'Stressful' role change for star of The Walking Dead spin-off

Lauren Cohan has spilled the beans on her 'satisfying' yet 'very stressful' role change for the upcoming season of The Walking Dead spin-off, Dead City.

Gracing the series that stems from the beloved main programme adapted from Robert Kirkman's famed comic books, Lauren Cohan grapples with her evolution on screen.

With all episodes of the first season available on Netflix and the second season kick-starting its broadcast in May on AMC, fans have plenty to feast on.

As the sixth iteration in a line of The Walking Dead spin-offs, Dead City zeroes in on fan-favourites Maggie (Cohan) and Neegan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) as they navigate a devastated New York City.

The follow up series leaps into action a year after the initial series, showcasing factions battling for dominance.

Conversing exclusively with Screen Time for Reach, Cohan mused over the remarkable 15-year journey since The Walking Dead first haunted our televisions.

She reminisced: "It's such a funny thing, isn't it? When I reflect the first thing I always think of is like starting on season two of The Walking Dead, doing my audition, getting to Georgia, meeting everyone, those first days, learning my lines and then it's almost like there's this 14 and a half year gap, where I'm just here today, I'm just like oh yeah that happened. Meanwhile I was living 14 and a half years of my life.", reports the .

Cohan opened up about her profound experiences while returning to work on Dead City, particularly as she took on a new role in its production. She remarked: "I even have (those moments) from shooting season two (of Dead City) because we had a lot of detail and I was involved on a deeper level by directing one of the episodes and that became a seminal experience in and of itself."

The actor, renowned for her portrayal of Maggie Greene since 2011, has stepped behind the camera to direct the sixth episode of Dead City's second season. She shared insights into both the gratification and pressures associated with directing.

She detailed: "Being able to direct on a creative level is so satisfying because you collaborate with everyone and you get to you get to go into their world. You go into the production designers' world you go into the costume designers' world."

Cohan further elaborated on the collaborative nature of directing, contrasting it with the often solitary process of acting: "A really big thing about it that I didn't know until I really did it is the way you approach as an actor can be obviously, very isolated and how you're approaching it, building a character. You get to go and collaborate with everyone. They're all doing the same kind of script analysis and so you all get to just sort of like love on the story together and it's a group thing and being in the room when you deliver a tone meeting and everybody's like, okay cool this scene is about this and how is each department going to deliver on that aspect? It's fun. It's really stressful sometimes, but it's really fun."

Cohan acknowledged the weight of fan expectations in the long-standing franchise and her unique experience directing fellow actors, confessing: "I felt like the responsibility to the fans is baked in because we know it, we love it. We just don't want to get in the way of the thing we love. And the responsibility to my co-stars, working with the actors is the best part of the whole thing because we speak the language."

Elaborating on the dynamics with her colleagues, she added: "When you're an actor, you know to approach your co-stars in a certain kind of way or you don't, but you wonder if they like being approached the same way you do when you're concentrating. So they've become these very quiet tender moments that you get to have in what is a melee of activity."

The Walking Dead: Dead City is streaming on Sky Max and NOW.