BY Craig Semon | WORCESTER TELEGRAM & GAZETTE | July 29, 2024
The city of Worcester made a brief cameo this weekend at the San Diego Comic Con in California.
During a celebrity panel for “The Walking Dead: Dead City,” a 70-second teaser trailer for the AMC season two of the series featured several, blink-and-you-missed-it action scenes that were clearly shot in downtown Worcester.
“The Walking Dead: Dead City” filmed six times in the city, for five days in May and one in June.
The trailer begins with a voiceover of Lisa Emery, who plays The Dama and filmed several scenes in Worcester.
In her voiceover, Emery says, “The old world was rigged, designed to rip us apart. That was the world of the dead.” Enter Negan, played by fan favorite Jeffrey Dean Morgan, was also spotted filming scenes here and very cordial to fans in Worcester.
At the 20-second mark, the screen goes black and Morgan can be heard blowing one of Negan’s signature whistle. This is followed by the echoes of Negan’s heavy footsteps and the dragging of his infamous wooden bat on the floor.
Back in May, Worcester made big news all over social media and several online publications because Negan had zombie batting practice with “Lucille,” his trusty, barbed-wire-covered Louisville Slugger, on Norwich Street and later Main Street.
“Lucille,” as well as Negan, were both introduced in the sixth-season finale of “The Walking Dead” but “Lucille” was absent in season one of “The Walking Dead: Dead City” and there was no word of the bat’s return until it was spotted in action on the streets of Worcester.
Further confirmation came in the trailer as Negan is seen walking into a crowded cathedral, before raising “Lucille,” with a knowing grin that the old Negan is back.
“There’s something about that sweet girl,” Morgan said during the SCCC panel about “Lucille.” “It really, kind of, indicates Negan. It makes me turn into Negan almost by holding that damn bat.”
And from the roar of the San Diego crowd, the audience really loves the old Negan.
Further along in the trailer, we see and hear the voice of zombie apocalypse survivor and kick-ass mom Maggie Greene Rhee (played by another crowd favorite Lauren Cohan, who also participated in the SFCC panel and filmed scenes in Worcester), who can be heard saying, “I know what it means to go back to Manhattan. It cost me a lot, almost everything.” Oh, did I say that Worcester was fixed up to look like post apocalypse downtown Manhattan?
During the tail-end of Maggie’s monologue, a scene flickers at the 45-second mark that shows the boarded up and abandoned Burnside Building at 339 Main St., Worcester. There are two leather-clad militants wearing gas masks opening the back of the blue van that is carrying two canisters of methane, which are very crucial to the plot of the second season, according to Morgan and Eli Jorne, the show’s executive producer, who was also on hand for the panel.
“In the first episode, we start off going out to war for some methane,” Jorne said. “So it gets pretty intense, pretty quick.”
“Methane,” Morgan later added. “It’s a gassy kind of year.”
Four seconds later on the trailer, we see Negan, with “Lucille” in hand, exit from the passenger side of the van.
With the address of 339 Main St. clearly in the background, Negan takes a mighty swing with his bat and smacks a “walker” right in the kisser.
At the 53-second mark, Negan, The Dama and The Croat (actor Zeljko Ivanek, who also participated in the SFCC panel), plus several militant extras, including two pushing the canisters of methane, are seen walking past Central Park Books, which is clearly the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences building at the corner of Norwich and Foster streets.
Four seconds later, the audience gets a glimpse of an armored garbage truck, which would look right at home in a “Road Warrior” film. The truck comes plowing down a street littered with abandoned cars — a street that looks a lot like Portland Street — but the scene is too quick and landmarks are too far and few between to make a positive identification of the actual street.
Although the audience gets their first glimpse of “Sons of Anarchy” alum Kim Coates — who plays season two super baddie Bruegel — the scene filmed inside Union Station in which Negan, The Dama and The Croat make some kind of trade and/or gesture of goodwill with the two canisters of methane with Bruegel, was left out of the trailer. Also missing were any scenes of Maggie and Perlie Armstrong (Gauis Charles, who was also on the panel) on the rooftop at 8 Norwich St. or Maggie and zombie extras in the backwoods of Bell Pond Park off Belmont St.
The trailer ends with the words “Coming 2025.”