Lauren Cohan talks facing the ‘Walker King’ in The Walking Dead: Dead City
By Ashley Hurst
The Walking Dead: Dead City has set a high standard for spinoffs in the franchise. Fans are loving the new setting of New York City, from the people zip-lining across skyscrapers high above to the claustrophobic narrow streets brimming with walkers below. In episode 5, “Stories We Tell Ourselves,” Maggie (Lauren Cohan) escaped into the sewers, where she came face to face with perhaps the most powerful walker we’ve ever seen!
We’ve seen plenty of crazy walkers throughout the years in The Walking Dead, from the iconic ‘well walker’ in season 2 to the one with the spiked helmet that Jadis set upon Rick. But Dead City just took things to another level of disgusting. Dubbed the ‘Walker King,’ this zombie had likely been rotting in the sewers since the beginning of the apocalypse. All bloated, it had other walkers congealed into its body, like a real-life rat king, which is where it gets its name.
“It’s the Walker King because it’s based on an idea of how rats sort of tangle their tails and become a rat king,” Cohan tole Entertainment Weekly. “So we have this monster Walker King and we had three people puppeteering it. We had our stunt performer, and then we had two walkers coming out of him and puppeteers bringing those to life.”
Cohan has been involved in The Walking Dead universe for over a decade at this point, and there’s not much she hasn’t encountered. But this was the most physically demanding thing she’s done yet:
"It was the most physically testing and fun stunt I’ve ever done on the show. It took a while for us to do that one and make it as scary as possible. To me, it totally felt like Alien. If you take the entire Alien movie, mash it up and make them zombies — that’s what it was to me."
Funnily enough, The Last of Us: Part II has a very similar monster, one that fans have taken to calling the ‘Rat King.’ Makes me wonder if The Walking Dead team played that and got inspired.
Lauren Cohan weighs in on huge Maggie-Negan twist
Since the start of Dead City, we’ve always assumed that Maggie’s determination to kill the Croat was a personal vendetta. And it is: he has has her son Hershel, after all. However, there’s something else at play. There’s a reason she wanted Negan by her side: to deliver him to the Croat in exchange for Hershel, as revealed in Episode 5.
“I was so glad when [showrunner Eli Jorné] came with this story and that this was the twist,” she said. “It was something I just didn’t see coming and couldn’t have seen coming.”
"It’s like, what would you do? If somebody said to you, here’s this person and he may have changed, but you may need to say these things, what would you do?"
Just when we thought Maggie and Negan were becoming teammates, it’s about to all come crashing down in the finale. The series finale of The Walking Dead: Dead City premieres on Sunday, July 23 on AMC.
New teaser for the Daryl Dixon show!
The next installment in The Walking Dead franchise looks particularly exciting. The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon follows Daryl (Norman Reedus) as he washes up on the shores of a desolate but resilient France. The teasers so far have been relatively light on plot details, but we have seen some stunning shots of post-apocalyptic France. The latest teaser is no different, featuring a broken Eiffel Tower. Check it out!
The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon premieres on September 10. Not long now!
Next. Jeffrey Dean Morgan reacts to throwback Negan scene in The Walking Dead: Dead City. dark
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