Melissa McBride’s character Carol wasn’t supposed to have a long, transformative arc on The Walking Dead. In the comics, Carol dies early and tragically (she commits zombie suicide), and she was supposed to die in season three of the show. “Not a lot of people know that when we were shooting season three, in the episode where T-Dog died, there was a moment where Carol was going to die in lieu of T-Dog’s character,†Greg Nicotero, one of the executive producers of the show, told SFX. In the episode, T-Dog (IronE Singleton) valiantly sacrifices himself (yes, he had already been bit, but still) so that Carol can  escape. Well, it turns out that Carol had another guardian angel behind the scenes as well.
In a roundtable of surviving Walking Dead cast members with EW, Andrew Lincoln relays the story of how his onscreen wife, Lori, played by Sarah Wayne Callies, asked the producers to save Carol. “Do you remember, with Sarah Wayne Callies? She fought for you,†Lincoln tells McBride. “It was the episode when Lori and T-Dog die. But for a few weeks it was going to be Carol and Lori. And Sarah, in her good grace and class, stepped in and said, ‘That’s a terrible mistake.’ And so she knew that she was going, but she fought for you to stay.†“I did not know that. I’m going to faint,†replies McBride. “Get her on the phone!†What color rose do you think says, Thanks for saving me from zombie death?