[Editor’s note: The following contains some spoilers for The Walking Dead: Dead City.]The AMC series The Walking Dead: Dead City follows Maggie (Lauren Cohan), as she enlists Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) on a journey with her to post-apocalyptic Manhattan, which is a very different environment than either of them have experienced before. Filled with dangers everywhere, both walker and human, the crumbling city tests them in new, terrifying, and sometimes very bloody ways that really push their tolerance for each other to the limit.

During this interview with Collider, Morgan and Cohan talked about their own favorite Negan and Maggie moments from this season, how they feel about fans who ship their characters, Negan’s rather dramatic and blood-filled theatrical moment in episode two, whether Maggie wishes Negan where someone other than who she believes him to be, and whether Negan has self-awareness about how Maggie views him.

Collider: There’s something so fascinating about a story centered around these two characters, who would prefer to be as far away from each other as possible, but have to actually rely on each other for survival. With that kind of dynamic, what is your own personal favorite Maggie and Negan moment from this season?

JEFFREY DEAN MORGAN: I like the quiet moments that they have, the one-on-one moments, where they almost can find common ground, but one or both of them just can’t allow it to happen. As the audience, to get a chance to be a fly on the wall for those scenes, I find fascinating. We got to see it [at the premiere] with an audience, which was vastly different than watching it alone in my room. Those moments that you don’t know are gonna hit, they do hit and you know that the audience recognizes those. Those are my favorite moments, the ones they’re vastly different, and yet they’re not. Something has happened that’s so that she’s never gonna be able to forgive him. They’re never gonna be buddies. She needs him and he needs her, in a way, and yet they can’t quite get there. Playing that is tricky. It’s hard to write it. But it’s super fun to try to play it.

LAUREN COHAN: Yeah, it’s cool that we get to be on the precipice and you can just see it sometimes. For them, you can see that, if only it weren’t for this thing, they could actually team up and do some pretty good things and achieve things in a really effective way. It’s just really interesting to say, what are we looking at here?, in terms of human limitations, like limitations in the way you’ve been impacted by something. This is an event that has just been cut so deep into Maggie’s unconscious, that’s been triggered by Hershel being taken. In so many ways, she’s blindly groping for something to hold onto, to move forward with. For this moment, it’s one foot in front of the other. She has to get somebody who’s capable, who owes her this back up, and then get on the road and keep it to just one part of the mission at a time. For her, in so many ways, it’s just hoping she can get through it without letting that those deep, unraveling, psychological things to just tear her down and stop her and end it all. Ironically, the good and the bad are in the unraveling. It’s like life.

Image via AMC

It’s so interesting to watch these characters because no matter how good or effective a team they are, these are two people who should hate each other and their dynamic is pretty toxic. How do you feel about the fact that fans are actually shipping these characters together? Does that surprise you?

MORGAN: I am incredibly amused by it. I find it fascinating that people are shipping them because when I watched the show and when we were playing these scenes, what’s really fascinating is that she might kill me at any minute, or he may kill her. I thought that was more interesting than anything else. But other people look at it like, “Oh, hey, they should be together.” We both are very amused by the whole thing.

COHAN: Yeah.

MORGAN: I don’t see that happening, any time in the future.

COHAN: No. But it tells me the world wants love.

MORGAN: There is an undeniable chemistry that Lauren and Jeff have on screen. The fact that people can see those characters together is because there is chemistry. It’s just not the chemistry . . .

COHAN: . . . that makes for that show that people are shipping.

Jeffrey, in the second episode, you have quite the dramatic blood bath moment, with the guy you’re dragging around and spilling his blood everywhere. What was that like to shoot? Does that get very messy, with all of that blood?

