New York City is usually a great trip — but maybe not if you’re also living in a post-apocalyptic world and fighting off undead walkers. In the latest The Walking Dead spinoff, Dead City, two unlikely familiar faces — Maggie (Lauren Cohan) and Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) — end up in the Big Apple together but, don’t worry, these two haven’t suddenly buried the hatchet in a feud that began when Negan brutally killed Maggie’s husband Glenn (Steven Yeun) years ago.
“I think there may be some shared purpose or mutual benefit,” Cohan told TV Insider’s Jim Halterman when she, Morgan, and co-star Gaius Charles stopped by our press room at January’s Television Critics Association press tour. Maggie’s purpose at the start of the six-episode series, which begins a few years after the events of the original Walking Dead series (which ended earlier in November 2022) is to find her son Hershel (Logan Kim).
And while Maggie and Negan may end up needing each other, Morgan points out “there’s some understanding that happens [between them]. I wouldn’t say that they’re ever going to be friendly. I think we’re three seasons away from that.”
As for Friday Night Lights alum Charles, he’s playing Perlie Armstrong, a Marshal and family man who is just trying to keep peace in the crumbling world of New York City with one particular nefarious person in his eyeline. “I want to catch this guy, Negan,” Charles says. “I hear about this guy, Negan, who’s been terrorizing everybody. And so he’s the guy I’ve got to go to New York to get.”
Speaking of New York, familiar landmarks will pop up in the series. Though they couldn’t say specifically what we’ll see, Morgan does say about shooting in New York, “I think it adds a whole new dimension to the show but, yeah, you’ll see some stuff that you recognize, certainly.”
Finally, expect a tone to the spinoff that’s different from the O.G. series. “It’s a lot more intimate and we have five central characters and it’s a big change for us because we get to go deeper into these stories,” Cohan explains. Adds Morgan, “Getting out of the woods and into the cold concrete of New York City…adds this kind of coldness that is a completely different tone than what we’re used to with The Walking Dead.
Watch the interview with the cast of the new series above.
The Walking Dead: Dead City, Series Premiere, Sunday, June 18, 9/8c, AMC and AMC+.
