The Walking Dead Actress on Black Panther

The upcoming Marvel Phase 3 film Black Panther is easily one of the most important films in the Marvel Studios film slate to date. As such, they’re making sure that every role is perfectly cast. Nowhere is this more prevalent, outside of T’Challa himself, than Danai Gurira, the famous actress from The Walking Dead, who is playing Okaye in the film. To fans, Gurira is easily remembered by her character name, Michonne, from the hit zombie TV show on AMC.

Funnily enough, her casting was not because of her time on The Walking Dead, as she told Comicbook.com. “The filmmaker had never watched it,” Gurira said. “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.”

As for the differences in roles, Gurira claims that the characters are apparently vastly different. Michonne is a sword wielding character, while Okaye is a part of the Dora Milaje, who protect Black Panther and the kingdom of Wakanda with their own set of skills.

“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.

Black Panther is set to release in February of 2018.