‘The Walking Dead: Dead City': Lauren Cohan talks turning the Bay State into a zombified Big Apple
Fans may recall that Negan, once a barbed-wired-bat-wielding villain, killed Maggie's husband Glenn (
In the upcoming season, Maggie and Negan are now on separate paths, dealing with the fallout of season 1's nail-biting finale. Production on the series shipped up to the Boston area after filming much of last season in New Jersey.
Advertisement
Lauren Cohan in "The Walking Dead: Dead City."
Robert Clark/AMC
'We went to check out Boston to see for possibilities for season 2, and found the most incredible locations and the best freaking crew,' Cohan told the Globe over Zoom this week.
They were looking for spots they could transform to look like New York City, and to take their 'production dollar a little bit further,' she said. Filming took place in several Massachusetts locales last year, including
Bostonians may recognize the 100 Federal Street building in Downtown Boston, which pops up in the opening minutes of Sunday's episode. The premiere also includes scenes featuring Negan filmed at the
'We knew that we'd be able to do something really epic in this place,' Cohan said, noting production designer Bernardo Trujillo's 'sense of history' in bringing the space to life. 'What you're always looking for as a filmmaker is something that fits the story, something that meets the level of the story, and then sends your imagination in even wider directions because the aperture just opens.'
A look behind the scenes during filming at St. Jean Baptiste Church in Lowell.
Robert Clark/AMC
Scott M. Gimple, executive producer on 'Dead City' and chief content officer of AMC's 'The Walking Dead' TV universe, said the team also used exterior and drone shots of the actual Big Apple to help flesh out its portrayal on screen.
Advertisement
The move to Massachusetts, after shooting season 1 in New Jersey and filming the original series for more than a decade in Georgia, 'gave us a little energy, it gave us a little luck,' said Gimple, noting how many of the locals that the cast and crew encountered 'were so happy that the show was being made in Boston.'
Jeffrey Dean Morgan in "The Walking Dead: Dead City."
Robert Clark/AMC
For Cohan, the trip to the Bay State coincided with her directorial debut in season 2 — she helms episode 6 this season. Cohan said she began contemplating directing toward the end of her run on 'The Walking Dead.' She jumped at the chance on 'Dead City' after a phone call with Morgan, who enthusiastically supported the idea.
'He didn't even let me finish the sentence. He's like, 'You better do it,'' Cohan said.
The actress called directing 'an amazing experience,' but found it to be 'challenging,' too, learning to keep her eye on
'all these little wheels spinning' on set. It taught her a 'huge life lesson' about staying focused on one task at a time and working as a team.
'The best parts of directing are that you get to sort of huddle up with each department, and it's a bristling creative environment,' Cohan said. 'I count my blessings every day.'
Looking back on her history with Maggie, Cohan can't help but feel a little sad over the character's 'hard road,' having lost her husband and much of her family in the original show and now being forced to reckon with her past again since Negan is back in the fold. Maggie also needs to find a way to reconnect with Hershel.
Advertisement
'The part that I feel sad for her now is that the walls of the world keep closing in,' Cohan said.
Behind the scenes on "The Walking Dead: Dead City."
Robert Clark/AMC
'There's people that you know in life that tragedy seems to befall them … and you still hope for a turn,' she added. 'And this is a really deep, complex relationship and road that leads us to these possibilities of a turn that I think 'The Walking Dead,' that's what it does. And that's what I'm proud of and that's what sustains it.'
According to Gimple, audiences keep coming back for more of the sprawling 'Walking Dead' universe because the franchise has always been 'more about characters than plot' and the feelings of audiences, crafting fan-favorite roles that viewers want to invite into their lives.
''The Walking Dead' is about making characters that people love and telling stories that hit them,' Gimple said. 'That hit them in the heart, hit them in the gut.'
