If you’re one of the stars of a high-stakes, post-apocalyptic horror TV series like Fear the Walking Dead, it’s probably nerve-racking to read a script and wonder if your character is going to live through the end of the episode, much less an entire season.
Luckily, Cuban-born actress Danay Garcia’s character Luciana Galvez has survived five seasons. Based on the season finale last Sunday night (June 13), she’s likely going to be back fighting off zombies in Season 7, which was greenlit late last year.
In the finale, Luciana and a group of survivors, including Daniel Salazar (Rubén Blades), are picked up by a helicopter just before a nuclear missile launched by a crazed cult leader detonates.
“When we got the script, I was like, ‘It’s in the air, are we really going to make it?’” Garcia tells Remezcla. “It’s not enough that we have to deal with zombies?”
Questions remain about the effects of the nuclear fallout for next season, but after six seasons, the first of which started in 2015, Garcia says audiences are invested not in the characters but in the way the characters survive.
“We’re invested in the way we handle pressure,” she says. “It keeps everyone on their toes. The audience really wants to know how we’re going to pull it off.”
Fear the Walking Dead is one of two spin-off series from the original The Walking Dead (the other is The Walking Dead: World Beyond). Another spin-off was announced for 2023 based on the characters played by actors Norman Reedus and Melissa McBride from the original show.
So, what about an all-Latino spin-off series where Garcia, Blades and Colman Domingo’s characters splinter from the group and set up their own colony on the beach in Cuba?
“I think with Colman and Rubén’s characters, they’d have their arguments, but they will always have their bromance with some drinks,” Garcia said. “I think Luciana would be like, ‘Come on, we have to survive here!’”
