One of The Walking Dead cast members almost quit the show over a traumatic scene.
Over the past few years, drugs, sex and violence have become commonplace on primetime television. This has many parents boycotting shows, and bashing the latest productions featuring gratuitous violence. And The Walking Dead is no stranger to controversy. In fact, some of the scenes from the show have been so intense actors have almost quit over them.
‘I have to leave the show. I don’t think I can do it.’
Lauren Cohan, who plays maggie on the show, explained one such moment on Inside The Actor’s Studio:
“The script where Maggie has to give the character Laurie a C-section to save the baby that becomes baby Judith. We all live in the same apartment building – we’re ridiculously incestuous in this cast – so I go two doors down and I knock on Steven [Yuen]’s door and I said, ‘I have to leave the show. I don’t think I can do it.’ It affects you so deeply to the core to dive into so much of this material, and that’s when I realized that’s why I have to do it, because the outcome of that – as heinous and as sleeplessly that affected me, and I’m sure that affected people who watched it – we watch to feel and to hopefully, honestly portray something.”
“Bad stuff happens, and what’s the point in not getting real about it. Ironically enough, as hot as this is, the deeper you go into it, you just have to let all that resistance go and then it’s easier. I always feel like a rattlesnake coming out of its skin because you just lost a part of yourself that ended up being something you really didn’t want that ended up being a barrier or a defense.”
“you just lost a part of yourself that ended up being something you really didn’t want”
It’s pretty interesting to think about this part of The Walking Dead. For us, it’s just an hour of TV in our week. But actors need to get inside the heads of their characters and really experience what’s going on in The Walking Dead universe. And for a show that features tons of violence and zombies, that means endless amount of violence, death and loss.
At a certain point it can get mentally exhausting, and I wonder if anyone else on the cast has basically felt like they wanted to quit the TV series.
Walking Dead Spoiler Alert
Who knows, maybe that’s what happened with Lauren Cohan. Rumors are circulating that her character dies at the end of this season, and a recent extreme haircut has added fuel to that fire.
Whatever happens, you now know how seriously she and the rest of the cast of The Walking Dead take their acting jobs, which just adds to my appreciation for the most watched show in America.
The Walking Dead returns February 14th at 9PM on AMC. The entire cast will make an appearance on Inside The Actor’s Studio on February 11th at 8PM on Bravo.
