With as many fans as The Walking Dead has amassed over the years, it's no surprise that some of them take their enjoyment of the show and its actors more seriously than others, which leads to some...special encounters and requests. Actress Brighton Sharbino, whose Lizzie Samuels was one half of the show's most controversial scene, apparently deals with a particularly macabre subsection of the fanbase. Here are some things she has to deal with as a former Walking Dead star.
People will come up and have me pretend to suffocate their baby for a picture. And someone licked my hand. No one prepares you for what to do when someone licks your hand.
Brighton Sharbino, who shared this answer for EW's The Ultimate Guide to The Walking Dead, seems to have it all wrong. I don't think anyone is prepared for handling a situation where you're meant to pretend to smother an infant, whether it's for a picture or some other unsettling occasion. I can deal with someone coming up to me and licking my hand. Dogs do that kind of thing. (Friendly ones, anyway.) But eesh on the baby-smothering.
It's all the more strange to me with Sharbino still only being 14 years old. I guess if stabbing one's sister and being shot in the back of the head on a TV show don't desensitize you, the fans will. Though she didn't mention it, she almost definitely gets plagued by people telling her to "look at the flowers." I'd imagine she hears that more than she hears the word "hello."
For another weird and gross fan story, next up is actor Josh McDermitt.
One assumes that even actors with the most fleeting performances on The Walking Dead go through unpredictably odd encounters, so playing fan favorite Eugene necessarily means the genial Josh McDermitt gets more than his fair share of uncomfortable requests. And it takes little imagination to guess that a lot of it has to do with his signature mullet hairdo.
I will be walking in the streets and people will shout out to me 'Liar!' . . . One fan wanted to bite my hair and put it in their mouth! And I was like, 'That's disgusting!' I just washed [my hair] in grime and, more importantly, I don't know where your mouth has been.
Josh McDermitt shared that story with the New York Post, and it immediately made me want to take a quick shower. (Not the part about people calling him a liar, believe it or not.) There is something extremely creepy and suspicious about asking to put someone else's hair in one's mouth. I don't know what kind of suspicions would arise, but you don't expect life-changing advancements from a person who wants to suck on a mullet.
Next up: Norman Reedus.
Given his all-encompassing appeal to fans of all ages and genders, Norman Reedus probably has a strange fan story to go with every day of the year. We've heard about those who bit him and the strange gifts he's received in the form of fake boobs, and there's even someone out there who is a Daryl Dixon-for-hire. But what's one of the most bizarre things someone has ever asked him to do? That's easy.
There was a lady that walked up in a trenchcoat and she was sort of nervous and she goes, 'Will you hold my chicken?' She opens up her trenchcoat and pulls out this chicken ... so I held her chicken.
Norman Reedus shared that story during a past appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, and it's hard to imagine that any incidents have occurred since then that eclipse getting handed a chicken that was, just moments earlier, stuffed inside of a trenchcoat. That woman would be a weird fan of The Walking Dead even if she hadn't met Reedus at that point, simply for not keeping her chicken in a normal setting.
The Walking Dead will debut Season 7 on Sunday, October 23, at 9:00 p.m. ET. We can probably expect Negan's first victim to experience a few strange fan requests of his or her own. To see what's coming to the non-implant boob tube in the future, check out our fall TV schedule.