THE WALKING DEAD: DEAD CITY
Season 2 premieres Sunday at 9 p.m. on AMC and AMC+
Matt Juul can be reached at
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
UPI
21 hours ago
- UPI
Ashley Williams: 'Barcelona' heroines 'see themselves in each other'
Ali Sweeney (L) and Ashley Williams star in "To Barcelona, With Love," premiering Saturday. Photo courtesy of Hallmark NEW YORK, June 7 (UPI) -- Sister Swap alum Ashley Williams and Hannah Swensen actress Alison Sweeney say they wanted to star in To Barcelona, With Love, and its sequel, To Barcelona, Forever, because the TV movies are about two very different women who find they bring out the best in each other. "Throughout the journey, they also change in different ways and then start to see themselves in each other, which is a really cool thing about our story I really love," Williams told UPI in a Zoom interview Thursday. Premiering on Hallmark Saturday, With Love brings American author Anna (Williams) to Barcelona, the only place in the world where her novel is being celebrated. Once there, she quickly learns that the book -- which she wrote having never visited Spain in real life -- is so popular because U.S. ex-pat and aspiring writer Erica (Sweeney) has beautifully translated it from English to Spanish and added her own thoughtful observations about the country and its people. Erica has a lot to share with Anna, but will that include the secret rewriting of her book? Watch #ToBarcelonaWithLove Saturday at 8/7c and stream the next day on @HallmarkPlus. @Ali_Sweeney #AshleyWilliams #PassportToLove Hallmark Channel (@hallmarkchannel) June 6, 2025 "I love that Erica is a little more buttoned-up and organized," Sweeney said. "She's a little more embracing of this whole European lifestyle, but, also, really afraid to be who she is," she added. "She just kind of has settled for being the friend and translating other people's work and, then, through this series of events, she ends up kind of really needing to push herself and admit how she really feels." Her new friendship with Anna is integral to catapulting Erica out of a comfortable rut. "Anna is living out loud," Sweeney said. "She's just bright and big and has a big personality and is fun and a daredevil. She's a risk-taker and Erica is terrified of taking a risk. ... I think that's a really fun thing they learn about each other." Unaware that Erica is secretly in love with him, Nico (Alejandro Tous), an adorable book-store owner is bewitched by what he thinks is Anna's beautiful writing and enlists Erica's help to court her. Anna is charmed by Nico, too, and also depends on Erica to feed her all the right things to say to him in the tradition of the 19th-century, love-triangle drama, Cyrano de Bergerac, and its 1987 film adaptation, Roxanne, starring Steve Martin, Daryl Hannh and Rick Rossovich. "I was so in love with the idea of getting to kind of borrow the Cyrano idea and play it with Ashley and do the comedy of it," Sweeney said. "I can't tell you how thrilled I am with how it turned out. It makes me laugh every time," she added. "It was such a fun thing to twist it around the two women who are doing the Cyrano thing and then getting to play that kind of physical comedy actually was a dream come true." In addition to being hilarious, these scenes also show Erica and Anna supporting each other, Williams said. "It's: 'Hey, I have confession. I'm in over my head. You're the answer. Can you help me?'" she said. "Erica puts Anna's needs ahead of her own. Erica is deeply in love with this person [Nico], but her fear about coming to terms with that and her loyalty to this fellow female in need [influence her actions]," Williams said. "That is so flawed and so beautiful and something that I relate to as a person who just loves the women in my life more than anything." Williams said the spark for the movie came from an experience she had feeling like a failure about her own writing endeavors, while she was browsing the stacks of best-sellers at an airport newsstand. "I thought, 'Well, i'm such a bad writer that the only way that I would ever have a hit book is if I wrote a book and somebody who's actually a good writer translated it in another language and that became a good book,'" she recalled. "And I was like, 'What a complicated idea, but, also, a good idea for a movie." Williams pitched the concept to screenwriter Julie Sherman Wolfe. "She said, 'Well, we would need another Hallmark actress that spoke a different language,' and, right then, Ali Sweeney -- who I loved and had been friends with for years and always wanted to work with -- was walking by, and I said, 'Ali, do you speak a different language?' And she said, 'Spanish,' and I turned to Julie and I said, 'So, it's in Barcelona.'" The sequel, To Barcelona, Forever, picks up five months after the events of the first film and is set to air on Hallmark June 14. Ron Oliver directed both movies. Williams and Sweeney also have a podcast in which they discuss their adventures in Spain.
