Danai Gurira Explains Meaning Behind The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live Title

The Walking Dead: The One Who Live got a title explainer from Danai Gurira. Head of the big premiere for the new series, Comicbook.com spoke to both the actress and Andrew Lincoln about the title of this spinoff. It’s no secret that Walking Dead fans have been waiting for the Rick and Michonne show for years now. Finally, after both characters have carried several metric tons of trauma, we get to investigate what they’ve been up to. That small fact goes a long way to describing why this series is titled the way it is.

“I don’t think they see it as that. I don’t thing they see it as where we go. Things go bad. I think that’s all they’re thinking about it,” Gurira began. “We’re the ones who live, which we had in the coda and thankfully got to make the title of this show, It’s not just about the ones who are alive, its about those who are living inside of us.” 

“Those that we carry their souls, their spirits. The connection that we have to them rather, it’s very real inside of us,” she added. You know, the essence of who they were in the effect they had on us. And, the way that they contributed to everyone into the group and for the life of all of us. And for any of us to survive, we’ve got that. We’ve all survived. And that being a core thing that keeps us going is that connection.”

Gurira Steps Into A New Role

Gurira wasn’t done talking-to us though. She told ComicBook.com about the process of writing and producing an episode herself. Brandon Davis ended up wondering about the journey to get here. Clearly, there was some joy for Gurira getting to write an episode for a character she’s played for a while now.

“Joy is the word — happy, no,” Gurira chuckled. “Joy has nothing to do with emotion; joy is something deeper. It was a lot of work, and of course it was going on simultaneously with all the other work that one has to do in this show. We had already arced the series, the three of us, so we knew what this episode needed to be. And of course, there’s a process of getting the episode to where you want it to be, and Gimple was like, ‘She’s the showrunner of that episode, don’t come to talk to me.’ And so I was the point person for the episode, which allowed me to have a vision on it, but it was very collaborative. 

“They were reading every draft, they were giving their thoughts, their notes. And also the episode before it was being tweaked, and as that tweaks, I jave to tweak because they have to work together. So ultimately it was a process, but I loved what it came to be. And I was in charge of the post of it, as well, with the editor, and the amazing Michael Slovis was the director, and he did an incredible job,” she added. “It’s interesting explaining — it’s such a familiar story, but I was explaining a very different chapter of it to people, in a way that we hadn’t explored these narratives as a whole for the series, and this episode was definitely part of that. It was great, it was very collaborative, it was also very solitary, and very little sleep.”

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