Danai Gurira Addresses Her Top Secret ‘Walking Dead’ Exit

Danai Gurira’s looming exit from The Walking Dead is shrouded in secrecy, dwarfed only by her role in Marvel Studios’ Avengers: Endgame.

“Well, I will say, I can say as much about that as I can about Endgame,” Gurira said on Jimmy Kimmel Live! when asked about Michonne’s fate. “I have a pretty simple life, I can just tell nobody anything. Keeps life very simple.”

Does Gurira spill secrets to her inner circle? “Outside of the people who I work with? No. Heavens no. No, no, no,” she said. “What’s great is that they largely don’t want to know.”

Gurira will appear in just a handful of episodes interspersed throughout Season Ten before reportedly transitioning to the coming movie side of the Walking Dead franchise, which could see Michonne reunite with long-missing lover Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln).

The in-demand star’s eight-season tenure with the long-running zombie drama ends after “pretty intense” shoots on Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther and the two-part Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame, filmed back-to-back under directors Anthony and Joe Russo.

“There was a lot of overlapping that happened, from Walking Dead, into Black Panther, then Black Panther into Infinity [War], then back into Walking Dead, then into Endgame. There was a lot of flow between Michonne and Okoye,” Gurira said.

“There was one day I literally woke up and went into Michonne, and I was Michonne until like 11 p.m., and then I was picked up at 3 a.m. to go be Okoye all day. So that was a special day.”

Walking Dead showrunner Angela Kang earlier confirmed the coming season will tell a “nice, meaty story” for Michonne, who still plays a “significant” part in Season Ten despite her reduced role.

“We are going to be doing some creative things with the order in which we write and shoot things so that she’s sort of woven in a little bit,” Kang told Deadline. “With Black Panther, Avengers and plays of her own and everything, I think Danai obviously is having an amazing career moment. She’s like an international treasure.”

Avengers: Endgame releases April 26. The Walking Dead Season Ten is due out this October on AMC.

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