The sixth spinoff in AMC’s “Walking Dead” universe, “The Ones Who Live,” will answer a question that fans have been asking for years when it debuts at 6 p.m. Feb. 25 on AMC. Where is Rick Grimes and will Michonne find him?
Andrew Lincoln, who played Grimes from the first episode to the end of season nine, left the series to spend more time with his family. Danai Gurira departed the series in season 10. They both made brief appearances at the end of season 11 but those cameos offered no insight to what had happened to the popular pair.
Lincoln had faith he would be back killing the walking dead because he knew how much Gurira wanted to keep the love story alive. He was happy to get the chance to return to that storyline and pick up playing a role he loved equally as much.
“I love this character, and this is a love story. Essentially the DNA of the original episode was a man in search of his family, and that DNA is very much in this story,” Lincoln says. “But we wanted to sort of make it a bit more operatic and, hopefully, shade in a universe, what the grownups have been dong while we’ve been scrabbling around in the dirt for 10 years
“I love this story, and I love the fact that we had lots of old guard in key positions. But we also had this astonishing cast of people that are landing this new world on such great performances. So, it is a love story. It’s an epic love story. That was the ambition.”
“The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live” looks at the two characters who have been changed by the deadly world around them. They have been kept apart by distance and an unstoppable power. They are thrown into another world, built on a war against the dead and ultimately, a war against the living.
Despite the passing years, Lincoln found it very easy to put his cowboy boots and hat back on to start playing Grimes again. The character will look the same but what Lincoln found was that the writers had put Grimes in such a different world that his mindset is very different than before.
“I think that was quite key because he’d been pushed and pulled and stretched and pummeled and abused so much in the main series for so long that we thought where can we place him? So, it was a new adventure, and that made it very, very exciting and appealing,” Lincoln says. “But, obviously, hopefully, the two characters at some point in the show get together. And when that happened, it all sort of made complete sense.
“There was a different energy in the space because we have the luxury of having an audience that has, in some cases, nine years of backstory. So, you don’t need to work as hard in certain areas.”
Knowing his audience would be educated about the past of the characters made it very easy for Lincoln. The only big difference was he noticed his knees hurt a little more at the end of a long day of filming. It was a pain he accepted because he had missed the “Walking Dead” culture and playing the sheriff.
“The Ones Who Live” will have plenty of walking dead for the cast to battle. But, despite the presence of the rotting foes, the cast makes it clear that this series will be just like the original one where the main threads are the importance of family and love.
Gurira – who is also one of the executive producers – pushed hard to make sure those elements were in every script.
“The idea of the epic love story aspect is what distinguishes it from many other renditions of this world. It was very much something that we didn’t get to really explore a ton on the mothership,” Gurira says. “There’s just no space for it. So, this was really honing in.
“When love is the driving force, when it’s the propelling thing in a show, when it’s actually the thing that’s making the plot move, what does that look like? So, the genre is new. We watched a few love stories, epic love stories. We didn’t fit into any. But it is one. So, I think that’s a genre. It’s an apocalyptic epic love narrative.”
The series also stars Pollyanna McIntosh, Lesley-Ann Brandt, Terry O’Quinn, Matthew August Jeffers, Craig Tate and Andrew Bachelor. If you miss an episode of the show when it airs on AMC, the episodes will be available on the streaming service of AMC+ the next day.
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