MORGAN: Oh, yeah. And I don’t like being all sticky, especially when it’s like 150 degrees. But I love just bringing back that Negan. It’s been a long time since Negan got to be Negan. And then, I got to play the moment directly following, where he sees Maggie and knows that she’s seen this thing that he’s been hiding from her and himself, for years. I thought that was really interesting and cool, and where that goes, the rest of the show, was neat, as well. Negan is a survivor. He knows how to survive, and he knows how to fuck with people, and that was just a perfect example of him putting on that show that he talks about. That’s his survival mechanism. He knows what he’s doing in that world, and he does it well.

Image via AMC

Lauren, do you think Maggie wishes Negan was something other than who she believes him to be, or is it easier for her to keep him in that irredeemable villain box?

COHAN: That’s a good question. To say that he’s something different is to say that that so many things are possible and that change is possible. Any time I see somebody with a great amount of tension, I know it’s because there’s some realization that’s too hard, or that’s just waiting to bubble over. So, by that token, yes, she does do that. There has been so much time in this and so many crazy things have happened that, if I took it all and put it on a piece of paper and rolled it out like a scroll, I wonder where this would land in the temperatures of these characters. It’s such a mad story. It’s such a wild story. I really think, if they could ever take stock and go have some peaceful moment and let all these things digest, what would come of it? And so, Dead City is that peaceful vacation. No, I’m just kidding. In all reality, what happens in the show is seeing the ways they’re similar. I always try to put this in a succinct way, and the reason it’s difficult is because it really takes, at least the beginnings of it, with this season, how do you really depict that picture? How do you depict the picture of your subconscious being so deeply affected by an event that it impossibly colors the way you’ve had to operate and the survival mechanisms that you’ve had to employ. You just can’t help yourself, but distrust someone and distrust something. The time that we’ll spend together, being forced together on this mission, you want to intellectually hold a point of view, and you see things and wonder if it can be trusted. But then, he’ll do something where he can’t be trusted and I’m like, “See, I knew it. I have to keep this point of view.” I find it really difficult to speak about it in a concise way, when it’s something that really pours out over our story.

MORGAN: Lauren is as confused as Maggie is about this relationship.

COHAN: I’m not confused. It’s just that the whole picture is so big.

Image via AMC

Jeffrey, do you see it the same way with Negan? Does he have self-awareness in those moments, when he realizes how Maggie is seeing him?

MORGAN: Yeah, I think he absolutely does. A perfect example is what we were just talking about, when he can himself through her eyes. I think he finds that mortifying. Negan has spent a lot of time trying to be someone else, and be this person that Maggie could live with and not want to kill. And yet, when we find them now, two years later, Negan is having a fucking hard time. She has been dealing with a teenage boy that needs a father, and now she needs Negan, the guy that took her son’s father away. So, she’s coming in hot, when she gets to Negan, but she needs his help. It’s a fucking predicament. I don’t think she ever thought she was gonna have to see him again, and here we are. And then, by that same token, I think Negan wants to help her, and maybe would be helping her, regardless if she didn’t have something hanging over his head.

COHAN: There’s an element to him needing a father, but I think there’s something that’s maybe him more paralyzing, which is that I feel, whether I’m aware of it or not, that I’m doing a disservice to my son by not moving through this and finding a solution and finding a way to cope. I do think you can do this on your own. I know you can do it on your own. I know women can do it on their own, and men can do it on their own.

MORGAN: True that.

COHAN: It’s the grief. On a fundamental level, whether she has that self-awareness, there’s something that has to be faced here. It’s like going into the mouth of the dragon, and it’s gotta happen. It has to happen because what’s happening now is not sustainable, as we see with the disintegration of her life and this frayed relationship with her son. It’s not there. You have to hit bottom, and how far poor bottom can you go. She’s got this life that she’s living, and then she’s got this family member that’s been kidnapped. And then, ironically, the link to finding him is through Negan, and what is that? There’s gotta be a reason. You’ll see what that is.

MORGAN: Or not.

The Walking Dead: Dead City airs on Sunday nights on AMC and is available to stream at AMC+.