Chris Harwick to Return As Host of AMC’s Talking Dead

Chris Harwick to Return As Host of AMC’s Talking Dead

After being cleared in an internal investigation into accusations by his ex-girlfriend of emotional, physical and sexual abuse, Chris Hardwick will return Aug. 12 as host of AMC’s Talking Dead.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Yvette Nicole Brown will host a Walking Dead Season 9 preview special on Aug. 5, and then return the following week as a guest for the premiere of Talking Dead, the cable network’s live after-show for The Walking Dead and Fear the Walking Dead. A regular guest on Talking Dead, Brown replaced Hardwick as moderator of the Walking Dead panel last week at Comic-Con International. Before the completion of AMC’s investigation, Brown had been named interim host of Talking Dead.

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“Following a comprehensive assessment by AMC, working with Ivy Kagan Bierman of the firm Loeb & Loeb, who has considerable experience in this area, Chris Hardwick will return to AMC as the host of Talking Dead and Talking with Chris Hardwick,” AMC said in a statement. “We take these matters very seriously and given the information available to us after a very careful review, including interviews with numerous individuals, we believe returning Chris to work is the appropriate step.”

Hardwick was accused of abuse last month by ex-girlfriend Chloe Dykstra. Although Dykstra didn’t name her ex in her essay on Medium.com, referring to him only as someone who grew from “a mildly successful podcaster to a powerhouse CEO of his own company, many outlets and industry watchers immediately picked up on his identity. Hardwick, who co-founded Nerdist Industries in 2012, subsequently confirmed Dykstra was referring to him with the release of a denial of her allegations.

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Legendary Entertainment, which acquired Nerdist, swiftly removed any reference to Hardwick from its website pending “further investigation.” AMC followed by removing him as moderator of its Comic-Con programming, and pulling the season premiere of Talking with Chris Hardwick from its schedule.

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