Lauren Cohan appeared in front of an audience at the TCAs yesterday to promote her new show, Whiskey Cavalier, which premieres later this month, but the former and potentially future star of The Walking Dead still can’t escape her AMC past. Recall that Cohan’s character, Maggie, left The Walking Dead along with Rick Grimes after episode five of this season ahead of a time jump, but she was never given a proper send off. After the series jumped ahead several years, Maggie was no longer the leader of The Hilltop. She’d abandoned her people and joined Georgie (possibly in The Commonwealth), and we still haven’t gotten a satisfactory answer to why she left.
Cohan’s departure on the series was left open ended, and until recently at least, showrunner Angela Kang had been working under the assumption that Cohan might return in season 10. However, the prospects of that happening took a major hit after we found out that ABC decided to preview Whiskey Cavalier after the Oscars, giving Cohan’s show the best possible launching pad the network can offer. That suggests the network has tremendous faith in the series, and if it does as well as the network hopes, it could transform from a midseason replacement series this season into a fall anchor series next season, meaning that Cohan’s schedule may be too busy to make a return to The Walking Dead anytime soon.
Not that Cohan has any reservations about moving on, at least temporarily. Though speculation persisted that contract negotiations between Cohan and AMC early last year were contentious, Cohan dispelled those rumors at the TCAs. “I don’t think [the negotiations were] ’bad,’” she insists. “I’ve done the show for a long time, so it was a long time to be in any character. Sometimes, you just get quiet and listen to your inner guidance and [decide] it’s time to multitask.”
“Multitasking” suggests that Cohan still has plans to juggle both series, should her schedule allow it. However, there is also another possibility that is not as work intensive and would allow her more flexibility with her schedule. She could take a deal similar to Andrew Lincoln’s and appear in a The Walking Dead movie or movie series. That thought, however, is not new to Cohan.
“There may have been some conversations [about a spin-off]” she admits, “but everything is so early-days, ambiguous. [Again,] we’ll have to see what happens.”
In other words, Cohan’s future with the series is still up in the air, and what her role on The Walking Dead will be and when is likely dependent on the reception that viewers give Whiskey Cavalier. Regardless of how successful her ABC series is, however, The Walking Dead — newly renewed for a tenth season — will likely still be around when Cavalier ends its run, because if there’s one thing we can count on, it’s another decade of The Walking Dead.
Whiskey Cavlier premieres after the Oscars on February 24th before moving to its regular timeslot on Wednesday nights beginning on the 27th. The Walking Dead, meanwhile, will return with the back half of season 9 on Sunday.
Source: TVLine
