Lauren Cohan Discusses Taking Maggie From "The Walking Dead" To "Dead City" And Showcasing The "Morally Gray" Side Of The Character

For over 10 years, Lauren Cohan has portrayed Maggie Greene-Rhee in The Walking Dead universe. Joining The Walking Dead in Season 2, she's been at the center of some of the biggest storylines on the show. Namely, her chemistry with Steven Yeun. Their portrayal of Glenn and Maggie is arguably still one of the most beloved pairings to come out of the show. Now, seven years after Glenn's death, Lauren is still growing Maggie's character, and showing how rich a story about grief and trauma can be. 

While on The Walking Dead, Maggie was a single member of a huge ensemble, but now Lauren's getting to show the deeper layers of the character with The Walking Dead: Dead City, a spin-off centering on Maggie and her unlikely partnership with Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) as they traverse NYC. It's a whole new arena and one that has been "really exciting" for Lauren, as Maggie (finally) takes center stage.

To celebrate the premiere of Dead City, Lauren sat down with me to discuss her journey playing Maggie. She shared some of her favorite memories from her early days on The Walking Dead, how Dead City gives her a chance to show the "morally gray" side to Maggie, and much more.

Here's everything we chatted about:

🚨 There are some spoilers for The Walking Dead: Dead City Episode 1 ahead! 🚨

THEN: You joined The Walking Dead in Season 2, over 10 years ago, do you remember your original audition for Maggie?

A thousand percent. It was coming off the back of a big life decision. It was so unexpected. I just remember I came out to LA from the UK and did pilot season and did a few TV shows like The Vampire Diaries, Supernatural, and Chuck. I had all of these television experiences, but I was still so homesick. I don't think I was really ready to wholly embrace Los Angeles either. Even though those shows shot in different places, there was something about moving to LA where I was hesitant.

So I got the audition for The Walking Dead, and it was part of a string of a bunch of auditions. I would make tapes. The first tape I did, I was at my parents house and my sister made the tape with me. I remembered reading the script and it felt totally intuitive and very natural. Then, I got a callback, with some feedback, and I had to do it one more time, but I was at a wedding. So I remember I was like in a castle in Ireland. It was very random. Anyway, they said they loved it, so I was preparing to go to Georgia to do a chemistry read with Steven [Yeun], and then like that afternoon they said, "Actually, they've decided. Frank [Darabont] said it's you. You got the role."

NOW: When did conversations first start that Maggie would get a spin-off series after The Walking Dead ended?

Before I even went back to The Walking Dead at the end of Season 10, Scott Gimple had asked me about my interest in either coming back on the show or doing a different show. Originally what they ended up deciding to do was have me come back on the show and then have Jeff [Dean Morgan] and I "take over." At the time, Norman [Reedus] was going to leave, Andy [Lincoln] had already left, Danai [Gurira] had left. We were gonna go into Season 11 and do four more years with the show, with Jeff and I kind of remaining on The Walking Dead. 

Wait, that's wild.

Yeah! And in the end, they had this idea for Dead City, with our characters in a whole new location with a new storyline and that sounded really exciting because it meant we could jump forward in time.

I don't think I really realized how much time had passed from the end of TWD to Dead City until we see Hershel in the first episode.

We were always kind of ambiguous with timelines on The Walking Dead because kids aged so differently, and we were always wondering if we needed to replace a child actor. But, in this case, it was enough time that we had Logan Kim come on.

Hershel being so much older also made me realize how much time has really passed since Glenn's death.

Exactly!

THEN: Looking back, do you have a favorite Maggie storyline from The Walking Dead? Or a favorite season from the show?

Season 2 is so palpable for me. I have so much muscle memory from Seasons 2 and 3. The newness of everything and the raw emotions. The kind of terror and trauma, and the reason to fight for those characters. There were just so many brutal, and now memorable, moments from the series during that time. Like, we run from the farm, my dad's leg gets chopped off, I perform a C-section on Lori—

Oh my god, I forgot Maggie's the one who delivers Judith at the prison. I haven't thought about that in so long.

