WALK OF LIFE

AS RICK AND MICHONNE RETURN IN THE ONES WHO LIVE, ANDREW LINCOLN AND DANAI GURIRA REFLECT ON THEIR JOURNEY WITH THE WALKING DEAD

- DARREN SCOTT

What was it like beginning your Walking Dead experience?

AL: I just didn’t want to be fired. Because I was a Brit and I just was like, “Why have they got me in the middle of this iconic series?” Frank Darabont, he wrote [screenplays for] The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile, but also penned the first two series and directed the pilot episode. So two and a half weeks into the filming he came over to me and he just whispered quietly, “I think we might have something here.” For him to say that, I thought we might be okay. It was the first [San Diego] Comic-Con when we launched. We showed the first trailer. I remember the reaction to, I think it was Rick on the horse coming down the highway. I heard the walls in Hall H reverberating. I was feeling sick outside before coming on. I thought we must be doing something right.

When I rode that horse in the first season, we had a weekend and we shut down four blocks of Atlanta and turned over tanks and whatnot, and had 500 extras chasing me as zombies. I just thought, “This is the coolest gig I have ever been in. What is happening?”

DG: It was an unexpected thing. I definitely wasn’t into horror. But when I watched The Walking Dead for the first time, I was amazed by the depth of the storytelling, characters – just how beautifully it was put together, I loved feeling the power and the energy of the actors, it felt like they were throwing their all into it. As a thespian, I love that. Those are my people. That’s my tribe right there. So it really felt right for me.