One of the highlights of The Walking Dead Season 4 was finding out a little more about Michonne’s mysterious past, first in a disturbing dream and later in a candid chat with Carl (Chandler Riggs).It turned out that she lost her son when her boyfriend and brother were under the influence of drugs and walkers stormed the camp. They were bit and in her grief she let them turn and kept them with her, as her armless, jawless bodyguards.
“I know that it’s very unusual for the show to do a dream sequence, and so it was really kind of a treat to get to like dress up and be pretty and all that,” says actress Danai Guria, who plays the warrior queen. “I feel like she’s been able to face the past that we never knew about and start to heal from it, which she hadn’t really done yet. Moving forward, she definitely has more of a capacity to connect with everyone around her.”
It sounds like Season 5 will see Michonne continue to warm up to her fellow survivors, perhaps leaving her open to a romantic interest… Rumours of “Richonne” – the ultimate power couple – have been circulating for a while now, and then there’s the comics that sees *SPOILER* her dating Tyreese. “We’ll see,” says Gurira. “She’s a woman, you know? She’s alive, so that’s a good start.”
In the meantime, Michonne needs to focus on retrieving her all-time greatest love – her katana. You just know she won’t be leaving Terminus until it’s back in her arms. “It’s an extension, she can’t go far without that thing near by,” she agrees. “Either it’s on her back or it’s in her hand, but it’s always there – she found her post-apocalyptic identity through this weapon. The psychology is fascinating to explore and the more I train with it, the more I understand how it works for her in a mental sense.”
We have this weapon to thank for some of the best scenes in the show, and it turns out that Gurira is gunning for the walkers as much as her onscreen counterpart: “It can be shockingly easy to look at the walkers in all their horror and mess and be ready to hack ‘em down,” she admits. “Sometimes it gets really easy to do, which makes you think, ‘Wait a minute, what’s happening here?’ It’s always fun when you get really grossed out!”
But what really grosses her out is string cheese. Michonne emptied the can into her mouth in an attempt to make Carl laugh, but the actress was squirming inside. “I had a spit bucket, I spat it out after every take!” she laughs. “I was like, ‘Oh no, what is this?!’ Then I made the prop guys finish a whole bottle. So we had a good time.” We sure did, too.
The Walking Dead Season 5 begins in October. You can buy The Walking Dead Season 1-3 on DVD for £35 at Amazon.co.uk.