Yeah! In front of Carl! And we bring baby Judith out and give her to Rick, and he's destroyed. But even past Season 3, it was just one thing after another for Maggie, and I remember it so vividly. Hershel's death, being separated from Glenn, the cannibals, Beth dying... it was so earnest and it was so much. Then, it eventually culminates in Maggie and Glenn getting married, him dying, and them having a kid. 

I think about it all, even the bad things, and I picture those golden hour moments of the good things. Like, when Hershel finds the cure for the flu and they save Glenn. Or when Glenn takes the photo of Maggie. The perseverance amidst the darkness and the chaos. I can't believe it has been a decade of just really big things happening.

NOW: When did you first hear the whole idea for Dead City? It must've been exciting to get to be able to explore the character so much more after playing her for so long.

I think we were on our midseason break for Season 11 and Eli Jorné, our showrunner, who had done some stuff on The Walking Dead in the time that I was gone, pitched me the outline for Dead City, and it was so cool and exciting. By then, we were well underway but hearing this kind of whole thing laid out sounded like a really good maturation of the characters and the story, and a different type of storytelling. It offered a deeper exploration of the core characters, which was really exciting, I think, for both Jeff and I. 

Did you have a break between The Walking Dead wrapping and then starting production on Dead City?

We went into production, I want to say, like six weeks after we wrapped Season 11. We shot Season 11 for about a year, and then we had a few weeks off, and then — I was about to say Season 12 — we did Season 1 of Dead City. We wrapped that at the end of last year.

Was the Maggie and Negan spin-off always going to be set in New York City? Or were there ideas for other locations?

Eli had some really good ideas of a few different places we could set the show and sort of shuttle it into the future. The one that sounded the most exciting was this New York idea. In fact, at the time, we knew it would either be a Western or would be set in New York City. It was going to be one of two very different locations from the Georgia woods. It sounded exciting. 

THEN: It's interesting that you never did a chemistry read with Steven Yeun before starting TWD. Was it wild to suddenly be thrust into a role where you're now part of one of the most beloved relationships on the show?

I know, I felt that, too. People were so excited about Maggie and Glenn because people that knew the comics knew how important they were, and then people were so excited with how Steven and I worked on screen. I still look back on Maggie and Glenn and think how uniquely romantic that setting is. You've got these two people and it's the end of the world. We're in the pharmacy, and I don't waste any time. 

It was this landscape to really show what it means to have somebody's back and show up for them. These things that are really heroic and obviously you go into the series and there's undeniably heroic things that happen, but I always just thought it was so cool the way people that this couple acted and looked out for each other, even in the small moments.

NOW: How has it been working with Jeffrey Dean Morgan on Dead City? Your characters are such an unlikely pair, given their history, but it works so well in the show.

Jeff's just the easiest work partner and buddy to hang out with. He's such a great dude. I don't know what other way to put it. He's just a good dude. It's such a fun thing for us because we have history, we have time that we've spent together over the years on The Walking Dead, but it was in such a different mindset for me because I also could never have imagined these characters would have to get along, especially in the beginning, in the raw, post-mortem of Negan and Glenn. 

We didn't really have much storyline together at first, too. It was really at the end of Season 10, when I came back and shadowed our directors before I came back onto the show, and then Season 11 that we formed our friendship, and then we were talking about the spin-off and we just felt super excited for how different it is to get to build upon such an unlikely dynamic between people.

You and Jeff are also producing Dead City. How is it working together in that aspect as well?

It's really fun having Jeff as a producing partner, too. We just know the show and the characters so well, but we are also thinking about different things at the same time. So it's nice to be able to come at it from different perspectives, but it all fits into this universe.

Maggie and Negan having a spin-off together is something I never would've imagined way back when he was introduced. What was most exciting to you about this duo now sharing more time together?

There was something introduced at the end of Season 11 that I was really excited to unpack and go deeper into for Dead City, which is that it's not about forgiveness, which I think is so far, far down the road for Maggie, in an honest sense. But like what actually happens when you are face-to-face with someone who has been responsible for what you — and others — perceive as the worst thing that could possibly happen. It's something that comes up, I think, in life, too. 

