Fear the Walking Dead: Karen David on Grace's Devastating Demise and What She'll Miss the Most

Karen David has played Grace Mukherjee since Fear the Walking Dead Season 5 Episode 2.

Unfortunately, her time on the show came to a tragic conclusion during Fear the Walking Dead Season 8 Episode 5 as Grace succumbed to a walker bite.

Despite a high-stakes battle to save Grace's life ensued, it just wasn't meant to be.

I had the absolute pleasure of chatting with Karen about Grace's journey, how things ended, and what project she moved on to following her final days of filming the zombie drama.

TV Fanatic: It's so nice chatting with you again, Karen. I'm sad about Grace's fate on Fear the Walking Dead Season 8 Episode 5. She's such a great character.

Karen David: I haven't watched the episode yet. It's a lot to take in. I want to do it with the fans on Sunday because I feel I won't be alone.

I'm just going to be surrounded by so much love, and to have that on Sunday is how I want to do it. I want to say goodbye with the fans together. So I purposely have not watched it yet.

Great idea. Grace has resonated so well with the fans, so I feel it will hit them hard on Sunday when it plays out.

Yeah. It means so much to me. As viewers of any of our beloved shows, we become so deeply invested in all these characters. I have to give a huge shout-out to the writers of the episode: David Johnson and Michelle Stallworth—also, Heather Cappielo, who directed the episode.

I was so nervous because I knew this was imminent. I knew this was coming. Right from the moment I joined the show, I knew Grace was on a ticking time clock.

The question was, which season and when? I knew at some point she would succumb to her radiation exposure. It's so much she's been through. We all know this, and I think having the fan support through each season they've been on this journey with her has been great.

They have felt every tear of not only Grace but every character. They have felt the pain that every character has gone through. But they've also laughed with us as well. They've also cried tears of joy when each character has had a moment of levity.

Right back to Fear the Walking Dead Season 5, in the shopping mall when Grace and Morgan were on the carousel, they still joke about it now.

Since Fear the Walking Dead Season 8 Episode 4 came out last weekend, a lot of them were just trying to find these moments of lightness for Grace, mentioning on my Twitter feed, you know, candy beanies and all this.

It just makes my heart smile so much because it's those moments that I hold onto that give me comfort knowing that Grace had these moments of lightness -- albeit a handful -- these moments of joy and that she was able to open herself up to hope the possibility to love, and friendships, hoping for a future, which she did.

If it wasn't for Morgan and the rest of the gang, I don't know if Grace would have been around for as long as she was. It's a testament to the love and support from someone like Morgan that gave her the will and the power to forgive herself and then self-love.

That was two important factors that were important for me in wanting to cement in Grace's legacy that she arrived at a place of peace knowing that Morgan and Mo are safe together and will be okay and that she was able to arrive at a place of forgiveness, self-forgiveness, and self-love.

Thank you. If you look at the entire Walking Dead universe, I feel Grace has been dealt one of the worst hands out of all the characters. It was one thing after another. It was just so unfortunate that she didn't get an ending that was happier.

I did a video diary two days before I was finishing on the show, and I wanted to remember that moment because I had to do a costume change. It was the same costume, but I had to go into a different set of trousers that had more blood on them, so you can see the progression of the state of Grace.

And it hit me in that moment that this is it.

These are my final moments, and throughout this final episode for Grace and this time that I've had with Grace playing her and breathing life into her, every line that I said in this episode, every tear, every beat, every moment, a lot of Karen came out through that as well, because I knew that my time in this amazing moment of being with this loving family after five years was coming to an end.

It weighed heavily on me, and I was trying to hold onto every second and relish every moment that I had with Lennie, the crew, and Zoey. Every beat really counted for me in this episode.

Grace has had this positive outlook on things since she arrived on Fear the Walking Dead Season 5, but at the end of Fear the Walking Dead Season 8 Episode 1, we see a more hardened version of Grace. What happened during the time jump changed her. She's not allowed to be with Morgan, not allowed to be with Mo, so her life has changed.

What did you like about showing a more hardened version of Grace during those initial episodes of Fear the Walking Dead Season 8?

That's such a great question because it shows everyone Morgan and Grace's commitment to family and how important family was to them, you know, as a mother and parent.

For Grace, this opportunity allowed her to have the family she's always wanted. Same with Mo, it's all about her safety and welfare. That's what a parent does. They will do anything. They will die for their child, as Grace did.

