In season two of The Walking Dead: Dead City, which premiered on Sunday, to stop her son Hershel (Logan Kim) from being conscripted, Maggie (Lauren Cohan) is forced return to the dangerous ruins of New York City to face new threats. Meanwhile, Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) is now a captive figurehead for the Dama (Lisa Emery), the Croat (Zeljko Ivanek), and the Burazi, forced to wield a new electrified Lucille bat to enforce order and unite the factions of Manhattan against the New Babylon Federation, the group Maggie has been coerced to travel with.

Perlie Armstrong (Gaius Charles), the Marshal of New Babylon who lied about Negan’s fate, continues to navigate the city’s politics, along with Major Lucia Marvaez (Dascha Polanco), who enforces New Babylon’s harsh rules with public executions.

On the other side is Bruegel (Kim Coates), an unpredictable new threat who commands one of the city’s gangs that the Burazi are trying to pull in to join their cause.

Recently, Charles, Polanco, and Coates spoke with SciFi Vision about working on the second season, including their characters’ adaptability and more.

Read the full transcript of the roundtable interview with the press below and tune in Sundays for all-new episodes of The Walking Dead: Dead City on AMC and AMC+.

***edited for length and clarity***

QUESTION:   My first question is for Dascha…You play Lucia Narvaez. She's fantastic. She's a leader, she's a major in the new Babylon Federal Forces. My question is about your training for the character. Did you reach back into your ROTC training from high school to bring her to life?

DASCHA POLANCO:   I did. I was trying to get Eli and Michael and them to kind of let me show my exhibition [of] how to twirl a rifle, but that wasn't her weapon. So, but I was a corporal in ROTC, and I did use that. I thought I was going to start having the whole platoon march and be part of Color Guard. Maybe next season, who knows? Yeah, but I definitely did. I think that I have, I use that a lot, personal experience, and I think our actors do as well.

I also am stepping into a world that is already established. And Gaius also helped me a lot with getting to know more of, you know, the community of New Babylon. And, you know, it was very well written.

Michael, Eli, they were very alluring. They were all so open to bringing my own essence to the character of Narvaez and to be able to portray her trajectory.

SCIFI VISION:   A lot of things happen that make all three of your characters really change plans constantly. So, just sort of talk a little bit about their ability to adapt and how important that is to your character, for all three of you.

KIM COATES:   Just because I'm the oldest, by about 14,000 years, I'll go first. Look, that's what's great about this season. The writing is so good. You never - I certainly never knew, as I was reading one, two, three, all the way through eight, where Brugal was really going to go. I really didn't. But to find out by reading where he was going to go, then you’ve got to play the guy. Then you’ve got to - like, for me, as the kind of actor I am, I like to - you know, obviously you memorize your lines, and then, for me, I forget them. Like, I want to know them so well that I can just forget them.

And they just let me play, and they let me ad lib, and they let me be funny. The villain in Brugal and the dandy in Brugal, it was always a great thing to figure out where he was going to go, especially with Negan. Have they seen the whole series?

SCIFI VISION:   I’ve seen six, yeah.

KIM COATES:   Six? Oh, well, get ready. Get ready, you guys. Seven and eight are pretty cool.

DASCHA POLANCO:   I think that it's a human thing to adapt to our surroundings, and to see New York as it is in this world is also very impressionable. A lot of the landmarks, Central Park and all the other places that we visit, and we see after it being, you know, under these conditions, and being brought to life by the methane, it's the new currency, right? It's the new currency of this world that we're living in, how much we need it to survive. It also shows that at the end, we're all truly - how much do we want to survive? How much does a human being, but also the characters in this world - the, what do you call it? Not the urgency, but the survival instinct. That instinct just starts kicking in, and we notice that throughout.

Then we also get curious and interested in knowing where they started. Where are these character traits, or why are these survival tactics coming into play? So, it's beautiful to see the arc throughout the story and get to know the layers of each of the characters and how they are all intertwined in this world.

