Actress takes a break from the zombie world
Walking Dead star Lauren Cohan is keen to discover different roles
You know, even the best zombie killers need a change of scenery.
Lauren Cohan has played Maggie on The Walking Dead for seven seasons, but she’ll say goodbye to the character (at least temporarily) when she joins ABC’s Whiskey Cavalier opposite Scott Foley next year. She heads to Prague next month to start shooting the series.
“It’s an action-comedy. I’m calling it an action-comedy, but it’s a drama that’s very funny with some action in it,” she says during a media day for Mile 22, an action film that stars Mark Wahlberg and is directed by PeterBerg.
Cohan says she wanted to leave Walking Dead because she wanted to explore other avenues as an actor.
The adrenalin-fuelled Mile 22 helped scratch her love for action (she mentions she’s a big fan of the Mission: Impossible series). The story — which marks the fourth collaboration between Wahlberg and Berg — revolves around an elite team of CIA agents who are tasked with transporting a foreign intelligence officer to an airstrip while battling hostile enemies.
“It’s cool to see two people so passionate about keeping it messy and keeping it real,” she says about working with Wahlberg and Berg. “It’s an infectious vibe.”
Although the movie is fiction, the type of agent Cohan plays, and the branch of the CIA Mile 22 depicts, is very real.
“I don’t want to go into too much detail about some of the people that we were able to speak with,” she says.
“One thing I will say is: It’s striking how normal people in that line of work look and seem.”
Cohan, 36, trained for her part on weekends off from shooting The Walking Dead and she was left feeling a sense of relief that the type of agents she and Wahlberg play (the film also stars the WWE’s Ronda Rousey, John Malkovich and The Raid’s Iko Uwais) are there as a third option when diplomacy won’t work.
“It didn’t scare me that they exist; it made me feel better,” she says.
“On so many levels they’re a pre-emptive force, and on a lot of levels they ’re the final force in terrorism.”
And even though she’s dipped her toe in the world of action moviemaking, she isn’t saying a total goodbye to The Walking Dead.
Unlike the series’ other departing star, Andrew Lincoln, Cohan says her exit may not be permanent. Depending on what happens with Whiskey Cavalier (as well as any future instalments of Mile 22, there’s already talk of a sequel) she could return in season 10 either full time or for a few select episodes. As she says herself, “Maggie’s story is open-ended, actually.”
Just as Mile 22 allowed her to fulfil her dream of becoming an action heroine, Whiskey Cavalier will let her have some fun. After all, it’s kind of hard to do that slaying zombies day-in, day-out.
“It has everything that I’ve wanted to do that I haven’t gotten a chance to do so much,” she says.
And if there’s such a thing as a perfect moment in an actor’s career, now might be it for Cohan.
“Right now I’m promoting a new season of Walking Dead, a movie with Mark Wahlberg that’s directedbyPeterBergandanewseries that I cried laughing making. I feel, honestly,” and here she pauses, “I almost said, ‘Like a pig in s--t,’ but I’ll leave it at that.”
Season 9 of The Walking Dead returns Oct. 7.