Life is really about what you do with the cards you're played, but also how am I — meaning Maggie — supposed to really move forward if I've not processed what has happened?

THEN: When looking at Maggie's entire arc, I feel like she has been dealing with her grief for so long, which is so true to real life how grief doesn't just go away. How was it portraying that mindset for several seasons now?

That's actually how I really see this new show. It's looking at Maggie, and namely her trauma, from a different perspective than we have in the past. It's like now standing on a different side of a scene and you're looking at it this way. And when you're looking at it this way what else can you find, what other ways are you able to grow, and just the layers you can find. That's why this season has been so rewarding and sets us up so nicely to, I don't wanna say spoilers, but there are just things that it sets up as an exploration of the whole human experience and we get to go even deeper.

NOW: Like you said, having a new setting for Dead City makes the show feel so different from The Walking Dead. How was it filming in a city setting now as opposed to the woods in Georgia?

The experience of filming in such a different location, it felt like we were just doing an entirely different show, like you said. It's hard to even separate the location being different from just everything being different from TWD. 

It was so appropriate because, as you learn, Maggie and Negan have never been to NYC. So, you get these two people who are usually at odds with each other, who are normally so proficient in the place they come from, then coming to this whole new setting where they aren't as comfortable.

I also loved how when you enter NYC in the pilot for the first time I was expecting walkers to be everywhere, similar to the first episodes of The Walking Dead when they are in Atlanta. But it was...eerily quiet.

Yes! we arrive in the city and the fact that there aren't immediately roamers — or walkers — everywhere is sort of anxiety-inducing because you know they must be somewhere. It gives the feeling that if you're expecting to walk into something and you're amped and then it's not there, your adrenaline has nowhere to go. You just remain sort of weary. The whole show, as you'll see throughout the season, has that. Some of the locations that we've been able to shoot in are so different and so scary, in different ways from only being walker-ridden. 

Besides the setting, what else made Dead City feel different from your experience on The Walking Dead?

One thing that was different was I went in knowing where the season began and where it ended, and it was a concise season. Then getting to see how different characters represented different things that you could explore in the apocalypse that we had maybe looked at in the original show, but had looked at from a different angle. I got to be so surprised by things, like with Gaius [Charles]'s character and Željko [Ivanek]'s character. They just offered up such a different feeling.

THEN: I feel like you've played two very different versions of Maggie: life with Glenn and post-Glenn. Are there aspects of "the old Maggie" you miss playing?

I think part of the work that we're doing in Dead City is to figure out who that person was because, like you said, this post-Glenn Maggie has now been so normalized. It's like when you get older and you look back at being carefree in your 20s and you know you had worries, but they don't seem as deeply existential as the ones you have now. You've lived so much and gone through so much in that span of time and you don't think about why you were happy then vs. now. I think about fighting our way back to that and getting back to that headspace with Maggie a lot. I think of now meeting an aspect of her that was maybe rushed through or taken for granted then that I would love to see come through again now.

And, I mean, there are obviously aspects of this current Maggie that have made her the survivor that she is.

Exactly. There's things that have made that character persevere. There's obviously a deep well of pain that gets revealed sometimes and we see it in Dead City when I'm willing to let the tide ebb and the vulnerability rise. To me, it's the very strange, unexpected surprise of a show like this, where it has evolved in a way where it's the same character, of course, it is, but we've now taken the time to mine and go deeper.

NOW: This time around, are you able to share more of your ideas and thoughts on Maggie's character arc and story? Especially since you've been with this character for so long and know her so well.

Yeah, I felt really involved once we were in the early stages of pre-production and in production. The story, as it came in Season 1, was so refreshing to me. I knew that I would end up bringing my history with the character to the plan for this season in a way that was going to be really fun. There's always that space between what you already know, your previous understanding, and then someone else's perspective. Like what Eli brought to the show, and that magical thing in the collaboration. 

I read Episode 1 through 6 and I was just so excited to see that as much as anybody wants to be progressively moving forward in life there's possibly a couple steps forward, but then inevitably there are steps backward, as well. 

