‘The Walking Dead’ season 4: Melissa McBride clears up ‘series regular’ debate

You know that only the diehard TV fans would have such a major debate about whether or not someone is a series regular, and in some ways to us that makes the following story all the more interesting: fans are passionate about the shows that they want, and they also want to make sure that the actors on them receive every bit of the credit that they deserve.

For quite a while now, there has been a debate waging among “The Walking Dead” faithful about whether or not Melissa McBride is a series regular, mostly because she is not featured in the opening credits, but is highlighted in the second block of the show after the first commercial break of the hour. So does this mean that she is billed more as a guest star? Not so fast. McBride confirmed on Twitter this week that this is not the case, and she is a series regular. The same can be said per TVLine for Scott Wilson, who plays the part of Hershel.

Ultimately, this should not be considered to be that unusual in the TV industry, since there are some other shows out there with series regulars not featured in the opening themes. For example, Hannah Simone (Cece) is a regular on “New Girl,” whereas there are a plethora of supporting characters on “The Office” whose names are not featured in their theme song. Sometimes, it’s simply due to the fact that these themes are limited by time, or in the case of “New Girl,” created before the new series regular is named.

Are you glad that this is cleared up? If you want to see a pretty funny new video featuring McBride on Conan O’Brien’s TBS series, you can do so over at the link here.

Photo: AMC