How Michael Cudlitz kept his return to The Walking Dead secret

Michael Cudlitz shares what it was like to keep his appearance in the season 7 finale a secret from everyone. As it turns out, he was really clever.

How do you keep one of the biggest secrets on television? Michael Cudlitz joins Game of Thrones’ Kit Harrington in the Big Secret Club. Game of Thrones fans were on the edge of their seats wanting to know if Jon Snow was still alive. But in Michael Cudlitz’s case, he had to keep his top secret return to The Walking Dead’s season finale under wraps after his character was clearly dead and gone, and that meant he needed to get creative.

With Abraham Ford the unfortunate victim of Negan’s bat Lucille, you’d think life would go back to normal for Michael Cudlitz. No, not really. Through all of his appearances and what was supposed to be time off after leaving the show, Cudlitz had to pretend not to be part of the show even though he knew he’d be returning to shoot a hallucination scene with Sasha’s Sonequa Martin-Green.

In an interview with ComicBook, Cudlitz shares how he was able to deceive so many people in order to maintain the surprise:

"“I had pictures saved up that I would put out on my Twitter account and I’d talk about Atlanta when I wasn’t there,” Cudlitz said. “When I was there, I would make sure I photographed and tweeted and be seen as much as possible. Especially the airport — the one place where I do not use the lounge…or didn’t use the lounge. I would make sure I was in line at the food court, and eating out in public. You make a big deal of it when you are there. If you’re at a hotel for the night, whatever, you make sure you at least walk out a little bit, be seen. It only takes one or two people to put it out their social that they saw you, or whatever. ‘What’s he doing there? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.’ And they take it and they run with it. They do all the work.”"

The biggest challenge, though, was his appearance. He had to keep his red hair and moustache, which was also hard to explain away. That’s why travelling was so helpful.

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We’ll certainly miss Abraham on season 8 of The Walking Dead, but at least we will continue to see Michael Cudlitz on the convention circuits.