a capable survivor,” co-showrunner Andrew Chambliss said of Elfman’s character in an interview with Entertainment Weekly last January. “[But] she’ll have her guard up as she crosses paths with Madison (Kim Dickens) and her family, and — as we’ll learn over the course of the season — she’ll have a very good reason for keeping people at a distance.”

Jenna Elfman as Naomi — Jenna Elfman as recluse survivor Naomi AMC

Aside from Grace and Elfman, Garrett Dillahunt is also joining the show in the series regular role of John. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly published earlier this week, Dillahunt said that John was a “trick shooter for fun” pre- apocalypse. And although Dillahunt is practicing a lot of exhibition shooting for the role, the actor said that they have decided that John is “more of a good shot than just, like, juggling guns.” “The main thing I asked for was that John a good shot,” Dillahunt shared. “It’s a pet peeve of mine when people with machine guns can’t hit a thing.”