Lauren Cohan, aka ‘Maggie Greene,’ started out as a sweet innocent girl from the farm in season two of The Walking Dead, and in season three, she’s grown into a badass killing machine.
SPOILER ALERT: She caught a body in the Season 3 midseason finale, and now she’s spilling the beans to GlobalGrind’s entertainment editor and Walking Dead fanatic, BlogXilla, during an exclusive interview about the best show on television.
During the interview, Lauren Cohan revealed what it’s like to be told you’re going to be killed, where she goes to hang out in Atlanta during downtime from filming, and all the other secrets of The Walking Dead. Check it out below!
GlobalGrind: How much of the real Lauren is actually in Maggie?
Lauren: That’s a good question. I really don’t know. It’s interesting because people say the longer you’re on a television show, the more and more the character becomes like you. Because Maggie is quite different from me to begin with – just her living situation, and her background, and all of it, it definitely feels like I’m stepping into this character.
Is it difficult to physically go through all of the different emotions to sell the role?
Yeah. With the scene, when I take the baby out, all I know in that scene is that Lori is this mother figure and sitting there with her child who is watching his mother give birth, and I’m taking a baby out of a woman’s stomach. That’s as simple as it is for me in my mind and you let the circumstances be, and you just be as real as possible and let everything else go. I think that’s the joy of Walking Dead – You have the most unexpected circumstances and you have to completely forget that there are cameras. At the end of the day, it’s a family story, and I know it has gore and death and all these things, but I think it helps to bring to the forefront your feelings for people and how you would protect them.
You and Glenn are making a lot of whoopee in the Zombie [apocalypse]. There’s death all around, and you gotta make love.
[Laughs] Yeah it certainly seems that way, doesn’t it?
We might’ve been on the road for 6 months with NO privacy. So I think it’s funny that as soon as they think it’s safe to rest for a minute, that’s pretty much all they do. They’re just at it like rabbits. [Laughs]. No, I love that scene. I thought it was so funny: their awkwardness. Glen and Maggie thinking that they’re getting away with it. They’re shirking all of their responsibilities and think nobody’s going to notice. Come on guys, we got work to do!
So this season you guys lost two of the main characters that have been there for a while. What is it like on their last day on set?
It’s really sad. IronE (T-Dog) and Sarah (Lori) had different last days. Everybody comes to set, everyone from the office, the cast, the crew, we all gather together so they give a speech. Everybody hugs and cries and takes pictures. It’s like the last day of high school and you’re getting your yearbook signed and you know you won’t see people, but you might see some people, keep in touch, and then we all have a cast dinner. So it’s literally just the cast members. We don’t bring boyfriends, or girlfriends, or family, or anything and we usually go to some simple little diner or something. We have this great steakhouse near the studio, which is like a steakhouse/ karaoke bar. The 10 or 12 of us will go and just have a final goodbye dinner and some kind of cocktails. [Laughs]
When you signed on to do this show, did you have any expectation of how big this show would become?
Absolutely no idea. Even last year when it became really popular, you think that’s the peak. When we came back and we knew the stories that were coming this season, you’re like “Oh my God!” If the show already has some audience and that audience is loyal, this is only going to bring everyone they know into the fold, because it was mind blowing.
I think it was just one of those things where everybody brings their own thing to it, and they happen to be attracting all of the right people to this one thing and making something bigger than the whole.
What do you do for fun?
Oh my God! I sing and read about how you live to 100. [Laughs]. And sometimes I go to MJQ, which is in Atlanta.
That’s a nice little hip-hop spot!
