‘Fear the Walking Dead’ Star Jenna Elfman Reacts to Death of Major Character (Exclusive)

Episode 712 of Fear the Walking Dead aired on AMC Sunday, and fans saw the deaths of two major characters. Howard (Omid Abtahi) and John Dorie Sr. (Keith Carradine) are the latest two to leave The Walking Dead Universe, and the loss of Dorie is hard for June (Jenna Elfman) who became close to him since the end of Season 6. In an exclusive interview with PopCulture.com, Elfman talked about her reaction when she learned that Carradine’s character dies in the episode. 

“My gut sank,” Elfman exclusive told PopCulture. “I remember we were filming an earlier episode and 712 was coming up next and he showed up to work and let me know. And that’s how I found out because he had just found out and I was like, ‘What?’ I had no idea that was coming. And so it was like, I had a little pit in my stomach all day. I was sad. I was so sad because I love working with Keith so much. And it’s just when you work in the apocalypse, you just don’t know what’s going to happen. But it was, I got a little teary and whatnot.”

In the episode, Dorie sacrifices himself to save the baby Mo. He took Mo from Victor (Colman Domingo) and gave her to Morgan (Lennie James), who was just outside The Tower. For Dorie to get the baby to Morgan, he had to walk through a herd of zombies, and once Doire gave Morgan the baby, he decided to walk back to the pack and sacrificed himself to make sure the baby could make out safely. 

“I thought it was a really honorable ending, frankly,” Elfman said. “When I read the script for that episode and read how he was going to be sacrificing himself in that way for the future, for the future of Mo and for hope. And all of the symbolism surrounding it, it seemed like a very Dorie thing to do. And I sort of had this epic musical score in my head for that scene when I was reading it, and I sort of was imagining all the pieces coming off and baby Mo sort of rising into safety. And it felt like it was going to be making, certainly, the best version of a horrible situation for him, you know?”

Before Dorie died, he did something very surprising earlier in the episode. He planted a walkie inside Howard’s room, leading to Victor believe that Howard was plotting against him. And despite Dorie telling Victor that he was the one who planted the walkie. Victor told him to throw him off the top of the roof, which he did leading to Howard’s death. 

“I think there were a lot of surprising turns for Dorie, starting in 710, you know, when he thinks he can change Strand. It’s kind of like, we all have these old kind of operating systems and then you, at some point in your life hit a wake-up call where you go, ‘This no longer works,’” Elfman said. “Whether it’s I’ve changed or the environment’s changed, or the people around me have changed, I can’t keep operating this way, it’s actually not going to work. Well, maybe has worked in the past, is not going to work now. Or you’ve thought it worked in the past, but it really didn’t and it takes extreme circumstances to realize you have to change your mode of operation here. 

“And so I think he had some really significant turns that he had to go through, which ultimately led to sacrificing himself. But he didn’t want Charlie (Alexa Nisenson) to go out there alone and frankly, June let it happen. I think that’s part of the pain for June is, that she wasn’t yet at that moment of saying no and not stopping saying no until Charlie didn’t leave.” Fear the Walking Dead airs on Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on AMC.