The Walking Dead lost one of its original characters last week, with the death of Glenn Rhee.

In the last seven years, Steven Yeun's Glenn has become a beloved staple on the show - made all the more special by the fact that he was a rare Asian-American character who:

1) was portrayed as a genuine and relatable hero;

2) was not racially stereotyped nor defined by his ethnicity.

Gene Page AMC

Glenn is a huge, huge loss to those looking for Asian-American role models on TV, especially when you consider how few of them actually exist.

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Yeun said it was the "greatest honour" to play a character like him.

"I didn't have a Glenn," Yeun said, recalling his childhood. "I didn't have someone to watch on television. I didn't have someone where I can say, 'That's my face, and my face is being accepted by everybody watching this programme'.

Gene Page AMC

"That's the greatest honour that I've gotten to experience," he continued, about portraying the former pizza delivery guy.

"I've had the privilege and great honour to play a character like this that didn't have to answer to anything other than his own character. He didn't have to answer to why he was so Asian, or why he did that or this based on his being Asian.

"None of that mattered. It just mattered who he was as an individual. That was the most important thing.

"We went into so many households around the world, and people got to see what it's like to be an Asian-American person, and they got to see an Asian-American person completely normalised as they are. And it got to a point where most people didn't even acknowledge the fact that he might be ethnically different than them."

AMC

Yeun added: "You get to watch people completely cling on to a character that has similarities to them in every single way except for their face, and that is beautiful and wonderful and I'm very proud of that.

"One of my favourite things that I always see is when I see kids that are not Asian dress up as Glenn for Halloween. That makes me very, very happy."

We'll miss you, Glenn.

The Walking Dead season 7 continues Sunday (October 30) on AMC, and will air in the UK the following day on FOX UK.

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io