Lauren Cohan

Off Camera with Sam Jones

offcamera

Tv & Film, Arts, Society & Culture, Off Camera

4.8 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 21 March 2019

⏱️ 68 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

If you look at Lauren Cohan’s acting career, it’s clear she has a knack for playing strong and feisty women. She’s played a zombie killing badass in The Walking Dead, a secret agent in Peter Berg’s thriller Mile 22, and now, she’s chasing down international baddies in the action-packed ABC series Whiskey Cavalier. Rolling on the ground, shooting guns, and doing stunts can be exhausting work, but for Lauren it’s the opposite. “I naturally gravitate towards action. As soon as I started doing it, I felt exhilarated. I have an excess of adrenaline, so it’s good for me to have a physical element to acting.” Lauren’s career path wasn’t always so certain. She spent years slogging through auditions where the only requirement was to be a “beautiful woman.” She longed for the opportunity to do more, and that’s when Walking Dead came along. “Don’t get me wrong, it’s great to be an actor and get work because people want to see you onscreen, but when I got the role of Maggie, I was so relieved that it was a stripped down character study. I finally felt free.” Exploring the vast depth of human emotion is what ultimately drives her, even when she encounters moments or scenes that scare her. “I keep going back to this idea of embracing the challenge. It’s like, ‘That sounds painful and difficult…let me try it.’” Lauren joins Off Camera to talk about the Walking Dead scene that terrified her so much that she almost quit, why there’s no point in being an actor if you aren’t willing to be vulnerable and uncomfortable, and why finding your inner lion is all part of a day’s work.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey folks Sam Jones here. Welcome to another edition of off-camera. You know we've been doing this show a long time now and one of the great joys I get is hearing from listeners all around the world and believe me it never gets old that we can sit in this studio in Santa Monica and make our little show and have people discover it in far away countries.
0:18.0	When I was a kid I loved listening to the radio. I loved hearing the outside world and I never could have imagined that I would have my
0:24.2	own show that I could broadcast around the world.
0:27.1	And when I get letters from listeners, it really brings home the fact that this show has a global
0:32.0	reach. So I want to read you a letter this week before we get
0:34.8	started with the show. So here we go. Hey Sam, my name is Wolfgang and I am living currently
0:40.2	in Austria. I've listened to your show now for a while and I love the diversity,
0:44.7	the different people you talk to and also the things you talk about. I love hearing
0:48.4	stories about early career struggles because that also makes me feel better
0:52.4	about my own struggles right now.
0:54.6	Your conversations are vulnerable and human and I can relate to so many stories and experiences.
1:00.0	So I have a question for you.
1:01.5	How did you motivate yourself while building a career doing what
1:04.2	you love and how did you deal with the daily obstacles and also the tight money situations once in a
1:09.6	while? Well Wolfgang, it's a good question because there were some tight money situations for quite a long while.
1:17.0	And I appreciate your letter because when you see these successful accomplished people that come on my show.
1:22.9	Sometimes what you don't see is all the years of toil and struggle.
1:27.4	And as much as they touch on it on the show,
1:29.2	it's hard to sort of imagine what they had to go through to get there.
1:32.4	And yes, there are the occasional success stories
1:35.1	that happened very young, and people, you know,
1:37.2	strike lightning in their 20s.
	...

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