CAN’T STOP LAUGHING. SHE HAS ONLY
a few days left filming her final season of
The Walking Dead, so you would expect
one of the show’s supreme slicer and dic-
ers of zombies to feel a bit mournful
about leaving the show that made her a
star. And she is. But right now, on this
sunny June afternoon in Griffin, Ga., the
actress is in the midst of a pure guffaw.
Blame it on a hallway barricade she and
actor Kevin Carroll (who is guest-star-
ring as desperate scrounger Virgil) just
had to squeeze through while avoiding a
ravenous member of the undead with a
phone cord wrapped around her neck.
Gurira—who has spent the past eight
seasons playing Michonne—mock-
stabbed the tele-walker with ease, but
sliding through that barricade proved a
bit more problematic. One slight nudge
from Carroll has sent the entire structure
of desks and chairs tumbling to the
ground around them, causing a thunder-
ous crash as well as a look of genuine
terror on the face of Carroll—and a look
of absolute glee on Gurira’s. “That
was awesome!” she bellows before pro-
ceeding to playfully rib her costar’s
momentary dread. “So funny! And the
cacophony as everything falls! Perfect!”
These are the good times, the ones
Gurira will miss the most moving on from
AMC’s record-breaking drama. “I had a
lot of great belly laughs per day on that set
and amongst those people,” she says while
reminiscing a few months after wrapping
her final episode (which will air in this last
run of season 10 installments, although
we can’t reveal exactly when). “It was
incredibly hard to even imagine leaving. I
loved that show. I loved the family that I
had there. The beauty of coming to work
and loving the people you’re around and
the work that you’re doing and the things
you get to do and call it your job is like
nothing I could have imagined. It’s been a
true gift to my life to have been part of it.”
But now Gurira has a new gift to open.
The 42-year-old playwright-actress is
returning to her behind-the-scenes rootsto serve as showrunner of a 10-episode
adaptation of Chimamanda Ngozi
Adichie’s novel Americanah for the new
streaming service HBO Max. The proj-
ect—which will begin filming this spring
in Nigeria, London, and the United
States—will reteam Gurira with Black
Panther costar Lupita Nyong ’o, who alsowent from understudy (in 2009 at Yale
Repertory Theatre) to headliner (in 2016
on Broadway) in Gurira’s Eclipsed. “ We
have a great ability to communicate,”
says Gurira of her former and future
leading lady, “because at the foundation
of it all we are in the exact same place.”
She is ecstatic to once again work withDANAIGUR
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42 APRIL 2020 EW ● COM
(PHOTO SHOOT) STYLING: LAW ROACH/THE ONLY AGENCY; HAIR: LARRY SIMS/FORWARD ARTISTS; MAKEUP: KIM BOWER/TOMLINSON MANAGEMENT GROUP; MANICURE: MILLIE MACHADO/TRACEY MATTINGLY;
DRESS: IRIS VAN HERPEN; EARRINGS: GERMAN KABIRSKI; SHOES: EMANUEL UNGARO.
APRIL2020.DANAIGURIRA.LO B.indd 42 FINAL 3/3/20 12:51 PM