Yahoo
a day ago
- Yahoo
2 Reasons AMC Stock Is Soaring in June
Memorial Day weekend set moviegoing records, and a lot of the sales went to AMC as the largest theater chain. With many expected hit movies slated for release, management thinks it's turned a corner. AMC stock is still down year to date and the company has a lot to prove. 10 stocks we like better than AMC Entertainment › AMC (NYSE: AMC) is the largest movie theater operator in the world, but being the leader in a troubled industry hasn't done much for the company over the past few years. With the advent of streaming and residual fears from the pandemic, moviegoing just isn't what it once was and AMC continues to struggle. However, Memorial Day weekend was a boon for the company and AMC stock has been climbing. Let's see why and what it means for the future. Streaming from home has taken a toll on the box office, but there is still life left in theaters. Four of the top 10 highest-grossing films ever were released since the pandemic started, including Avatar: The Way of Water in the No. 3 spot and last year's Inside Out 2. People are still going to the movies. That fact was reinforced with a record Memorial Day weekend in May. Disney's live-action remake of Lilo & Stitch had the highest-ever four-day Memorial Day opening, and it was buttressed by a strong showing for Paramount's Mission: Impossible -- The Final Reckoning. Altogether, these two topped a blowout weekend with $326.7 million in domestic ticket sales, and Lilo & Stitch is already the second-highest-grossing domestic film of the year. Of course, that success trickled down to generate incredible financial results for AMC. Management said it set an all-time record for admissions revenue, food and beverage revenue, and total revenue for a weekend Memorial Day opening, and that the five-day stretch was the third-highest revenue for any five-day slot in more than 10 years. As for attendance, this was the highest-attended weekend and highest-attended five-day period of the year, both domestically and globally. Management didn't provide specific financial metrics for the weekend, so investors aren't likely to hear the nitty-gritty details until the second-quarter earnings release sometime in July or August. But management's update and optimism are boosting investor confidence. It's nice for the company to have a solid, record-breaking opening, but can it last? Management thinks so, and the market may be pricing that in. CEO Adam Aron said that after this weekend, AMC has turned a corner. "With many more potentially huge movies coming in June all the way through the end of 2025, and beyond that deeply into 2026 as well," he said, "we firmly expect to be enjoying a robust theatrical box office as we look ahead." Here's what to be excited about. Disney has a full slate of films coming out over the next few years, including the third film in the Avatar series. The first two are the highest-grossing and third-highest-grossing films ever, and the next film is slated for release this coming December. It also has the next Frozen film and other top franchises coming out soon. Warner Bros. has its own expected hits coming out, including a new Superman, and Comcast's Universal Studios has the next installment of Wicked and a new Shrek. Sequels to popular franchises can be big business. But the company is still reporting revenue declines and losses as of the 2025 first quarter. It will take some time to see if AMC has indeed turned a corner. As the price has increased in June, so has the short interest in AMC, hitting almost 15% of all outstanding shares. These investors are betting on this being a short-term boost and that the price will fall from this surge. Even though AMC stock is up 29% over the past month, it's still down 15% year-to-date. Unless the company releases incredibly strong earnings for the second quarter and keeps up its performance, the price jump may not last. Part of what's frustrating about that for investors is that many variables are beyond the company's control. It's up to film producers to create hit movies that bring viewers into theaters and to make the decision to keep them there long enough before they hit streaming services. That can be quite lumpy. You need to have real confidence in the future of the film industry and the resilience of theaters as a beckoning call for die-hard fans to want to invest in AMC's future, and for most investors, that time isn't now. Before you buy stock in AMC Entertainment, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the for investors to buy now… and AMC Entertainment wasn't one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $674,395!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $858,011!* Now, it's worth noting Stock Advisor's total average return is 997% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 172% for the S&P 500. Don't miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join . See the 10 stocks » *Stock Advisor returns as of June 2, 2025 Jennifer Saibil has positions in Walt Disney. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Walt Disney. The Motley Fool recommends Comcast. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. 2 Reasons AMC Stock Is Soaring in June was originally published by The Motley Fool Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Business Insider
a day ago
- Business Insider
You're about to get ads right before the movie at AMC too
You're going to see ads right before the movie at AMC Theatres from next month. The cinema chain is adding a "platinum spot" in between the trailers and the film from July 1. The move is part of an agreement with National CineMedia that will give AMC a slice of the revenue from these ads, which the company describes as "vital" to its post-pandemic recovery. Rivals including Regal and Cinemark have been playing pre-show ads since 2019. AMC had held out over fears of alienating movie fans. AMC said in a statement that its competitors had not suffered "any direct impact to their attendance. This is a strong indication that this NCM pre-show initiative does not negatively influence moviegoing habits." AMC said last month it would start offering 50% off tickets on Wednesdays for members of its loyalty scheme in a bid to boost midweek attendance, alongside an improved selection of food and beverages. Revenues fell 9% to $862 million in the first quarter for AMC, while attendance at US theaters fell 11%. Total US box office takings stood at nearly $3.4 billion by the end of May, per Comscore data — 26% higher than the same period last year. A $4.2 billion haul is being forecast by the data provider for period from the first weekend in May to the Labor Day weekend in early September, Screen Daily reported. That could beat 2023's " Barbenheimer" summer when ticket sales reached almost $4.1 billion.