GAIUS CHARLES:   I think adaptability and improvisation is, you know, that's the name of the game, quote unquote, and it's like we've been doing that for as long as the apocalypse has been going on. It's the constant ability to reinvent yourself, to reinvent your alliances, to reinvent your surroundings, your resources, you know, to make it work somehow. That actually, I think, keeps the world interesting and keeps the characters interesting, and I think keeps things really fun to play.

So, I had fun even coming from season one to season two. Armstrong is already adapting into a whole new environment. Now he's a colonel, but he was a colonel on the surface, but underneath he's going through all of these internal kinds of changes and just processing his values and all that. So, I think, having all that as part of our world and part of our storyline just makes it so much fun to play.

QUESTION:   …Sons [of Anarchy] and The Walking Dead were kind of parallel shows in the sense that they have the most passionate fan bases. How would you say that the two fan bases compare? And how do you think, you know, maybe Jax and Tig would have fared in the zombie apocalypse?

KIM COATES:   Well, they better have a couple of motorcycles ready if they're going to kind of cover this world. We'd have to talk to Norman Reedus about that.

Yeah, you nailed it. You know, for me, doing all the movies that I've done and the limited series that I've done, even CSI Miami, I did five for Caruso and Prison Break, I never really wanted to be a regular on a television show until Sons of Anarchy. So, I was very, very lucky that they invited me to that party. And as you guys know, they're lucky to have all of us too. So, luck goes both ways. And I'm telling you, Sons of Anarchy's fan base, it still is insane. They will never forget that show. So, I remember filming Sons at the exact same time when The Walking Dead was starting as well, and they were both with Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones and Mad Men. They were all the cable hits of the world at that time, and today they still are.

So, last night, or was it two nights ago, when we had our first little premiere, I had all these incredible - and guys, you know this already. You and I are about to find out, Dascha, but the fans of The Walking Dead, they continue to stare at me going, “welcome to the family. Welcome to the family.” Like The Walking Dead family is real, and I knew about it from Norman. I knew about it from Jeffrey. They're pals of mine. But to film it and be involved in the walkers, in the world that Dascha's been talking about, I'll never forget it.

So, now it's just about wait unti these things start dropping. Wait until the show starts dropping. I'm not Tig Trager anymore. I'm playing Bruegel. He's a completely different guy. But to be invited into that world of The Walking Dead, what a joy it is for me.

QUESTION:   Kind of piggybacking on Jamie's question earlier, you get to do so much this season as actors as well, and it's such an impressive range that all of you express. I'm just curious what you enjoyed the most about working on season two this year.

GAIUS CHARLES:   I actually enjoyed bringing New Babylon. I mean, it's pretty matter of fact, but bringing the troops and the army in New Babylon and the scouting mission. I enjoyed the process of bringing our footprint into Manhattan.

I just really felt like there was almost like, not really a war movie, but there's just something really interesting about that, and I don't think we've seen that in The Walking Dead yet. Like there [are] armed forces coming in. And like, what does that look like? Troops and, you know, we're going through Central Park, and we're bringing our guns, and [there’s] just something really cool about that that I don't think we've seen in the world yet, and then obviously the reality of who and what we encounter when we get there.

DASCHA POLANCO:   I think, for me, being part of the world was obviously super exciting and also being able to - the pyros, the weapons, the walkers, I mean, the work that this behind the scenes that the crew puts in to bring this world to life is so admirable. I mean, there were moments on set where I'm like, to weather, do not weather through, you know, logistics of things to see walkers come around you. You're like, wait a minute. It's so much work. Like, I never knew there was a university for the walkers. There's so much that comes into play and so many moving parts. It’s just, as an actor, you're acting, and yes, you're bringing a role, but to be aware that it takes a team on screen and off screen to bring this to life, and then the audience makes you part of this family.

As Kim was saying, it’s just really the gifted, you know, the wrapped gift for an artist.

KIM COATES:   Can I just add to that, too? You're both so dead on. But for me to add to that, it's about the art. We really are in New York now. I live in the Met. That's where I live. Kim Coates got to go to the Met for a couple of days before I started filming, to live in the Met for a while, and to feel. And that [Washington Crossing the Delaware], that painting that you see in our series, obviously, it's much bigger in the Met. But the work that the art department did on that painting in the show, it blew my mind when I saw it on set.

