'The Walking Dead' star thought she was getting killed off when she learned about the show's final season

• Warning: There are spoilers ahead for season 11, episode 10 of "The Walking Dead," "New Haunts."
• Eleanor Matsuura thought her character was getting killed off when she learned "TWD" was ending.

Any time "The Walking Dead" showrunner Angela Kang called star Eleanor Matsuura, she figured her time on the show was up.

"I answer the phone, just going, 'Am I dead? Is it now? Is that why you're calling?" Matsuura, who has played Yumiko on the series since season nine, told Insider earlier this month over Zoom. "I don't say hello or anything."

"So I did that. I was like, 'What's up? Am I dead?'" Matsuura said when she received a call in the fall of 2020 from Kang.

But it was to tell her the show, not her character's run, would be ending.

"[Angela] was like, 'Oh no,' but she told me that it was gonna be the final season," Matsuura recalled, initially making light of the news. "And I was like, 'Oh, well, so kind of dead.'"

Matsuura wasn't the first to think she may be getting killed off AMC's apocalyptic series. Khary Payton, Lauren Ridloff, and Seth Gilliam were among the show's stars who also thought they were getting the axe when learning about the show's final season.

"It was surreal because I remember getting that phone call ... right in the middle of the pandemic," Matsuura said. "I wasn't even in Georgia. I was away from 'The Walking Dead' family, living my other normal real life back in London. So everything about it was surreal."

"Honestly, I'm just glad to be back doing the final season," Matsuura added. "I wouldn't rather be anywhere else."

Matsuura joined the series as a member of an entirely new group of survivors from the comics, after Rick Grimes' final episode in season nine.

With Michonne's departure from the show a season later, Matsuura's character has taken over part of her story from the comics, finding a long-lost relative at the Commonwealth community where life has returned to some semblance of pre-apocalyptic normalcy.

Money has returned as a form of currency, children are dressing up for Halloween, and survivors are attending galas as if the dead don't exist outside their walls.

Though Yumiko is thriving in the Commonwealth as counsel to Governor Pamela Milton (Laila Robins), the same can't be said for her girlfriend, Magna (Nadia Hilker).

The badass has been reduced to a lowly waitress serving the wealthy, including Yumiko, at the Commonwealth. Matsuura says that weighs heavily on Yumiko.

"The Commonwealth presents something that we haven't dealt with before on 'The Walking Dead,' which is class," Matsuura said of the arc shaking up the show. "Everyone before has been fighting as equals, survival of the fittest. All of a sudden, we're kind of put back into this world where your class matters and somehow you're divided up into these categories as if that's somehow important."

"I think Yumiko really struggles with that. I don't think that sits easily with her," Matsuura continued, hinting that her new loyalties with the Commonwealth may clash with those she has to her perceived family.

"She takes the role of Pamela's lawyer to survive and I think she does her best to acclimatize to the Commonwealth, but she can't unsee or unexperience what she has in the past few years in the apocalypse," Matsurra said.

"She's really loyal. She loves her chosen family. I think we're gonna see her really struggle with that," Matsurra said, adding, "I think her heart is always gonna be with her original group outside the Commonwealth walls."

You can follow along with our "TWD" coverage all season long here.