The following interview contains spoilers for 3.08

In last week’s episode of The Walking Dead: Dead City, the community was left without their leader after Dillard (Jimmi Simpson) killed Renata (Aimee Garcia). Tonight, in the season finale, Maggie (Lauren Cohan) and Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) must go up against Dillard in a battle to rescue Luis (Raúl Castillo) and rest of the community from the psychopath.

In a recent interview, Garcia spoke with SciFi Vision about joining Dead City as Renata, a character she describes as hopeful, non-jaded, and connected to the light in a brutal world. She talked about being a longtime fan of The Walking Dead, shaping the character through optimism and long-term thinking, why Renata struggled to separate Negan from the Croat (Zeljko Ivanek), and whether she felt things could have gone differently. She also discussed dying on the show, fully becoming a walker, the practical effects process, and the special birthday cake she received as a final goodbye.

The full season of The Walking Dead: Dead City is available to stream on AMC+.

Read the transcript below.

SCIFI VISION:   I heard that you were already a big fan of The Walking Dead before you got on Dead City. So what was kind of your first reaction when you found out you got the role here?

AIMEE GARCIA:   I squealed, and I jumped up and down, and I called my mom, and I was just ecstatic, because I love the world. From the pilot, I've always said it's one of the, I think, top 10 pilots of all time. And it's just perfectly executed from the comic and Michonne and Rick and obviously Negan. And I just thought, “Oh, these characters are so multifaceted.” And I love the simplicity of, but also the complexity of, what do people do when they're desperate, and how do people act in the apocalypse? So, it was such a dream come true, and I feel like I can check something off my bucket list. That's great.

SCIFI VISION:   So, let me ask you, since this character is not from the original story from the comics, other than the script, where did you pull from for your own inspiration as you created sort of your version of the character that they gave you?

AIMEE GARCIA:   Well, I spoke to Seth Hoffman, our showrunner about her and asked what her purpose is in this band that's already nearly perfect. And he said, “She's the light. She's the hope. She is the non-jaded version of this world, and she's very much influenced by her father who taught her that you have a choice. You can choose the light or the fight, and the fight grinds you down, but the light opens things, your eyes, your hearts, your possibilities.” So, I think that is something I personally connect with. I'm a very optimistic person. I'm a very trusting person. I give people the benefit of the doubt. I give strangers the benefit of the doubt. I try not to judge someone until you've walked a thousand miles in their shoes. I try to understand why people did something. And I think I infused that hopefully into Renata, where she thinks big picture. Most people would think, “There's food, I'm hungry, take the food.” But what I love about Renata's character, is she thinks, “Okay, maybe we eat a quarter of the food today to plant crops and have food in the future, so that [my] niece can grow up and have kids of her own.” And it's more of like a long-term macro view point, which I think makes her a good leader.

SCIFI VISION:   Do you think, and I don't know that it could be, I'm just kind of curious your own ideas of it, but do you think that there's something she could have done differently in the way that she interacted with Negan in the end that would have prevented her death? I know it was really because of Dillard, but Negan started the dominos and I don't know, maybe if she had talked to him a bit differently, I was just curious what you thought.

AIMEE GARCIA:   Yeah, I think everyone has their trauma. And I think Renata's trauma that will always haunt her is not feeling she did enough to save her uncle and her brother from the Croat. And I think that is her blind spot. I think her family is her blind spot. And the fact that she connects Negan to the Croat, even though she does at some point, finally, when Luis helps walk her off the ledge, [realize] that they are different, but in her mind, Negan trained the Croat. Negan trained the Croat. So, she has a really hard time because of the trauma that she wasn't really able to process, because she had to go straight to finding them a home and straight to finding them food and straight to protecting her family members. She didn't have time to grieve the family members that the Croat killed. So, I think that Negan is a really hard pill for her to swallow, because she just associates him as being the mentor of the Croat. And I also think that she's not wrong in seeing how mercurial Negan is and seeing that part of what makes Negan such a rich, fun character to watch is that he's a wild card. He's a little bit like Harley Quinn. Is he going to save you or is he going to - I mean, he didn't save Maggie back in the franchise series when there was walkers clawing at her at her feet. He's not the most reliable character, which makes him so fun. And I think Renata is not totally wrong to have him earn her trust. But I think she could have seen Negan as a separate being who's evolved and give him the benefit of the doubt, which is her default. But I think she just kept seeing the Croat's face when she saw Negan. And, you know, yeah, she realized it, but a little too late.

SCIFI VISION:   Yeah, yeah, no, I get that. Talk about though, you know, dying and turning into a walker, because I mean, I'm sure you didn't want to leave the show, but at the same time, becoming a walker I'm sure was a dream come true. So, talk about getting to do that. I don't know if some of it might have been a dummy on the table [with Dillard]. I'm not 100% sure.

AIMEE GARCIA:   No, no dummy. I was the walker 100%. It's funny, Scott Gimple, who is a producer, said he was so impressed with my walker performance and he's like, "We've had really good actors on the show who just sometimes can't do the walker thing, and you fully committed to the walker performance.” And I said, “Oh, thank you,” So, I was really proud to hear that. But I did actually, as much as I was so disheartened to leave the show, I thought it was a really cool moment to experience all facets of the show, including becoming a walker and experiencing the process. So, they took molds of my teeth, so they could make walker teeth. They gave me white contacts, which are larger than regular contacts. And when you open your eyes, all you see is white. It's like looking through a paper towel. I literally couldn't see anything. I needed a guide to go to the bathroom. Addison and Gino, our special effects teams, are true magicians. They airspray arteries on my arm and face and bruises and blood, and it really is practical effects at its finest. It's such an art form. And the creepiest experience was them quote, “detaching my fingernails.” It was so trippy to see your hands without fingernails. And just the detail that they put into creating these monsters. So, who doesn't want to become a monster? So, I thought I got to experience the whole, full gamut of the show. And even my dad, who came to visit by the way, was a walker in the background. So, he just loved it and had a blast. And he was a little Frankenstein-y. You know, we had to coach him a little bit on the on the walker shuffle, but he picked it up eventually.

SCIFI VISION:   That's awesome. I know we're about out of time. But really quickly, did you get a death dinner when you left? Because I think they still do that even on Dead City sometimes.

AIMEE GARCIA:   I didn't get a goodbye dinner. I did get a goodbye cake, because it coincided with my birthday. So yeah, so it was like a four story cake with Renata on it, you know, presented by the wonderful Lauren Cohen. So, I'll take cake over dinner any day.