Lauren Cohan and Jeffrey Dean Morgan shed fear and tears on the set of The Walking Dead: Dead City

Peter Kramer/AMC Lauren Cohan and Jeffrey Dean Morgan in 'The Walking Dead: Dead City'

It's a sunny October morning on slip 5 of New Jersey's Hoboken Ferry Terminal, and the crew of The Walking Dead: Dead City is battling a horde of invaders more frightening than any zombie. Two unsuspecting members of the camera department munching on breakfast burritos by the craft services table jump and scream as an intruder from the offending party advances on their position. "HOLY S---!" one of them yells, morsels of eggs and salsa spilling out of his mouth.

And then… laughter. These are not the first crew members to be panic-stricken by a stray rat today. And they will not be the last. Chuckles one on-looker at their terror, "You know, we do work on a zombie show." But something even scarier is happening 25 feet up in the air. Series stars Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Lauren Cohan are preparing to execute a stunt that has the duo walking across a very narrow beam for an impeding showdown on an elevated platform.

While the actors playing Negan and Maggie are secured into harnesses to ensure their safety, that doesn't make the journey across any less harrowing when they look down at the sliver of beam separating them from a fall above unforgiving concrete, not to mention scores of hungry zombies.

Morgan is first to make the traverse, and he wants to make sure the event is captured at every angle for posterity. "Have Barry shoot me going across the beam," he bellows, referring to the hand-held camera operator. "Nobody's going to believe I did this!"

As cameras begin rolling, Morgan hits the beam at a breakneck speed, laughing nervously after completing the crossing in mere seconds. "F--- me, I almost fell!" As for his Usain Bolt-like pace, the actor figured that the less time he was up on that beam, the better. "It's going slow where I start to freak out," he explains to episode director Gandja Monteiro.

Freaking out also describes the current state of Lauren Cohan. "I can't do it. I can't do it. I can't do it," repeats the actress to seemingly no one and everyone. But while Cohan may have an issue with heights, she has an even bigger issue with not getting the job done. And after playing a farmer's daughter turned post-apocalyptic badass for over a decade, she knows a little something about overcoming fear.

Cohan could easily call for her trusty stunt double D.J. to perform the task for her, and certain angles would be used so that nobody who watches the scene would ever be the wiser. But the crossing has now become a point of pride, and after taking a minute to calm herself down and then psyche herself up, Cohan hops over the railing and motors across the beam — the cameras catching every second of the action. "F--- yeah!" she exclaims after arriving on the platform and hugging her scene partner in celebration.

Looking back later on the crossing, Cohan sees it as a defining moment. "Literally, my feet would not move," she recalls of freezing in place. "I started crying, definitely was hyperventilating." So what changed and got her over that beam? "I just thought, if you let this take you down — no pun intended — what's the next thing that you're going to be afraid of that you don't do?"

The dangerous crossing is also symbolic of the tightrope walk with little margin for error that Cohan, Morgan, and the entire Walking Dead franchise is taking with its new spin-off strategy. Can AMC recapture the magic of the original series by breaking it off into several different shows with different stars in different cities? Don't look down, but we're about to find out.

Peter Kramer/AMC Lauren Cohan in 'The Walking Dead: Dead City'

On Nov. 20, 2022, The Walking Dead aired its 177th and final episode. The plan to end the show came as something of a surprise to the man who runs the franchise, chief content officer Scott M. Gimple. "That was AMC," Gimple told EW last year. "It was heavy when it happened. I wasn't expecting it and had all sorts of plans for the future."

But AMC's marching orders were even more surprising than merely shutting down the record-breaking drama. Instead, they wanted more! Even though the network already had spin-offs Fear the Walking Dead (wrapping up later this year), The Walking Dead: World Beyond (which was cut short after two seasons), and the anthology entry Tales of the Walking Dead (which appears to have been a one-and-done), they saw a chance to expand the franchise by putting the original show's most popular characters into a trio of new series.

Andrew Lincoln and Dania Gurira were convinced to come back for a new Rick and Michonne show. Norman Reedus was shipped over to France for The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon. But the first true test of AMC's unique strategy will come when Cohan and Morgan's The Walking Dead: Dead City premieres with six episodes starting June 18.

Dead City will take Maggie and Negan from the woods of Virginia to the mean (and zombie-infested) streets of New York City on a mission to free Maggie's kidnapped son Hershel (now played by Logan Kim). And if it will be a bit of an adjustment for viewers to see these same characters in a different location on a different show, it was an adjustment for the actors as well.

"Every day I was looking for familiar faces," says Morgan. "Because it's the same world, right? And so to be in that world and not have Norman or the same camera guys — It was just odd."

But the new setting, new crew, and new castmates also invigorated the pair — who both serve as Dead City executive producers — after so many years battling chiggers and tics down in rural Georgia. "I had that feeling of excitement that you get when you're going somewhere new and going to be with new people," says Cohan. "And even though there's familiarity with the characters, everything else became fresh and totally a new thing. It felt like a whole new job."

