Sarah Wayne Callies returns to Walking Dead universe as a director

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

For the first couple seasons of AMC's The Walking Dead, actress Sarah Wayne Callies was at the center of a lot of drama as her character Lori Grimes. She thought her husband Rick was dead when the zombie apocalypse broke out, she slept with his volatile best friend Shane, then Rick shows up alive, soon after Lori realizes she's pregnant. Is the baby Rick or Shane's? Shane went nuts and wanted to kill Rick so he could have Lori for himself. That didn't work out for Shane, but Lori only made it a handful episodes after that issue was resolved. She died a sad death early in the third season, passing away during childbirth in a dirty room in an abandoned prison.

Callies has been out of The Walking Dead for six seasons at this point, but she will soon be returning to the world of the show. She's not going to be making a cameo for a Lori flashback or anything like that, this isn't an acting job. She's going to be behind the camera, and not for an episode of The Walking Dead, it's for The Walking Dead's companion series Fear the Walking Dead.

Callies revealed in a recent interview that she has directed an episode of Fear the Walking Dead's upcoming fifth season.

Discussing what it's like to go from acting to directing, she told The ISA:

You're still looking at story, but your job is the macro. So far the only thing I don't like about it is having to direct myself, and so the great joy of the Fear job is I'm not acting in it. And so I get to just focus on connecting with the actors and tracking the story and working with the department heads. It's so awesome, I love it."

The actors Callies could have had a chance to connect with while working on Fear the Walking Dead include Alycia Debnam-Carey, Colman Domingo, Danay Garcia, Ruben Blades, Lennie James, Austin Amelio, Maggie Grace, Garret Dillahunt, Jenna Elfman, Mo Collins, Daryl Mitchell, Alexa Nisenson, and new series regular Karen David.

A premiere date for Fear the Walking Dead season 5 hasn't been announced yet, but the announcement should be coming soon since there are only three episodes left to air of The Walking Dead season 9.