She would die for her family. And for her, there are no regrets in that. No regrets. The only regret, maybe, is that she didn't have as much time as she would've wanted. But her comfort in those final moments is knowing that she could give her daughter and Morgan time together to be a family.

It broke my heart, coming back into season eight in the first episode, knowing that there was so much unspoken between her and Morgan. And it comes out on [Fear the Walking Dead Season 8 Episode 4] King County when she gets very tearful because she looks at him and says, "We've lost so much time."

Playing Grace's final episodes was really a reminder that I've learned so much from playing Grace. I've grown so much as a human being too. I'm reminded by Grace that life is too short.

Life is precious, and life's fragility is what defines us. The success in our lives is to love, to be loved, and to give as much as we can to those we care about and causes we're passionate about.

It makes us think about the legacy that each of us wants to leave, and when I say legacy, it may sound grandiose, but no, it's who we are as people.

It was a lot of soul-searching going through this final chapter for Grace and also a final chapter for me with the cast, crew, and creatives. So it was a lot going on behind the scenes, in between takes, and I wear my heart on my sleeve, so there are many times in between takes where I'd be in tears.

It was very tearful saying goodbye to Lennie. It's never a final goodbye with Lennie or our family because I know I have made family and friends for life. But at that moment, in that formation of what it was, when Morgan steps out of the canoe and says, "I'll see you soon," I said to Lenny in between takes, I'm like, "Oh my gosh. This is our final moment where we actually see each other."

I cried between takes, and they were teasing me, saying, "Save it for the take; save it for when the cameras are rolling."

But I didn't even have to work hard for any of it in this episode because it's the final moments, it's a final chapter, and a representation of five years together as a TV family for me. So, yeah, it was all the feels.

I know on a zombie series, we should expect death, but with June's tests and how the radiation could potentially stop the spread of the infection, there was that slight chance that Grace could pull through. What are your thoughts on the show giving these hints about potentially slowing down the spread of the virus on Fear the Walking Dead Season 8?

I was excited by the idea of that, especially for the universe. I think that's where it would naturally progress at some point.

We're going to want to find a way to counteract the effects of the walker bites.

But you know, it's got to start somewhere. It's got to start at a very painful embryonic stage, and there will be loss of life because you are experimenting, and that's such a great point and question you raised because, for Mo, there's so much that I can relate to, being a daughter.

I'm very close to my parents. My parents are seniors now, and I savor and relish the time I have with them because we don't know how long we have on this earth.

It's about relishing those moments that we have together as a family. And what I wouldn't do if there was a potion or something that could keep my family alive forever.

I saw that so much in Zoey's heartbreaking, amazing portrayal of Mo, where here is a daughter who finally has her family reunited, who finally knows what it's like to have the love and support and encouragement of a mother and a father, and wants desperately to hold onto that and will do anything to save her mother's life.

And that in itself, going through the different progressions that we see in the different stages throughout this episode, makes it even more heartbreaking for Grace.

But she's doing it because she knows that she needs to make sure that her daughter is at peace, knowing that she did everything she could to save her mom, or at least try and have those final moments of bonding, having those final moments and the opportunity and the gift to be a mother in those final moments to Mo is so precious and so important for Grace to say everything she needed to say to make sure that her baby girl is going to be absolutely fine with her dad and with amazing human beings that are out there and to instill the hope and the love that Morgan instilled in Grace.

She's passing that baton on to her daughter. I think it is just so beautiful, and on her mind, she will be reunited with her other baby girl, Athena.

That brings comfort to her, but also knowing that maybe she could have been part of an experiment that might help June draw some conclusions about what worked and what didn't.

Grace knew it was a long shot, but she would not tell her daughter that. She will let Mo carry this out even though she's so scared of dying in a bed or a canoe.

All that matters is the time that she has together with her daughter.

I think our time is almost up, but thank you so much for chatting with me again, Karen. I'm really excited to see where you land next. I thoroughly enjoyed your work on Once Upon a Time and Legacies. You pick great roles.

Paul, I have a couple of things coming out, which I know announcements will come out about, but the one thing that has come out already is this movie that I did. I literally flew the next day from Fear the Walking Dead when I finished.

It's called Isabel's Garden and is a different character again. As an actor, it's always the hope and dream to continue on the arc of playing characters that you've never played before.

So that's next, and a couple of other things will come out. I hope to see you soon and talk about those things too. But thank you so much for five years of just love and joy. It's been such a pleasure talking to you.