As the zombie drama rounds out its final season, the longtime co-stars Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Lauren Cohan will reunite for the spinoff “Dead City.”
Send any friend a story
As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Anyone can read what you share.
By Calum Marsh
Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Lauren Cohan have been surviving the zombie apocalypse for a long time. As Negan and Maggie, two of the lead characters on the AMC series “The Walking Dead,” they have endured every conceivable hardship and cruelty, from watching as a family member is beaten to death to being slashed in the jugular with a knife.
With the enormously popular drama finally reaching its conclusion this fall as the last of its three-part 11th season begins, you’d be forgiven for thinking the mainstay co-stars — Cohan joined the cast in 2011, Morgan in 2016 — would be thrilled to wrap up and leave the undead behind. But AMC recently announced that both actors have signed on to lead “The Walking Dead: Dead City,” a new spinoff mini-series that will follow their characters as they try to navigate a post-apocalyptic Manhattan.
Before “The Walking Dead” kicks off its final block of eight episodes on Oct. 2, Morgan and Cohan spoke together over Zoom about killing off characters and finding “slivers of light and hope.” These are edited excerpts from that conversation.
Lauren, you joined the series in the second season. What was it like for you when you arrived?
LAUREN COHAN I was coming from the U.K., and on the flight to Georgia, I watched Season 1, and I thought: Wow, OK. I’d better not screw this up. When I landed, I had a week of prep, and Steven [Yeun, who played Glenn] and Sarah Wayne Callies [who played Lori] took me out for Korean barbecue to give me the lay of the land. The whole atmosphere of the show — it was so hot, and we were all just surviving, just like the characters — was a very bonding experience.
Jeffrey, your character was introduced at the end of Season 6 with a huge, notorious cliffhanger. What was it like to be thrown in so dramatically?
JEFFREY DEAN MORGAN [The “Walking Dead” producer] Scott Gimple had called me and asked if I would do this. I was in the middle of shooting “The Good Wife.” I just happened to have a two-day window where I could go to Georgia. I was a big fan of the show, and I knew it was going to attract a bit of attention. But I had no idea of the levels of crazy that it was going to be.
I had met Lauren — we’d been Batman’s mom and dad in “Batman v Superman.” But it was such an emotional way to meet everybody. Everyone was a little standoffish toward me, as you’d expect.
Did you have any idea who you would be killing?
MORGAN I think we all knew it would be Glenn, but not Abraham. The last shot I did on that very first two-day stint was the bat coming down toward the camera. I remember Michael Cudlitz, who played Abraham, coming up to me like, ‘Do you know who you’re killing?’ I’m like, yeah, Steven! It’s in the comics! He was like, ‘Do you think you’re killing anyone else?’
COHAN Remember we shot those alternate endings?
MORGAN: That’s right! We shot me killing every member of the cast. Everyone took a hit from the bat that night. That was just to throw people off. It was crazy. The cliffhanger pushed the fan base awfully far.
Source: Read Full Article