The epic conclusion of the second season of AMC’s The Walking Dead sequel series, Dead City, is nigh!

The beloved show, which follows TWD fan faves Maggie (Lauren Cohan) and Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) as they try to find and rescue Maggie’s kidnapped son Herschel, originally debuted in 2023 and came back earlier this year for another nail-biting season, and one of the names that fans got to learn more about was none other than Ginny, played by up-and-coming ingenue Mahina Napoleon!

Gold Envelope got the chance to have a virtual sit-down with Napoleon, and we kiki’d about everything from the return of Dead City to who her role models are to being a part of a new generation of AAPI stars ready to take on the world!

“It’s been a really exciting journey to dive into season two and figure out how Ginny finds her own way and finds her own path without Negan,” Napoleon tells Gold Envelope about reprising the role of Ginny from the first season of Dead City. “Her realizing that she doesn’t really have anybody, and her making a world for her own and finding her own strength and also finding her own voice.”

And though she’s still young, she was always a huge fan of the OG TWD series (even if the themes weren’t always age appropriate!).

“I was a fan of The Walking Dead, like a major fan,” she says. “I watched it all the time when I was little. Probably I was not supposed to, but I watched all the time with my dad. And so I got this audition, and I didn’t know what it was for, and I was just doing it. And then I got more into the process and I found out what it was for, and I was like, ‘Oh my God! It would be so amazing if I got this job!’ And then I got the job, and I was like, even more excited than getting to work and meet Lauren and Jeffrey and everybody else, it was just an amazing process. And I’m super, super grateful.”

Napoleon, who was born in Hawai’i and has Filipino ancestry, also opened up about being a part of a new, rising wave of young Asian American and Pacific Islander talent bringing visibility to the entertainment world, especially since generations past didn’t always get to see themselves represented on screen before.

“I love representing my culture, especially my Hawaiian culture and my Filipino culture,” Napoleon says. “Not a lot of us get to get on camera, so I’m gonna take every single chance that I can to show up with either a flower in my ear or something to represent our culture, because I feel like it’s very important to me to to show that.”

Watch Gold Envelope‘s full interview with Mahina Napoleon in the video below.

The Walking Dead: Dead City is streaming on AMC+.

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