The popular "The Walking Dead" season 9 premiered on Monday, October 8. At a press breakfast in June at Comic Con San Diego, the cast gave fans a glimpse of what they could expect in the new season.
Among those present were Danai Gurira, Lauren Cohan, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Norman Reedus and executive producer Angela Kang.
Danai, what is it like to play two powerful women in The Walking Dead and in two blockbusters in the Marvel universe, in a time of the #MeToo movement and a focus on empowering women?
Danai: It has been an amazing experience. We are starting to see more women-driven narratives, and that’s exciting. When we put out strong female characters or characters who are multidimensional and generally under-represented, the shocking thing is the response is so amazing that we wonder why we didn’t do it earlier.
Are you able to give us a teaser about the upcoming season?
Angela: We are starting a new chapter of the story which is exciting for us. We are starting with a time jump and we’re playing with time, so that gives us the opportunity to see where our characters are at after the war has ended.
We get to see the world in a way we’ve never seen it before. We see nature taking over and man-made structures falling.
We also see how intrepid our group are in dealing with the new challenges and their interpersonal relationships. We’re dealing with themes about civilisation. How do you build a civilisation? How do you look to the past to build for the future? How do you deal with the differences in philosophy and what are the things we, as people, owe one another?
After Negan’s episode with Rick, can we expect to see a new version of him or will he go back to the version we love?
Jeffrey: Negan is going through a bit of a change but deep down, I don’t think he’s going to stray too far from who he is. We’ll see. All the characters are going through some changes. We’ll start the season in a position that we’ve never seen Negan in before and he’s gonna have to learn to deal with it. It might take him a second, and then you’re gonna love him.
In the final episode of the last season, we saw a glimpse of Daryl and Maggie revolting against Rick and all the Negan stuff. Will we see more of that? What other characters will make a comeback?
Angela: We’ll see some great stuff with Daryl and Maggie. Daryl made a promise to Maggie and Maggie made a promise herself. These are people who tend to be people of their word.
Lauren: Maggie and Rick are sort of on different sides of the coin about how to proceed, but they come together and try to find a way through this and a way to respectfully evolve as a civilisation.
Daryl and Maggie feel the same way and so there is disagreement in the camp, but you’ll see with the time jump how things have evolved. It’s a greater conversation about one philosophy versus another. The greatest takeaway for me is seeing us have the conversations.
"The Walking Dead" Season 9 screens on Fox at 8.45pm on Mondays.
Interview courtesy of Fox International.