Ryan Coogler Had Never Seen THE WALKING DEAD Before Casting Danai Gurira In BLACK PANTHER
Danai Gurira talks about how she ended up landing a role in Marvel's Black Panther and reveals why playing Michonne in The Walking Dead has helped prepare her to take on a character like Okoye.
To the vast majority of us, Danai Gurira is best known for playing Michonne in The Walking Dead. However, one person who didn't know the actress for her work in the hit AMC series was Black Panther director Ryan Coogler. Of course, many assumed that it was her role as Michonne which probably landed her role in the highly anticipated Marvel movie, but it doesn't sound like that was the case.
"The filmmaker had never watched it," Gurira tells ComicBook.com. "I'm not saying that everyone else that was involved hadn't, but Ryan Coogler had never watched The Walking Dead. He'd watched me in something completely different. It's quite amazing to hear, but these are African women roles. He'd watched me in an independent film, Mother of George. He's never seen The Walking Dead."
The site then asked the actress how Michonne and Okoye compare, and while they're clearly going to be very different characters, it sounds like Gurira's fighting skills will definitely come in handy for Black Panther! "I'm training right now for Black Panther, and, yes, there's a lot of ways that they're extremely different. I'm learning such great, awesome new things. There's a lot of ways that, yes, one helps another. There are things about using combat that help each other. Absolutely. There's a lot of new things to learn and I'm really enjoying. There's so much new. She's a whole 'nother thing. Okoye is a whole 'nother thing." Are you guys excited to see what she brings to the table in the Marvel movie? As always, be sure to let us know your thoughts on these comments in the usual place.
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A lifelong comic book fan who grew up on Spider-Man: The Animated Series in the '90s, Josh Wilding has been contributing to ComicBookMovie.com since 2009.
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