The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live's Star Explains Michonne’s Emotional Breakdown

Danai Gurira discusses Michonne’s heart-wrenching moment with Nat during the latest episode of TWD: The Ones Who Live.

The Walking Dead star Danai Gurira made a triumphant return to the franchise in The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live, and she recently broke down her big emotional moment in Episode 2. While Rick and Michonne’s heartfelt reunion came with a heavy price tag, one of the most poignant moments in the second episode, “Gone,” occurred on the lovers’ journey to find each other once again. When it appears that Michonne (Danai Gurira) has lost all hope, her close friend Nat (Matthew Jeffers) insists that she should “believe a little bit longer.” That exchange led to a heart-wrenching performance from TWD veteran Gurira, who explained in an interview with Entertainment Weekly:

“That moment for her at the fire is really her letting go in a way that is just unheard of for her. It kind of breaks her, but also sort of makes her. Because she’s a mission-driven person and a love-driven person, so she has to go to her other loves now, to her children, and that becomes where she’s going to. So that aspect of her breaking to that point and then finding him right at that point is this mirror.”

Tears drenched Michonne’s face as the amber glow of the fire snapped before her and Nat. It’s a moving scene, but as it unfolded, the camera slowly revealed a shot of the seemingly innocent walkie-talkie lying close by. And that’s when the eerie static began to resonate from the device.

The Ones Who Die

Unfortunately, it was Nat (Jeffers) who ultimately paid the aforementioned price when Michonne reunited with Andrew Lincoln’s character, Rick Grimes, near the conclusion of The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live, Season 1, Episode 2. And in typical TWD fashion, the story sets up Nat as one of the nicest and most generous of people. Then the gut-wrenching payoff came, during Rick and Michonne’s long-awaited embrace: Nat is shot in the chest and killed. Danai Gurira was blown away by the demise of Michonne’s friend. Gurira said in the same interview:

What a glorious death. That was a fantastic death. His death was a thing of beauty. I was watching like, ‘Wow, look at that. That’s a great death. That’s impressive.’

Michonne became fast friends with Nat after saving Aiden (Breeda Wool) and Bailey (Andrew Bachelor). Unfortunately, all three of The Ones Who Live’s characters ended up dying after crossing paths with Rick Grimes’ sword-wielding wife. But the deaths were certainly not in vain. Lincoln also told EW in the same sit-down:

“The reverb of these characters in Michonne and in Rick plays out very much throughout the whole of the rest of the season. They inform and make decisions and help these characters make decisions further down the story arc. So, they don’t die. They sort of continue.”