The following is an extended version of the interview that appears in our December 2020 issue.
Photo by Bryan Papazov
Actress Aliyah Royale stars in the new AMC spinoff series “The Walking Dead: World Beyond.” Filmed in the Richmond region but set in Nebraska, the series follows four teenagers who survived the zombie apocalypse for 10 years in relative safety behind the walls of a college campus, part of the first generation to come of age in the new world. Royale portrays Iris Bennett, an intelligent young leader who learns that her father may be in danger, so she and her sister set off to try and save him, joined by two friends. We caught up with the former Maryland resident via phone at her home in Los Angeles to talk about filming in Richmond and what lies beyond.
Richmond magazine: What drew you to “The Walking Dead: World Beyond?”
Aliyah Royale: The fact that Iris is a young woman who is able to make her own choices, be decisive and be fearless enough to go after what she wants even if she knows the risks and the dangers involved, that’s important to me. I feel like even today in TV and film, the way that young adult characters are written, they’re naive, they’re reckless, they don’t know what they’re doing, there’s a whole bunch of hormones involved, and with “The Walking Dead: World Beyond,” they wrote Iris as someone who does not have everything figured out, but at least she knows what she wants and where she’s going.
“The Walking Dead: World Beyond” will air a two-episode season finale beginning at 9 p.m. Nov. 29 on AMC. (Photo by Macall Polay courtesy AMC)
RM: Were you familiar with “The Walking Dead” when you signed on to do the show?
Royale: “The Walking Dead” is a huge franchise. I was really young when the first season aired [Royale was 10 when the original season premiered], still young enough to be deeply terrified of the undead. My brothers have always been obsessed, and I jumped in at a good time, I’d say. I’m old enough to still be afraid but be able to use it and make it look as authentic as possible when I’m acting.
RM: “The Walking Dead” is known for being physically demanding, so did you do anything to prepare or train for the role?
Royale: It was definitely really difficult. The first week that we had landed in Richmond, we were doing four hours of stunt training a day, so just hand-to-hand combat, working with different weapons. We didn’t have our character weapons yet, so we weren’t sure exactly what we’d be working with, which meant we just had to try a whole bunch of things and get used to all different kinds of weapons, but the moment that we got our character weapons and I got my [rhinoceros] horn pole named Shiloh, I was over the moon. It’s your character’s weapon that really makes you feel like you’re a part of “The Walking Dead” universe.
RM: Is the name Shiloh something you made up or was it written into the show?
Royale: That’s definitely something I made up. I like, for example, Lucille from the original flagship [series] — Negan’s [barbed-wire baseball bat] — I like that he named her, and I just feel like everyone should name their weapon.
RM: Once you had Shiloh, did you have to do additional training to get comfortable using it?
Royale: She’s super long, she’s actually, if I stand her up next to me, the weapon is taller than I am, and she’s very, very heavy. Whenever there’s a stunt sequence or fight scene I definitely work with it, but I walk around with it all the time. In episodes one and two, I’m usually wearing it because it’s collapsible. I have it across my back or across me in some way, but after that I was like, “No, this weapon is so awesome that I just want her to be fully out all the time,” and she’s in my hand every moment that we’re on the road from then.
RM: What has it been like portraying that childhood friend dynamic between the characters?
Royale: It was really important for us to develop real relationships behind the scenes. Alexa [Mansour] really is like my sister. When we first got to Richmond — and I knew Richmond had a very haunted past just because my mom was born there, and I was born in Maryland so I went back and forth all the time — the first week that I was there, there was a ghost in my apartment, and it scared the lights out of me. I called Alexa, who plays my sister, Hope, and I was like, “There’s a ghost in my apartment,” and she was like, “Bring it on down,” and I moved in with her and we lived together for the entire rest of the shoot, the six months that we were shooting. We’re best friends on screen, best friends off screen, and I think that’s why our stories are so powerful is because we worked really hard when the camera wasn’t running to develop these relationships, and I’m really proud of that.
RM: Did you actually see a ghost, or was it more like a feeling?
Royale: I woke up from a really terrible nightmare, and I wanted to open my door to get some more light in my room, and as I opened my door it just walked on through me, and I was like “Oh, nope, nope.” I called my mom, who was all the way in LA crying, screaming, kicking. I was like, "This is unacceptable what just happened to me." I grew up with ghosts and ghost stories, paranormal happenings, so it’s kind of like normal for my family but at the same time unacceptable.
RM: Did you have any favorite spots you visited while in Richmond?
Royale: Is it Hollywood Cemetery? Is that the one that has the vampire?
RM: Yes, that’s a nearly 100-year-old legend.
Royale: One of my closest friends is actually someone that I met on “The Walking Dead: World Beyond.” His name is Dawson [Shea]. He plays young Felix. We were both in the city figuring out what should we do … and one of the immediate Google searches is this vampire among other things in this cemetery.
So, we decided to hop on over. … We saw all the cool things that we wanted to, all the tombs and everything, and then we walked into this [mausoleum], and there were these cast-iron light fixtures, and there was no wind at all. And this is cast iron, it can’t be moved that easily, and I remember there were two of these light fixtures, and one of them started rotating, so not moving back and forth, but rotating [laughs], which is how we know it wasn’t wind.
I remember being like, huh, only one of them was doing it, the other wasn’t. I was like, “Dawson, don’t be afraid, but look up [laughs], and he saw it, and he was like, “Aliyah, what’s happening?” I was like, “I don’t know, they just follow me everywhere, I’m so sorry.” [Laughs] [I said], “Hi, I don’t know who you are, but I hope that you are OK,” and exactly as I said that, it stopped moving, and I was like, “Well, that’s Virginia.” But we have the most beautiful pictures from that day. It was really, really fun, and I’d definitely go back again.
RM: What about a favorite spot from the places you filmed?
Royale: We always shot in really old, abandoned places. Actually, my favorite place to shoot was indoors, and ... all the stuff that you see in the community in the campus colony was shot at VCU. I think school was in session, and I remember the students coming in and being like, “What is happening?” … Instead of telling people that I’m an actor, I told people that I was studying at VCU, which never really worked because everyone pretty much knew who we were anywhere we went.
RM: The series premiere was delayed due to the pandemic. Has season two filming also been pushed back?
Royale: Season two had a bit of a delay — we’re definitely going back soon. Our writers’ room has been up and running, creating the most amazing episodes for season two, and yeah, we’ll be back on the ground shooting shortly.
RM: As season one wraps, how should viewers prepare for the finale?
Royale: Let’s just say we leave a lot of untied strings. I wish that I could say it’s all happy and great and everything works out, but that would just be bad television now, wouldn’t it?
