Steven Yeun Calls Walking Dead Premiere 'Beautifully Terrible'

Even if Glenn makes it out of the Walking Dead premiere alive, the experience of shooting the episode left his portrayer wounded.

In an interview conducted mere hours before tonight’s opener (AMC, 9/8c), Steven Yeun acknowledged to our sister site Variety that “it’s always tough to see people exit the show,” adding, “As an actor you come to terms that things might be ending for somebody. You go over all the things you experienced together and what a great time it was for everyone.

“So [in] that way, it’s beautifully terrible,” he added. “It’s bittersweet.”

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Similarly, tonight’s special extended Talking Dead aftershow — featuring the entire Walking Dead cast — will be filled with “joy” and “sadness,” Yeun predicted. “It’s going to be a lot of things.”

Viewers themselves may be too emotionally raw to tune in. As showrunner Scott Gimple previously teased to TVLine, he and his fellow producers “spared no drop of awfulness, no iota of misery, no scintilla of pain” in depicting Negan’s rampage.

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That said, after the blood and tears have dried, Gimple promised Season 7 will feature moments of “lightness… humor… warmth…. It isn’t all misery.”

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