What it’s like to be a newbie on The Walking Dead – Looper

McAuliffe was nervous at first, of course. "It was kind of intimidating to be entering into a world that was so well established and that had been going on for so long, because these people are a family," McAuliffe tells Looper. "It's like I'm the newborn and I'm coming home."

And yet, the rest of the cast welcomed McAuliffe with open arms. "There's no one on that program that I've worked with that was anything less than a stellar human," McAuliffe says. "It was a pretty seamless transition from having nothing to do with the program to being one of the cast members. They made it easy for me."

It helped that Alden didn't have any baggage when he first appeared. Characters like Negan and Michonne were fan favorites before they ever appeared up on screen thanks to their roles in the Walking Dead comic book series. Alden isn't based on an existing character, though, and so McAuliffe's debut didn't carry the same weight. "It's been nice to do what I felt like I ought to do with the character and be unencumbered by the expectations of fans or the expectations of the comic book fans," McAuliffe admits.

Still, it's taking some time for The Walking Dead's producers to trust McAuliffe completely, especially when it comes to the series' infamous plot twists. When he was first cast on the show, McAuliffe was forbidden from telling anyone who he was playing. More recently, he didn't learn about the death of Katelyn Nacon's Enid, who his character Alden was dating, until very late in the game.

"It wasn't too long before we did the deed on set, honestly," McAuliffe says. "That's also because I'm a new guy so no one knows the way of my mind yet. They're hesitating to give me too much in case I spoil something, which I think is wise."

Similarly, McAuliffe hasn't been around long enough to really shape the direction in which his character is going, although that's starting to change. "There's a lot more spear work for me [in the newest episodes], which is something that I insisted on the writers putting in," McAuliffe says, before adding, "I'm not going to have the power to insist, of course, but I really hope that I get to utilize my spear so that it might become something of a trademark of my character."

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What it's like to be a newbie on The Walking Dead - Looper