Did you approach playing Maggie in Dead City differently than when you played her in The Walking Dead? Especially in the final season.

I think one defining difference with this show was the ways I sort of almost removed certain things about Maggie. Like, she does become vulnerable at points throughout the season, but there's something that has to be tamped down and put on ice in approaching her this time around because it's almost like things had to get more locked up.

She's not around Carol, Daryl, the people she knows—

The people she can trust, yes! It's almost like emotionally threadbare. We're left with the basics.

THEN: Glenn's death is still a big factor in Maggie's Dead City arc, especially in Episode 1 when she dreams of his death again. How has it been having to revisit that event?

When I watched it back...I cringed all over again. 

Truthfully, I have not watched that scene since it aired. And even then, I was crying so hard I think I watched half of it behind my hands.

[laughing] It was a lot. But I think it's so important to show that scene here because it's that thing of you think everything's fine, and then you close your eyes and that's what you see and that's what you remember. It's like what Maggie says at the end of Season 11 to Negan. I can't remember Glenn without remembering what Negan did to him and how he took him out of this world. 

I think that even if you put your blinders on and can get through most of the day, that thing, subconsciously, is still running constantly. It's such a huge influence on every decision Maggie makes and the way she sees everything. I mean, the way I protect my son and treat my son. Like, can we ever be aware of how much our trauma is dictating our current behavior? No. But it's part of the uncomfortable thing. If you let something rest on your heart and it makes you incapable of taking action, and you have to just get through the day, maybe this rigidity has been her only survival mechanism. 

NOW: In Dead City Episode 1, Negan has a moment where he says that Maggie's probably killed husbands and fathers too. How has it been exploring this morally gray side to Maggie through her unlikely partnership with Negan?

Thank you! Thank you for bringing that up. That's such a huge factor. It's funny because everything's in the name of survival. As we see play out in Dead City, Negan, buy it or not, thinks it has all been part of surviving in the way that he thinks will be most effective. I know that my actions...nothing Maggie could ever do will equal what he did. But, is there a world where I begin to understand the person and all the armor that he built up to do the things he felt he had to do?

It's wild to think of it from Negan's perspective because, being such a Maggie fan, I'd never thought about it like that until he said it. Like yes, Maggie has probably killed other people's family members, like Negan killed Glenn. 

I do look back to episodes with Maggie where she killed Gregory and where she made decisions in a silo and felt that it was the best thing to do. I will never ever be able to say that Maggie and Negan are the same, but I like the idea of a man on the road to truly apologizing and meaning to change. I think she's aware that there is a gray area when it comes to Negan and his actions, but she's still very much stuck in the black and white of the way that our actions define who we are. 

I still think, during every moment, the reason I don't kill him is because will it really give me what I need? And will it make me only as bad as him. But the desire to see if obliterating him would give me peace or would right the world somehow is never out of my mind. 

THEN: Did you take anything from The Walking Dead set after filming wrapped?

I still have my belt, but that remains in Maggie's closet. And then I took my boots. I took a lot of shit. I have this jacket that I wore in that episode with Leah, which wasn't even really a signature jacket of Maggie's. We thought about bringing it back in at some point. It's funny for these shows imagining characters bringing back pieces of wardrobe because you imagine, at some point, these characters having to drop everything and run.

On a sentimental level, I took the second pair of boots that I ever had on the show. The first ones absolutely evaporated and we looked high and low for them. They were the ones that were sort of knee-high Fryes, with the red laces, that I wore I think in Season 2 and 3.

[laughing] Wait, I loved those boots. I know the exact ones you're talking about.

I remember Iliana [Sanchez], who was one of the onset dressers on The Walking Dead, for the girls, she would wear our boots before us so that they were broken in. She'd take the blisters for the team because we were often jumping straight into action and everything. If that's not a team player then I do not know what is.

I took my chair back. I just have scripts and memories, and honestly, so much paraphernalia. Like, crew wrap gifts, posters, cool stuff that we made. I just need a room of all of our dolls and magazine covers. At some point, I need an office to display all of that.