Season 8 of The Walking Dead has gone by the motto of “All Out War,” but off-screen, another type of battle is clearly still in full swing, as the contractual fate of star Lauren Cohan remains unresolved. A battle that has grown to now involve another cast member and even the actress herself, who has portrayed Maggie Rhee on the AMC zombie apocalypse blockbuster since Season 2. Earlier this week, fellow TWD regular Khary Payton became seemingly the first of Cohan’s co-stars to speak out for the actress when he bluntly posted “pay the woman” on his Instagram account. A pivotal figure on the series based on Robert Kirkman’s comics, the CAA-represented Cohan has been fighting for a pay increase in her new TWD contract with AMC, and going forward into its ninth season and beyond. As talks hit an impasse, the much-sought-out actress signed on in February as the female lead opposite Scott Foley in Whiskey Cavalier, ABC’s hourlong action-dramedy pilot from Bill Lawrence, Dave Hemingson and Warner Bros. TV. Now ex-showrunner and TWD franchise Chief Content Officer Scott M. Gimple told Deadline late last month that “these sorts of negotiations do happen all the time in television and we’re working on it.” How despite the EP’s insistence that “we’re all talking, so stay tuned,” nothing of substance has been achieved, we hear. Which is perhaps why the man who plays Kingdom leader King Ezekiel wasn’t the only one to make a move on the matter this week. After long having been announced as one of the TWD marquee names at London’s Walker Stalker Con this weekend, Cohan suddenly dropped out of the fanfest on March 8 due to a filming schedule change. That alteration was for the Whiskey Cavalier pilot, which is in production as TWD gears up for a Season 9 that Cohan may or may not substantially be a part of at this point. Cohan was supposed to join TWD co-stars current and past like Payton, Andrew Lincoln, Danai Gurira, Norman Reedus, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, the now-departed Chandler Riggs, Star Trek Discovery lead Sonequa Martin-Green and many more at the March 10-11 UK event. Cohan’s Maggie is still a big part of The Walking Dead this season and is a big part of Sunday’s “Dead Or Alive Or” episode. An episode that faces the ABC launch of the new American Idol and Fox’s deft O.J. Simpson: The Lost Confession? counter programming at 9 PM ET. BTW – AMC had no response to Payton’s Instagram post of last week. The cabler has nothing to do with the UK confab. Also, Andrew Lincoln was another no-show at Walker Stalker Con it seems as well.
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