The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live delivers all the action and zombie horror we've come to expect from the franchise over the last 14 years, while also going hard on romance. Andrew Lincoln and Danai Gurira, who play Rick and Michonne, have made no secret of the fact that they wanted the spin-off to feel like a love story as well as an apocalyptic adventure – and one way they established that tone was through an imagined meet-cute between their characters.
In the show's early episodes, Rick is seen dreaming about what it might have been like to meet Michonne in a pre-outbreak world. In the sequences, we see them strike up a conversation on a park bench, as a nervous Rick asks Michonne for directions to a nearby building ahead of his first day on a new job.
"It was really fun. I had a lot of say in things like what she wears," Gurira tells GamesRadar+ about the scene, remembering how much of a novelty it was to wear bright, fresh-looking clothes. "I had braids [at the time], and I didn't want to take them out yet. So I was like, in his dream, she could have braids instead of dreadlocks...? So we kept them and I thought that was kind of a cool dream-like schism, you know? It was the first thing we shot, so it just sort of set the tone of this being a love story.
"It was very cute. We talked very intensely about how you take something like The Walking Dead, which is not a love story genre, and really lean into making it a love story genre," she continues. "When Scott came up with this aspect of it in the teleplay, I was like, 'Oh, that's good. That's good stuff.' Because it's like, 'Of course that's how he survives, he has to escape. He escapes and goes into a dream place that is wholly devoid of the issues and the horror and the apocalypse and the loss'. That's how he keeps himself alive. It encompasses that hope and joy of falling in love."
For some, combining romance and violent action might prove a jarring mix, but for Gurira, "it just makes so much sense". She explains: "Maybe for guys, it's different? I don't know but typically they're more skewed to the action thing but to me, it's the same.
"[Michonne's] power, her passion, her focus, her determination, her unwillingness to lose is all based in love. There was a time when it wasn't based in love for her. In the very beginning of the main series, everything was about loss and it was just like, 'I'll become my own army,' but at this point, it's all about love. Action, working as a team; ultimately, it's the same thing," she goes on.
"I can only speak for myself in terms of how I think, I know sometimes directors in general, or whoever. can have trouble connecting the two things, but it's not an issue for me because it just makes so much sense that that's her determination. Her unwillingness to lose is connected to this love, and the love of her children. I think it's the best when those two things are married, actually, because romance and action can be so intertwined."
Created by Gurira, Lincoln, and The Walking Dead franchise's chief content officer Scott Gimple, The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live also stars Craig Tate, Lesley Ann-Brandt, Terry O'Quinn, and Pollyanna McIntosh.
After premiering in the US back in late February, the show is now finally streaming on Sky and NOW. For more, check out our handy guide on how to watch The Walking Dead franchise in order or our list of the most exciting new TV shows heading our way.
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