‘Fear The Walking Dead’: Danay Garcia On Why Luciana Left The Ranch

“Fear the Walking Dead” star Danay Garcia said that her character, Luciana, had anticipated how bad things would go between Broke Jaw Ranch and the Nation, and that’s one of the reasons she decided to leave the ranch in Season 3, episode 5 of the AMC show.

“She sees the whole thing coming and she thinks, ‘I gotta go,’” Garcia told BT TV. “The first half of the season was about her healing. She was at the bottom of the bottom, but now that she has got some strength, she can see the problem and doesn’t want to be part of this. It’s ugly.”

In addition, Garcia said that Luciana “doesn’t belong” in the ranch — a truth expounded by executive producer Gale Ann Hurd in a separate interview with BT TV last June.

Hurd said that Luciana was aware that Jeremiah (Dayton Callie) had always seen her as an outsider since the very beginning. “Otto believes that people with the same value system, the same skin color, the same background, that’s his tribe. Luciana has a different tribe,” explained Hurd. “He would never really be able to see her as someone who belongs, and she knows that.”

“Luciana doesn’t trust them [anyway],” Hurd continued. “And these are not the people that she wants to find a future with.”

As for Luciana’s decision to leave her boyfriend Nick (Frank Dillane) behind, showrunner Dave Erickson said that Luciana had realized “that as much as [Nick] might care for [her], Nick has greater obligations to his mom and sister, and she comes to that awareness on her own.”

Dillane, meanwhile, said that Nick actually felt relieved when Luciana left the ranch without forcing him to go with her. “There’s a sense of relief because she obviously didn’t want to be there,” Dillane said in an interview with AMC. “Nick didn’t want to be put in that difficult position of having to choose between his mother and his girlfriend, so I think he feels a sudden weight off his shoulders. It’s one less thing to worry about.”

Danay told MyM magazine that dealing with Luciana and Nick’s split was personally “very hard” for her because she and Dillane “had such a great time working together.” “He’s a great actor and a great human – so funny and charismatic,” the actress said of Dillane. “But as characters, it’s difficult to see them grow apart. I’m at a place where I’m rooting for them to be together, because they fell in love in the time of an apocalypse. If you are able to open your heart in that space, it’s because it’s worth it. So I’m hoping they will come back together.”

“Fear the Walking Dead” Season 3B premieres on Sunday, Sept. 10 at 9 p.m. EDT on AMC.