By Antonia Blyth | Deadline
Danai Gurira is this week’s guest in this special episode, taken from our AwardsLine magazine piece entitled “On My Screen.”
In the Black Panther sequel Wakanda Forever, the actress resumes her role of Okoye — a part she also played in the Avengers franchise — and here we discuss the night of the Los Angeles premiere and her feelings seeing it for the first time, including “a lot of tears” over the film’s Chadwick Boseman tribute.
A Tony-nominated playwright, Gurira first became a fan-favorite household name as Michonne in AMC’s zombie series The Walking Dead, and she tantalizingly reveals a bit of what fans can expect from her new spinoff in which she’ll return as Michonne opposite Andrew Lincoln as Rick Grimes.
Gurira also recalls the Wakanda Forever scene she and her co-star Letitia Wright partly ad-libbed, plus rocking out in the car between takes with Wright and Lupita Nyong’o, and Martin Freeman’s freakish memory for ’90s lyrics.
Looking at her career as a whole, Gurira digs into her constant drive to create roles for young Black women and to shine a light on the underrepresented and how that mission is always front of mind for her.
And she describes the best advice she’s ever received, her dream dinner date of all time, her desert island films, and why she shamelessly consumes Selling Tampa.
To hear more musings, childhood memories and future dreams from Gurira, check out this episode of 20 Questions on Deadline above, and listen and subscribe on Spotify and Apple podcasts.