The Ones Who Live’ stars in Rick and Michonne’s sex scene

Warning: This article contains spoilers about The Walking Dead: Those Who Live episode 4, “What We”.

Well, that just happened. Yes, Andrew Lincoln’s Rick and Danai Gurira’s Michonne survived the cliffhanger of jumping out of a mid-air helicopter, but that wasn’t the most significant event in this week’s episode of The Walking Dead: Those Who Live. The most significant event was one rarely seen in this franchise: an entire sex scene. And a very atypical sex scene.

The fourth episode of the spin-off series (titled “What We” and written by Gurira) found the couple holed up in a super cute apartment where they could discuss their differences. (“We needed some time off,” Michonne explained.) Because the helicopter they jumped out of crashed and they were left for dead, Michonne told Rick they were free to go home, but Rick refused.

Michonne eventually left alone, before Rick caught up with her. But after fighting off some zombies, they ended up back at the apartment, where things became intimate… and awkward. Far from the hot and heavy sex scene between Steven Yeun’s Glenn and Lauren Cohan’s Maggie in season 3 of The Walking DeadThe scene between husband and wife shown here began very tentatively, with Rick clearly struggling from the beginning as he dealt with all the trauma of the past seven years.

It was a witty, emotional, complex, and ultimately beautiful scene between the pair, whose bond later manifested as the pair physically became one both in the bedroom and then outside in the hallway as they attacked the zombies in perfect synchronization. . EW spoke with Gurira, Lincoln, and co-creator Scott M. Gimple about staging the scene and overcoming initial concerns about how the union’s uniqueness might be perceived.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Sex scenes are very rare in The Walking Dead. Not all of you do that much in this franchise, so how did the decision to do one here come about?

DANAI GURIRA: It’s a love story, for God’s sake. We propose a love story. So, at some point, they have to make love. It’s really that simple. I think the goal of that scene in my head was for it to not be a typical love scene. It won’t be, “Oh, when they copulate and it’s so beautiful,” it won’t be that. I needed to have a character moment that allowed something to change. Even if the public doesn’t fully understand what it is.

SCOTT M. GIMPLE: It’s a big part of the story, and there’s a whole story in that sex scene. It’s not just that they do it. There is an arc told in the story of the sex scene. And with these characters in that episode, it’s not until they put themselves in danger and have to fight side by side that they click and suddenly they’re just one person. And then at the end of that physicality of surviving together, it leads to a different kind of physicality where you actually come together and really touch each other.

GUIRA: It’s something that happens that is about people who connected by having a moment in their most vulnerable place. So it was very important to me that that love scene wasn’t just a love scene. The key was, of course, the fact that Rick has PTSD and that’s largely what drives a lot of his behavior and being in a place of that level of vulnerability, back with the love of his life. that way.

It’s also what he fears: losing her. It manifests itself in a visceral way and leads to making love not just about love, but about revealing pain, trauma and fear. That informs Michonne that she can’t just force sense into him. There’s something deeper going on here that she can’t verbalize. She has to help him get ahead in a different way. Then she can see him too, as he reveals what’s really there, the wound. Most likely, that will happen in the most vulnerable space. It’s a love story and, at some point, we’re going to have to see some lovemaking.

We see Rick struggling during that scene with intimacy. So Andy, what are you playing in terms of what’s going on in his head when he returns to his wife after six years, but he’s been through so much and he barely knows how to act or react in this situation?

ANDREW LINCOLN: Yes, I think it’s about pain. As Danai just said, it’s about him wanting her and then fearing what he’s about to unlock again. He goes so far as to articulate it in the scene later in the episode, when he says, “I can’t do this again. I don’t have the ability to do this again. I have discovered how to die and live again.”

So it’s an absolutely necessary scene that allows Michonne to realize that something is really broken here, more broken than she ever anticipated. It is not only resolved with her intimacy. It explains a lot of her behavior before this meeting. She also informs that scene when she says, “It doesn’t matter if we die in this building, so be it, but we’re not done yet. It’s not time to leave.”

So the scene was about real intimacy, a kind of terrifying intimacy. This is a part of his personality that he has shut down. It’s almost like she’s trying to avoid feeling this love again. She sees that and just says, “Just trust. We’re back. We’re the same…” I find it very moving. I think it’s a very, very touching scene, because it’s about them connecting in a way that he’s had to deny for seven years. He has denied that connection so he can continue living in this CRM half-life.

Danai, what was it like giving orders to your co-star in the episode?

GUIRA: There were stages. At first it was complicated. Then it became very easy. He simply agreed.

LINCOLN: It’s true. Because I have a tendency to instantly say no to everything. It’s a matter of workload. I say, “No, no.” Then I read it a second time and said, “Actually, it’s brilliant. What I’m talking about? Let’s do it.”

GUIRA: Oh, it’s infuriating. (laughter) But no, it was amazing. Because it was a lot of hard work for him, and it was planned that way. I say: Okay, this is a fantastic actor. I want to give them a training. I want to give them something worthy of everything they are capable of doing. I want them to be like, “Shit, can I do this?” Because he knew that of course he could and that it would be fantastic.

So I wrote it in a way that, yeah, it was a lot for him to have to do. It was too much. But he was fantastic. I was sort of directing that episode and I was very specific about my vision, and he was very respectful of that and I think he finally understood what he meant.

Yes, because it’s not just a standard sex scene. There’s a lot more going on here, with Rick’s emotional reaction to the act.

GIMPLE: Yes, there is a moment that stops things between them and they can get through that moment together. They can have that kind of moment of recognition of how real things are.

LINCOLN: Some feared it could be interpreted as something else, like helplessness or something.

I didn’t read it that way at all.

GUIRA: Honestly, the idea of ​​helplessness never occurred to me either. It was never the intention. There were some initial concerns about the scene, but in my head I’m like, I’m not going to change it. They will catch up. But initially some people were like, “Wait a minute…”

LINCOLN: Yeah, initially I was like, “What is this?” Then I said, “Oh, I see. That’s it.” Then I was totally in.

GUIRA: Yes, you were. You totally agreed. She did a beautiful job.

GIMPLE: This is a love story, and the arc of that love scene really parallels the entire love story arc.

Was the fact that you didn’t do many sex scenes in this franchise something you’ve known over the years, and was it something AMC ever asked to see more or less of?

GIMPLE: No, the comic is our model and it is an element there, but we do not discourage it or encourage it. And when it happened on the show, I think it had a lot of meaning, whether it was Glenn and Maggie, or Rick and Michonne. The intimacy of Rick and Michonne’s first kiss, which was a very everyday scene in my mind, I wanted to make it very, very real.

And I think that first kiss between the two of them was incredibly intimate and romantic in a way that I think people could see in their own lives. That’s what I was looking for. I don’t see that kind of thing a lot between adult characters, and that moment I felt meant more than a lot of sensuality on television because it was a real vulnerability of intimacy, but in such an everyday context that people couldn’t.

The episode ends with Rick and Michonne leaving together, so what can you say about what happens next?

GIMPLE: They get home and everything is great! It was very strange doing those last two episodes because everything was fine after that. There are no problems. No, I guess I can mess up the fact that they can’t immediately head out into the sunset. These things happen. They’ve really accomplished something in this episode between the two of them, but I don’t know if the world will let them hold on to it.

This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.

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