You might need to gather an extra grain of salt or two for this rumored Walking Dead casting, but the effort will have been worth it if it turns out to be true. Fans keeping an eye on the production claim to have possibly seen Lost and Sons of Anarchy actor Harold Perrineau on the set, perhaps indicating that the fan favorite character Ezekiel has finally been cast.
Again, this is just a rumor put out there by Spoiling Dead Fans, and we’re more likely to see Rick end up as Negan’s victim than we are to see AMC come out and confirm that this is, in fact, the latest bit of casting on The Walking Dead, and that there’s a trophy being express-mailed to the Spoiling Dead Fans site owner. Still, there have been a lot of things that the network and show producers have stayed mum on that spoiler reveals have gotten right, so there’s no reason to think that this is completely hogwash already.
After all, Harold Perrineau fits some of the characteristics that Ezekiel does. He’s black, obviously, and he’s in his fifties. And while he doesn’t have quite the bulky build that The Kingdom’s leader shows off in the comics, that’s not necessarily a dealbreaker. I mean, we’re expected to believe that this guy can handle the tiger Shiva – whose presence has also been spotted on the set in the form of an animatronic tiger puppet – but Ezekiel was a zookeeper, so his animal talents were more about instincts than brute strength.
For another completely random example of circumstantial evidence, if you head over to Harold Perrineau’s Twitter page to see who the actor followed recently, you’ll find that Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman is right at the top of the list. If that’s just curious coincidental timing, I might be more impressed than I would be if Perrineau is actually playing Ezekiel. That’s the kind of fateful connection that seems like it’d be written by a TV scribe.
A stint on The Walking Dead wouldn’t be Perrineau’s first time in a zombie apocalypse. He also had a role in the Syfy horror Z-Nation, although it was definitely short-lived enough to not automatically count out him joining another zombie show so soon after. (You can find both Z-Nation and Walking Dead streaming on Netflix.) It’s unclear when or if any further news will come from this rumor, but we’re going to go out on the water and yell “Walt!” to see if that helps anything.
Not a lot of news has come out about The Walking Dead Season 7 just yet, although we know that there might be a younger character heading to the show, along with other Kingdom characters and Saviors for Negan to boss around. The Season 6 finale may still be taking up a lot of fan conversations, but I can’t wait to see what other new elements we’ll get when the show returns in October. And if one of those new elements is Harold Perrineau running a community on a school ground, I’m definitely on board.
While waiting to hear more, check out everything else premiering in the next few months, check out our summer TV schedule.
