After being absent for the first three episodes of "The Walking Dead" Season 5, Emily Kinney finally made her return to the show on its Nov. 2 episode titled "Slabtown" with a number of new cast members, including Christine Woods as Dawn, Tyler James Williams as Noah, and Erik Jensen as Dr. Edwards.
In a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly, Kinney was asked what it was like to shoot the Beth-centric episode with a completely new cast.
"It still felt like the show because we have the same crew and Mike Satrazemis directed it and he is the [director of photography], so someone that I knew really well," the 29-year-old singer-actress said. "And it was all the same producers on set, so there's still a lot of the familiar faces that I'm used to, so it felt very homey to me to be filming and everything."
But Kinney admitted that she felt different seeing new faces on the set. "It is different having a different cast," the Wayne, Nebraska-born actress said. "It was a whole different cast and it was interesting in that I'm so comfy with Lauren [Cohan] (Maggie) and Steven [Yeun] (Glenn) and Norman [Reedus] (Daryl), and I felt just like Beth, like, 'Who are these people? Do I know them? Do I click with them? Do I not?'"
"So I was sort of very much feeling the same way as Beth was as far as how to learn about these new castmates," she explained. "And they're all really great and really cool. But it's a whole new world for Beth, and it was for me too."
Kinney added that Reedus and Andrew Lincoln (Rick) actually visited the hospital set while she was filming. "They were so encouraging and supportive," she said of her two fellow series regular.
Kinney also said that filming "Slabtown" was "challenging" for her as an actress. "[It was a] very emotional and physical episode," Kinney told The Hollywood Reporter. "All the elevator stuff entailed a lot of stunts and I did a lot of that stuff. It goes by so quickly. We shot those elevator scenes over a couple of days. Some of the stuff outside was physically demanding but it's really satisfying."
However, despite its physical and emotional demands, Kinney said that she loved the episode.
"I was really excited to be exploring a whole different world, to see how she would do on her own without any of her family or team. I loved the episode because I like how it unfolded with her discovering just how bad these people were," Kinney told TV Guide. "Along the way she's figuring out who is to be trusted and who is not to be trusted. She's slowly realizing what's going on in this world and in this system and figuring out that it's not for her."