© 2022 AMC Film Holdings LLC. All Rights Reserved. Credit: Peter Kramer/AMCWhen fans said goodbye to the 12-year, 11-season run of The Walking Dead back in November, they knew they wouldn’t have to wait long to see some of their favorite characters return in a new brutal, postapocalyptic adventure.
And the series’ most unlikely pairing — Maggie (Lauren Cohan) and Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) — are the subjects of AMC’s new The Walking Dead: Dead City, premiering Sunday, June 18, at 9pm ET/PT (also streams on AMC+). The two justifiably have been at war with one another for most of the series, as Maggie’s beloved husband Glenn died from Negan bludgeoning him with his infamous barbed-wire bat in what was one of the series’ most appalling and heartbreaking deaths.
While you would have never imagined that this character could be redeemable, Negan did begin to atone for his sins and made some significant sacrifices that allowed for him to survive (and occasionally that self-serving sarcasm we came to love did come through). Now the two head to Manhattan, which has long been cut off from the mainland, where they see the dead being used as weapons, and they desperately search for Maggie’s son Hershel.
Here Cohan tells us what we can expect.
How much of a time gap is it since we last left Maggie and Negan? And what’s New York like?
Lauren Cohan: It’s covered in zombies. We haven’t exactly pinpointed it, but I would say it’s a few years into the future.
Where do we pick up with Maggie? Where are you?
Maggie’s a few years into the future and in a place that maybe she’d hoped to move on from or be in a different place in her life, but that’s not the case. She’s searching for her son and needs the help of Negan on this mission, and it’s somebody that she never thought she’d have to see again, let alone deal with all the emotions that they bring up. [We find out pretty early on what happened to her son.]
When we last left you two, Maggie said she didn’t want to hate Negan anymore. How’s that working out?
It’s a great plan, and it’s a great hope that she has to be able to somehow put something to rest so that she can move on and not be consumed by the rage. But I think the combination of not having processed any of the grief really and going away from the source of the pain hasn’t made her process it. And it’s only by being forced back into it that we see that she’s reverted a little bit. He’s reverted a little bit, and they both have been sent on a slingshot, pulled back only to be thrust forward into crazy extremes of this raw circumstance. So it’s really challenging. I mean, it’s delicious as a performer to get to think about all this and be there, but it is painful as hell for the people, and it’s a really conflicted journey.
Besides the obvious of her missing son and working with Negan, what other demons is Maggie challenged with?
I think, honestly, it’s so difficult to fathom the level of pain and loneliness and the parts of self that are just shut down in order to live this life. We’re talking about someone 15 years into the apocalypse, which normalizes at some point to a degree. But it is fascinating to me to say that these realms of your heart and your mind are off limits. And that’s a recipe for insanity. … The most flavorful part of this whole story is the complexity of human emotion and this kaleidoscope of pain and tension and need and unwillingness, and who can you trust and where can you turn and how do you keep going?
What’s the New York zombie scene look like?
The New York scene for us is different. We meet different people. We meet people who have learned to survive. There’s a sense of the New York spirit inserted into an apocalypse, which I think everybody would be excited to see that cocktail. And we get to show the people that are still living, and we get to show the sea of the dead and then we’re stuck on this island. Once you get on, you can’t get off. And that’s something that Maggie and Negan don’t know going in. And it’s entering, really entering, the dark night of the soul — both on the island and in ourselves.
Who’s this new character Marshal Perlie Armstrong (played by Gaius Charles), and who should we be worried about?
We should be worried about him; he’s not our biggest bad in the show, but he has a drive that is unstoppable and that’s what makes him so threatening. … I think so many characters who have to follow a rule of law to the letter, it’s often protecting the great vulnerability within them. And that’s something that definitely exists for Perlie. … I find myself just enjoying Gaius and Željko Ivanek [who plays The Croat] and watching them, and just pinching myself at the luck of this.
And how bad is The Croat?
The Croat is really a new level of sinister. I don’t want to say too much about how he came to be who he is, because that’s a part of the story, but you think you’ve seen all kinds of evil represented in the world and sinister things, and obviously our king sinister, Negan. And then you see this whole new level of sport in evil that somebody has, and yet also these vulnerable, heartbreaking colors. And that’s what’s been so exciting about the show, is nobody conforms to any cut-and-dried sort of label.
So if we thought Negan or The Governor was a 10, how is he?
Remember in Spinal Tap when they want the amp to go to 11? People may not know this reference, but The Croat is definitely, he’s definitely beyond 11 in what he represents and sort of forces.
Can you see the series going beyond the initial six episodes?
I think this could at least be five seasons. There’s so many wonderful ideas that spawned out of the characters from Season 1. It would be my absolute pleasure if we got to do this for a few years.
Trust the enemy. #DeadCity premieres this Sunday on AMC and AMC+. pic.twitter.com/akVecZsiqU
— The Walking Dead (@WalkingDead_AMC) June 13, 2023
Is Maggie going to look any different? And did you have any say in what she might be wearing?
I went and built my whole wardrobe. I found all these pieces in thrift shops and leather makers. I just built it as close to the ideal as I could without real sewing skills. And then I went to Stephanie Maslansky who did our costumes and said, “OK, can you just seal the deal on this?” I was pretty clear about what I wanted for her because she is still a grounded woman, and I’ve always liked where she comes from and her roots and the pragmatism to her. I didn’t want a costume that suddenly felt like a total departure from that. I knew that going into New York and telling this story of this sort of darker, deeper color of her was going to give me an opportunity to just say, “How are you hardened?” This deep blue leather jacket that I found just felt like the emotion of her. And it was in so many ways emblematic to me of the sadness of her soul and the drowning of the surrounds of the island. And then there’s all this great resource in her wardrobe. … You’ll see as a season unfolds, but it’s like my outfit itself is a weapon.
You described this series and this point in Maggie’s life as “uncomfortable.” Can you expand on that more?
I think uncomfortable is when you can’t run away from what something makes you feel and what may come. It’s undeniable that what Negan did is what Negan did. … But with Maggie’s life, she thinks about the minutiae, she takes accountability for every part of her … she keeps herself quote-unquote safe emotionally and physically, because of something that happened. … The bravest thing to do is to continue to live your life and change and unpack the kind of trauma that Maggie or any of these people have been through for these 15 years against the backdrop of this terrifying island. And your only loved one, your child, missing is incredibly uncomfortable but necessary. And the only good is on the other side of all this difficulty, as it forces her into these places of quiet and these places of reflection that are unbearable.