Jeffrey Dean Morgan & Lauren Cohan Talk The Walking Dead: Dead City
The Walking Dead franchise is more alive than ever.
Though the zombie horror series aired its series finale in November after 11 seasons on AMC, there are currently three different spinoffs in development: The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon, starring Norman Reedus, an untitled series starring Andrew Lincoln and Danai Gurira as their characters Rick and Michonne, respectively, and The Walking Dead: Dead City, starring Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Lauren Cohan.
While the spinoffs all stand alone, Jeffrey and Lauren teased that it might not be long before their characters Negan and Maggie stumble across some familiar faces again.
“I think the door is open because we are all on the same timeline,” Jeffrey revealed to E! News. “They are existing at the same time. So I think there is the opportunity to bring a character from this show, a character from that show, and do something else that can continue.”
Lauren agreed, saying “there’s hope of a collision” between all of the different shows.
While Jeffrey now says “everyone is very excited about the respective spinoffs and what can come next,” he wasn’t always so sure how Dead City—which will follow Maggie and Negan as they travel “into a post-apocalyptic Manhattan long ago cut off from the mainland,” according to the network—would even work in the first place.
“When the idea was first pitched, I thought it was as crazy as you probably did,” he said. “How do you put these two characters together? There was a lot of talk about spinoffs and how they would do it. They were talking to Lauren and I about doing our own.”
Jeffrey continued, “One day, [The Walking Dead Universe chief content officer] Scott [Gimple] said, ‘Hey, we’ve got this idea and it’s the two of you.’ I remember I talked to Lauren the next day on set and we were both eyebrows raised going, ‘How the f–k does that work?'”
How the f–k that works, Lauren argued, is by not running away from the existential nature of Negan and Maggie’s relationship.
“It’s a good territory for us to get into as actors, but our audience is going to want to see it,” she said. “It is so much left on the table. If you’re tethered to somebody you have every reason to never want to deal with and want to hate and you have to, for me it just brings up the biggest questions you can have in life.”
Peter Kramer/AMC
As for when those questions will be addressed? Jeffrey insisted fans won’t have to wait long.
“I think those are all going to be answered in the first year,” he said. “I think they’re going to be answered, really, in the first couple episodes. It’s really interesting. It’s really interesting storytelling.”
Jeffrey credited Lauren with making the transition to a spinoff a seamless one, but warned that not everything can stay rosy for long.
“A lot of it felt the same. We had an intimacy from just being around each other for the last seven years,” he said. “But at the same time, we got to do all this new stuff and dive into dark places that you really need to trust your partner. Make no mistake, we really are partners in this, on screen and off, and yet she might kill me at any moment. Or maybe me her. Who knows?”
We can’t wait to find out.
The Walking Dead: Dead City will premiere on AMC and AMC+ in June.
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