Lauren Cohan, star of The Walking Dead, delved into the 'satisfying' but 'very stressful' role shift for the new season of the spin-off Dead City.
As a notable branch from the main show, which was adapted from Robert Kirkman's widely-celebrated comic books, Lauren Cohan stars in the series that is currently making waves. The entire first season is up for binge-watching on Netflix, while the second season kicked off its run from May on AMC.
So far, there have been six unique spin-offs birthed from The Walking Dead universe, including Fear The Walking Dead, The Walking Dead: World Beyond, Tales of the Walking Dead, The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon, and The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live.
Dead City zeroes in on the fan-favorite characters Maggie (played by Cohan) and Neegan (portrayed by Jeffrey Dean Morgan), as they navigate through the challenges and stories set against the backdrop of a dystopian New York City after the apocalypse. The second series continues the journey one year on from where the first left off, with various groups fighting for dominance.
In a candid conversation with Screen Time for Reach, Cohan mused about the return of the series, a whole 15 years after The Walking Dead first graced our screens, reports the Mirror US.
Reflecting on her journey, she remarked: "It's such a funny thing, isn't it? When I reflect the first thing I always think of is like starting on season two of The Walking Dead, doing my audition, getting to Georgia, meeting everyone, those first days, learning my lines and then it's almost like there's this 14 and a half year gap, where I'm just here today, I'm just like oh yeah that happened. Meanwhile I was living 14 and a half years of my life."
Cohan shared insights into her profound experiences while returning to work on Dead City, where she took on a new role in its production. She remarked: "I even have (those moments) from shooting season two (of Dead City) because we had a lot of detail and I was involved on a deeper level by directing one of the episodes and that became a seminal experience in and of itself."
The actor, known for her portrayal of Maggie Greene since 2011, directed the sixth episode of Dead City's second season. She opened up about the mix of satisfaction and stress that comes with directing.
She detailed: "Being able to direct on a creative level is so satisfying because you collaborate with everyone and you get to you get to go into their world. You go into the production designers' world you go into the costume designers' world.
"A really big thing about it that I didn't know until I really did it is the way you approach as an actor can be obviously, very isolated and how you're approaching it, building a character. You get to go and collaborate with everyone. They're all doing the same kind of script analysis and so you all get to just sort of like love on the story together and it's a group thing and being in the room when you deliver a tone meeting and everybody's like, okay cool this scene is about this and how is each department going to deliver on that aspect? It's fun. It's really stressful sometimes, but it's really fun."
Cohan opened up about the weight of fan expectations and directing her peers, confessing: "I felt like the responsibility to the fans is baked in because we know it, we love it. We just don't want to get in the way of the thing we love. And the responsibility to my co-stars, working with the actors is the best part of the whole thing because we speak the language."
She elaborated on the dynamics with her fellow actors: "When you're an actor, you know to approach your co-stars in a certain kind of way or you don't, but you wonder if they like being approached the same way you do when you're concentrating. So they've become these very quiet tender moments that you get to have in what is a melee of activity."
