First Look at Seth Gilliam as Father Gabriel Stokes in The Walking Dead Season 5

Seth Gilliam will portray Father Gabriel Stokes in Season 5 of The Walking Dead. The character had a complicated past in the comics and should be an interesting addition to the show.

EW.com posted a first-look photo of Gilliam as the character and got a few words from the actor. Gilliam said he did not know he was auditioning for the role of Gabriel, but he read the character's debut issue once he found out.

"I only read the comic book where Father Gabriel was introduced, which I think was episode 61 in the comics. I didn't read anything before that, and I haven't read anything after that. I discovered from reading about the show that often times characters' names and journeys are kind of crisscrossed and mismatched, so I thought if I did read too much I might be giving myself a lot of information that would be useless, or just outright wrong. So I figured, like with everything, I'd just take the script and try to fill him out the best I possibly can."

Gilliam then said he binge watched the first three seasons of the show on Netflix and watched Season 4 as he was starting to work on the show in Atlanta. Interestingly, Gilliam has a bit of a reunion with other actors from The Wire, Chad Coleman and Lawrence Gilliard.

"We definitely did have a Baltimore bonding session when I got down there and saw Chad and Lawrence," Gilliam said. "I had dinner with Scott Gimple when I first got down there, and he said, 'You know, after we had cast Chad, I made a promise to myself that I wasn't going to cast anybody else from The Wire. But I love the show so much, and, you know, they just turned out to be the best people for the jobs. So I guess I've gone back on that.'"

AMC also released two brief promo clips for Season 5, which you can view here and here.

What do you think of the photo and the promos? Let us know in the comments section.