The Walking Dead: Danai Gurira Talks About “Stereotype-Breaking” Michonne and Rick Grimes Coupling! Could She Be In The Final Season!?

Danai Gurira talks about “Stereotype-Breaking” Michonne, her character in The Walking Dead. Gurira spent several years playing Michonne on the hit zombie show but departed during season 10. We miss Michonne and Rick!

Her character ended up being romantically involved with the series lead played by Andrew Lincoln. Michonne and Rick Grimes ended up together and Gurira spoke a little about the reaction to that coupling.

This pairing is completely different from the source material. In the comics, Rick actually was with Andrea up until his death but with Andrea gone, well… Michonne is who he ended up with. Michonne left in order to try and find Rick, actually.

“I’d never come across a character like this. I was like, ‘Oh, now this is the breaking of a stereotype I’ve never thought of,'” Gurira said as a keynote speaker at the virtual #Unstereotype Alliance Global Member Summit. “I often said to Robert Kirkman, ‘I wish I thought of her! How did you think of her?’ Because the katana meets a Black girl with dreadlocks was just very, very interesting to me.”

Gurira credited Walking Dead showrunner Angela Kang and former showrunner Scott Gimple for “cracking through a lot of stereotypes as [Michonne] was built up, right through what her backstory turned out to be and who ultimately her partner turned out to be.”

Playing a “full character” in Michonne, Gurira said, “I really got to play a woman who evolved, who had many facets, who was really strong and was also able to show vulnerability and be a lover, be a friend, be a warrior, be really scary, be broken over and over again, but still keep going and finding ways to keep joy alive and keep moving.”

“There was a lot that I got to do with her that I know is not common for Black women to get to do in television or in film. It’s just not common,” Gurira noted, adding Michonne’s iconic Japanese weapon is part of “what I got to do that I just don’t think is very common for a Black woman to get to do.”

“And that to me, right there, is something that speaks to the mandate of unstereotyping. It just takes a few folks just willing to truly listen,” said Gurira, who also famously plays General Okoye of Wakanda in Marvel’s Black Panther and Avengers franchises. “I think there are aspects of how you can actually just fall into stereotype because you assume that’s what everyone wants and what everyone’s used to, and then there are folks who are just like, ‘no, I’m listening to the authenticity of this person and the organic journey of a character.’ And ‘it’s not that, it’s something else, we’re gonna go this way.'”

Michonne has been through a lot on The Walking Dead. She lost her own child very early during the zombie apocalypse. She ended up with Rick, and was a mother figure to Carl long before that. Eventually, she gave birth to Rick Jr, RJ, a child of their own.

“People thought it was so huge and radical that my character and the Rick Grimes character became a couple, and I guess it was. You know, I guess it was. But really, should it be?” Gurira said. “But once again, it was eradicating stereotype around who the lead man, the handsome white male lead man, could be with. But it was clear that the characters had a connection and chemistry, so what do you listen to? So that’s why I said it just takes a few folks willing to truly listen, and I think right there stereotypes can break.”

Gimple, the man responsible for The Walking Dead universe on AMC, has been teasing we might see a Michonne spin-off. We’re also expecting to see Rick and Michonne reunite in the upcoming Rick Grimes films.

 

 

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