The job this time — on screen, at least — is to save Maggie's son Hershel, who has been abducted and brought to Manhattan. For Maggie, saving him means getting help once again from the man who brutally murdered her husband — and she gets that help in the form of some good ol' fashioned quid pro quo.

It seems Negan has gotten himself into a bit of trouble — SHOCKER! — and Maggie can help him escape… if he'll aid her in getting Hershel back. "She kind of blackmails him into helping," laughs Morgan. "She knows that he's a wanted man, so she's like, 'Look, I can help you get away. They're on your tail and we can get out of here. You help me save Herschel, and then I won't turn you in.' So it's maybe not starting off on the greatest foot."

Peter Kramer/AMC Jeffrey Dean Morgan in 'The Walking Dead: Dead City'

While their final episode together on The Walking Dead displayed a truce of sorts emerging between the dysfunctional duo — with Negan finally apologizing for what he did to Glenn (Steven Yeun), and Maggie inviting him to settle down in the community with them, Dead City aims to show that some wounds can never be fully healed. "If you were to lose a loved one the way Maggie has, or to be the cause of the loss of a loved one the way Negan was, I think that's going to ripple throughout your whole life," says showrunner Eli Jorné. "I don't know that you ever forget that, or 'get over it.'"

"How do you behave when you are literally forced to walk into the mouth of the dragon that killed your family?" asks Cohan. "It's not even remotely close to forgiveness, but it is finally really tackling the unavoidable issue of grief, and the fact that these characters have been through these crazy traumas and nobody processes anything."

That lack of processing may help explain why neither Maggie nor Negan has been doing so hot since we last saw them. Dead City picks up roughly two years after the end of The Walking Dead, and Cohan hints that her character "is definitely in many ways gone a couple steps back by the time we see her, because you hope to avoid something and get on with your life, and I just don't think you can move forward without facing it."

As for Maggie's former tormentor, Jorné teases that, "When we meet Negan, he's in a bit of a down-and-out state. I don't know that he's found his perfect little happy ending with a bow on it." What that means for his wife Annie (Medina Senghore), last seen pregnant with Negan's child remains unclear, but it certainly doesn't bode well. As Morgan notes: "He's not with his family, so some s--- has happened."

Negan's problems have also attracted some unwanted attention in the form of a lawman on his tail. Friday Night Lights' Gaius Charles plays Perlie Armstrong, a marshal for a federation of city-states in Virginia known as New Babylon. "He's a man on a mission, and he has really strong code," says Jorné. "Whether we agree with that code or not remains to be seen." Charles' take on that aforementioned code? "I try to give people a chance, which you'll see. But if they don't take that chance, then I lay the law down, and you'll see some of that too."

Peter Kramer/AMC Gaius Charles in 'The Walking Dead: Dead City'

Like Maggie and Negan, Armstrong has his own trauma and ghosts from the past that visit him from time to time. "One of the reasons why I cling to this law-and-order mentality is because it helps to protect me from some of those issues that I haven't dealt with," explains Charles. "But, of course, this being The Walking Dead, I eventually will."

On the opposite side of law and order is another new threat known simply as the Croat. Played by Željko Ivanek, the Croat is an unwelcome blast from Negan's past. "He is an underling of Negan's from back in the day," reveals Morgan, "But he has taken the evil to places where not even Negan in his heyday has gone."

Which all bears the question: Is there anyone not coming after Negan on this show? Laughs Morgan, "Negan has born this monster in Željko's character, and he's got Armstrong on his six, and then he is dealing with Maggie, who probably wants to kill him about 93 percent of the time. So, you know, he's in a tough spot when the series kicks off."

Of course, all of this will now be taking place in the backdrop of the concrete jungle that is Manhattan, which will give the new series (that filmed in both New York and New Jersey) a very different look from its predecessor. "Manhattan is the ground zero of the virus," Cohan explains. The government bombed all the bridges and access to and from the island. People were basically just left there to die, so those that are still alive are pretty bitter about it."

And into that brave and bitter new world step Maggie and Negan. "There are many different factions in the city," says Cohan. "And they live very differently and have had to arm themselves in a way that allows them to make it work."

But the biggest question of all is… how long will their stay in the Big Apple last? Even with the current writers' strike, and even though Dead City has yet to be officially picked up for season 2, the show is currently in pre-production for a follow-up season of Manhattan madness. But's it's not just Dead City's future at stake; there is also the entire fate of a franchise to consider. A rough start out of the gate could dampen enthusiasm for the other follow-up series. However, cast, crew, and network are all confident that the first entry in The Walking Dead 2.0 universe will set the tone and template for this next phase of the overarching story, and act as a bridge — or, say, a beam — to this new era.

Cohan and Morgan just hope viewers are ready to cross it.

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