Stars from AMC/AMC+‘s The Walking Dead: Dead City – Season 2 did a press conference at Comic Con 2024, to have an in-depth discussion about the upcoming season. Scott M. Gimple (The Walking Dead Universe Chief Content Officer), Jeffrey Dean Morgan (Negan, Executive Producer), Lauren Cohan (Maggie Rhee, Executive Producer), Gaius Charles (Perlie Armstrong), Željko Ivanek (The Croat), and Dascha Polanco (Major Lucia Narvaez) talk about this season’s surprises, character connections, the past and fan service.
How do you guys think system will keep your characters fresh heading into the season? How do we keep our characters fresh heading into season 7?
Well, we dip ourselves in oil, breadcrumb, and then no, we go to a new location as we’ve done with our city. We have stories that make us reveal parts of the character that we haven’t got to explore. We come into conflict with new characters, and I think in general just try to keep each other honest and if it’s emotionally resonant then that’s fresh to me for as a viewer and as an actor and as a human. We’re humans. Hate to break the news barely.
How do you guys keep it fresh?
I think it’s like how do I deal with the thing I didn’t ever expect to happen? Do you know what I mean? And I think that keeps it fresh. Like an apocalypse. I think it helps working with new actors as well. Bringing in Gas and Jelo, it’s not an established relationship that the characters have that that Maggie and Negan have. but in the circumstances, we find ourselves in this year, I think are different than we were in last year. But I had a lot of fun. I always have fun with Lauren, but I think Jelo in particular, I think, brings out something to Negan that we’ve never seen before. Being that they have this past that we get to explore. It’s a new story and we were in a new place and all these relationships after every season gets shaken up and turn around and you find yourself with the same people in a very different set of circumstances and that always keeps it fresh and new. It’s nice.
We all expect you your two characters to have that dichotomy of back and forth, back and forth, villain, hero, hero, villain. When you two prepare for a scene together, how much are you already anticipating the future swap of relationship as the script is developing?
I was just like thinking how lucky we are because sometimes we’re in concert with other people and then we finally get to be together and there’s so much that like nothing, but history can give you. So, knowing where things might go and like knowing what the whole story might be is irrelevant in the moment because we really get to just be together in in a moment, in an episode, in a scene. It helps to stay present because we shot eight episodes out of order this year and it was really challenging at times. It was it was great because it actually makes it easier to stretch the budget you have for the year. But it was something to keep track of and then at each thing you just have to keep coming back to the touchstone of like what we know right now and then you just go together and see how what wants to happen in the scene. And that’s the beauty of the whole of the whole game of acting. There’s a relationship that’s established that the audience all knows about. So, we go into scenes and it’s like how we can turn this in a way that not only makes it something different for the audience because people have seen us play a couple scenes the same way over the years.
I think it’s about trying to find that new that new bit. And I think as time goes and this relationship continues, does that add comfort or does it add more strain? We do a lot of discussing about where we’d like to see these scenes go, and hopefully it would fall in line with what the audience wants to see as well. This year I think was interesting. That’s what I can tell you.
Can you talk about when the show first came out from New York, the characters, what’s it like moving forward?
Different energy, different location. Yeah, we’re in Boston this year, and it definitely afforded us a lot more space. It’s very expensive and difficult to shoot in New York City, as probably everybody knows. It’s hard to shut down a street and make it look apocalyptic in the daytime in New York. Oddly enough, no one gives a shit. I joined the show, and I got to kill my first walker, that was like really dope. It was cool because I mean that was the first part of the research was to track that relationship back and go through the whole Walking Dead story basically to figure out what is that relationship and to figure out him since that’s my idol. There’s just an awful lot you get to build on that’s been established and then figure out like where does it go from here? But in some ways, it makes it easier because you have so much more information. You got the script, but you also have a whole history and that was a great thing. So not daunting. Not at all.
Does Hersel have some Stockholm Syndrome or some other aspects where he might have some sympathy towards the towards his captors?
It’s a really that part of the storyline has been really complex and real and sad and we get to unpack all of this but mostly because he’s a teenage boy and it is his responsibility to not do what’s best for himself. No, just kidding. No, it is his responsibility. It basically just it comes with the territory that there’s going to be a push and pull between me and I. And that’s what makes the season really relatable for me is we’ve all been teenagers, and we’ve all known that nothing our parents say or do can ever be right. And for Maggie, she’s not a perfect parent either, but the influences that aren’t her are particularly dire, and the people that he came in contact within season 1 are going to have a lot of influence on him. I think it will make parents say, ‘You always want to protect your child from danger and the danger here is maybe a little more potent than or not because the dangers of social media and the dangers of mental illness for children is potent.’ I like the fact that we do this on the scale of the apocalypse but it’s close to the heart.
Lauren Cohan, can you tell us anything that you might have learned about yourself when portraying these characters? Or better yet, what are some of the ways that you carry with you outside after the trip.
“I think perseverance and continuing to look for the challenge has been a big takeaway for me from being on a show for an amount of time that you could rest on your laurels or not look for a challenge within yourself as a performer or as a teammate or anything. When I think about one thing about Maggie is that I do find myself to be very different from her in many ways and I’m always looking for ways that I’m similar, like knowing the best way to swing a hammer. We in this world have more of a luxury to do self-reflection and there will be more of that in our show and so I guess it’s just art informing life informing art.
What do you think Jeffrey?
