Women

Meet The Walking Dead's (Sorta-) Southern Belle, Lauren Cohan

Could Lauren Cohan's real accent be even more charming than Maggie's?

By MARK BYRNE

Photographs by Marc Hom

October 2014

How to Date Lauren Cohan

Play Slideshow

Pause

1 of 4

1411161019162_lauren cohan gq magazine october 2014 01

"I'd always fantasized about playing a southern role," says Lauren Cohan in her natural British accent. "I definitely had this idea"—and here she breaks into the farm-girl drawl that defines Maggie Greene on The Walking Dead—"she'd be soooo southern." She reverts to British. "I had to dial that in slightly." The ventriloquist act comes from a rootless childhood, jumping from New Jersey to Georgia (a year, but it stuck), back to New Jersey, then to the UK. Decades later, Cohan's still got the wide-eyed fascination of a kid who moved a lot—as happy in the gritty loft she once occupied in downtown L.A. as in her current suburban Atlanta home, and probably as happy as she'd be on the Montana ranch she fantasizes about retiring to.

"You could spin the flipping globe and put me anywhere
on it and I'd be happy."

Wait, flipping?

She lets out a loud laugh. "I never realized how much
I actually curse until I read a couple of interviews, and I was like: You need to find a different word."

See? Adaptable.

Bodysuit by Dolce & Gabbana
Ring and bracelet by Bulgari