Kelley Mack had been auditioning for new roles until June 2025, her representative said, which is why her death in August came as such a shock. The actress, who played Addy in the ninth season of The Walking Dead, died peacefully in her hometown of Cincinnati on August 2, 2025. She was 33. Her family said she had died of a glioma, a type of tumour affecting the brain and spinal cord.
Her career
Mack grew up in Cincinnati and moved into acting and film-making in her teens and twenties. In The Walking Dead in 2018 she played Addy, one of the young survivors in the Hilltop community, a part that put her in front of the show’s large global audience. She also appeared in Chicago Med and 9-1-1, did voice work in animation, including for Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, and worked in commercials. According to her family, she had 35 acting credits and five as a producer. Mack’s family shared updates on her illness through a CaringBridge page. Her representative said everyone close to her had been “totally surprised” by how quickly she died. A memorial service was held at the Glendale Lyceum in Glendale, Ohio, on August 16, with a celebration of her life planned in Los Angeles.
Mack’s career had only just begun to take shape, and many of the people who knew her work knew it from a single season of one of the most-watched dramas on television.