I think I learned how to swing a baseball bat. I think after all the years of playing one character, it’s the amount of growth that Negan’s had, the different sides of Negan that we’ve been able to show. The only similarity there is that I hope and that I grow as a human being as well, in different ways than probably Negan. It has been interesting to track him from when he first came out of that trailer in the clearing to where he is this season. It’s been a roller coaster ride for Negan, and I think it really is coming to a head this year. I don’t think he’s done growing at this point, but some stuff we’ve never seen Negan do, we will see this year. Some stuff I think will shock people, and yet there’s always that old deacon that is still in there, which is really interesting and fun. He doesn’t lose track ever of who he is and where he came from.
New York City has a reputation. What was it like filming the attitude of New York.
There are some places that we show in New York. There’s one set we live on quite a bit that just blew me away. It was not filthy. In fact, it was probably the opposite of that. There were some disgusting things that happened within there as she was walking back. But I was blown away by the world that was built, by the sets that were built there, and also by the locations we had, which is something that Boston gave us. There will be moments where you’re going to want to throw up, but there really are some moments, I think, where the audience is going to be like, “Wow, how did they get into that place?” How do they how do they make that place? It the world gets spelled out that way?’ Another cool thing that’s somewhat disgusting and not specific to New York but to our show is that we make methane through the use of dead walkers and we have some fun insight into the process. There’s almost a recipe that should It’s almost like a YouTube video where like, “Hey, let’s make that thing, guys.” How to step by step.
You mentioned the fiscal challenges of filming an apocalypse in New York, and we know you were filming in Worcester, Massachusetts, which has areas that already looks like an apocalypse ran through. Was it like both physical and the aesthetic of Worcester that inspired booking?
It wasn’t just Worcester. We were in Worcester, Lel and Taton as well as in Randolph, we built our stages, and our production designers were able to create incredible things. But we did find some great abandoned areas. As soon as we went on the scout and saw it, we’ were about 80% of the way there and then we found this incredible cathedral that was not actually insanely run down but was abandoned to the extent that we could move in, and they were very generous with where we could shoot. It was great.
Jeffrey, when you transition to the Walking Dead series, and you saw your faces on Trading Cards and action movies. Was that weird for you?
Yeah. I had been in the kind of the comic book world for a little bit. I had done Watchmen and The Losers, so I had done some stuff, but Walking Dead when I came in in season 6, it was a whole another world. It was huge. I don’t think there’s any way to kind of prepare yourself for Funko Pops. It was nuts. It still it still is. I still see stuff, you see people dressed as our characters or any number of toys and action figures. It’s always a lot in a good way. Never gets old. It’s exciting.
What’s it like working with Lauren Cohan’ as a director?
Lauren has been working towards this for years. She shadowed on The Walking Dead. Lauren is incredibly hardworking. Actors often make incredible directors and just Lauren had all the ingredients. I’ll tell you what surprising. It is really cool to be a director. It is really brutal, especially in television. And the amount that Lauren loved it, she loved every part of it. The hardest part was the action of days when I was directing myself and then downregulating to remember technically everything that I wanted to do purely for the fact that to do these action scenes, we know when we’re performing like how much adrenaline is required, but it’s okay because you get to just kind of get in it and stay in it. And then the hat switch then was when I felt it most acutely. The easiest part was that if you do the prep and you get ready ahead of time, you’re on set and you’re just having the best freaking time. It was honestly like a dream. It was just we understood what we were doing. We have a shorthand. She gives good communicate an idea. And it was so much fun. And it’s a terrific episode. First-time directors generally don’t turn in cuts like Lauren. It just came from all the work and the years and years and years that she’s been doing this she just had a head start.
I know you guys are limited on what you can say, but what are you excited for people to see about your characters this year?
They’re going to there’s such depth that both Jeffrey and I get to go to with our characters and then there’s such depth that we get to all explore together. We are so lucky to have the cost that we have. We’ve done this show for a long time and sometimes it didn’t feel like we were in the show at all. We just have a great story, amazing support, amazing whole production team and then we got to play. It’s just been a love fest.
During the premiere it’s like a big budget spectacle with fire and explosions. I’m reading the script and I’m thinking, ‘Okay, well that’s going to be CGI and that’s going to be this and that’s going to be that’ and then they bring out the cannons. They bring out the fire rods. So, I’m excited for the audience to see that. In this season that there’s so many high highs for people and low lows for people. You do get to do that range within the season and sometimes within the episode, it’s just really fun to act and I hope really fun to watch.
There’s something that has gotten to be revealed over the course of all this time; that is a shared value system that they both have and that’s really interesting when they’re people that can so much dislike aspects of each other and have gone through the challenges they have, but come to where we are in season 2 of Dead City and where we really get to by the end of season two is this recognition that despite these ways. Despite things, we’ve employed to survive, that a potential for growth and that there’s be a lot more in common than we would know. I love exploring that because wouldn’t that be a nice thing to realize in general in the world now?
We have now known each other all this time and there’s something in that. There’s a reflection of each other in it. At this point after so many years together and especially the last couple years though they would never admit it. I think there’s a respect and a weird trust that they have. I think if Negan is in big trouble, I think that he thinks that Maggie may come through for him. That’s odd considering how they met, and the hatred has always been there. But even in that hatred, there’s a lot of shared stuff that has led to them having a certain amount of respect for each other, though I don’t know that they’d ever voiced that. There’s something Negan can give Maggie and something Maggie can give Negan. There’s a forgiveness and there’s a recognition in each other that’s sort of kept them connected. I don’t know if they can be apart as fucked up as it is.
To learn more about The Walking Dead: Dead City, check out the full interview in the video above.
Discover more from The Koalition
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