So, New York without art is nothing, and that's what we're finding out in this series. You have the New Babylon. You have the guns, the boats, the walkers. But the Dama and Bruegel understand art. New York is all about art, and we want to bring it. Gaius has been saying so, bringing the old world back, making it better. The old world, let's bring it. It includes art, and that's why I think Bruegel is such a dandy. He's into art. There’s no doubt about it.

QUESTION:   This is for Gaius. Talk about has it turned out to be a very complicated relationship between your character and Negan? Especially at the end of the season where you kind of had to rely on each other a little bit. That was fascinating to see you guys both play that.

GAIUS CHARLES:   Yeah. Well, I think Armstrong really figured out that life can't be so rigid and so black and white all the time, especially in this fallen world, or in this world of walkers and death and danger at every turn. It was a really hard, you know, it took basically him confronting his own death to really realize that he needed to make a change.

And I think Negan is one of the most fascinating characters to me. Certainly, you know, I binged watch the whole original show just in prepping and working on the spinoff, and just the anti-hero thing that Negan brings is just amazing. It's very fascinating to me, very engaging. Yeah, I think Armstrong really has to deal with this idea that you can't put anybody in a box, especially in this world. You just can't put them in a box, and, you know, characters evolve, and you have to figure out where your place is in that you evolve yourself as a character, and you grow together.

So, I think we'll see even in the second season how they were enemies when they started. They become somewhat of frenemies, but they're still, you know, they can still go at it. I think we see that the sort of underlying tension and the underlying threat between them is still there, because it's still life and death, even though they've made a sense of peace with themselves and their relationship. The fact that I represent New Babylon, and he represents the gangs of the New World, can still put us against each other and could still threaten each of our lives.

QUESTION:   My question is for Kim. Bruegel, as you mentioned, he's this art aficionado. He's a little bit of a dandy, but he's also a formidable gang leader that has been tasked with joining the Dama and Croat to protect the methane gas that New Babylon is interested in usurping from Manhattan.

So, my question for you is, with Manhattan in such this chaotic state, these factions against each other and trying to unite to fight New Babylon, what do you think is the one thing that could unite these various factions? Is there any hope for peace between them? Is it just methane that they're going to protect, or is there something that's going to bring them together, do you think?

KIM COATES:   I have no idea. I have no idea. All I know is it's the survival of the fittest. It just really is. I mean, if Bruegel really feels that Christoph and the other gang leader, all three of them together, can get to the Croats' head and show them that it's a great place to make methane as well, and this is what I can bring, and this is how I can kill walkers, if all three were to be able to be together, then Bruegel would go for that deal. But he really is looking out for himself. He's really looking out for himself. He's looking out for himself. He's got the biggest gang in New York, and until they're not the biggest gang, they're the biggest gang in New York. He thinks his brain is better than any other gang members. In fact, he doesn't think much of the other two gang members, because I think really Bruegel was probably a CEO of a hedge fund. He has a billion dollars somewhere, which is worthless now. So, he's well-read. He's well into art. And it's about him. It's always about him, and if he thinks he can take another gang along with him to get to the top, he will. Otherwise, he'll kill them all.

QUESTION:   He's also very well-dressed.

KIM COATES:   Our guy was indeed. With all the dirt and the grime and the sweat. Yeah, I'm not sure how well I smelled on set, but I sure love putting that wardrobe on every day.

SCIFI VISION:   This is actually kind of continuing in that vein, but I was thinking about how you guys are talking about them trying to bring the old world back, even though the Dalma supposedly doesn't seem to want that or says she doesn't want that, she's still kind of doing the same thing.

I'm just curious, do you think that maybe if all the characters could kind of let go of that notion and not even try for that, that maybe that could make the people be able to, I guess, coexist a little better? Just for whoever wants to answer.

DASCHA POLANCO:   I mean, I guess for Narvaez, I don't know what she wants to go back to, but I think it's a natural human instinct to want to hold on to the past, what feels comfort, what feels most at home. I think that's the common denominator here for everyone is, what are we holding on to?

Those that want the old to come in, or are we going to have hope, like Gaius had previously said, to allow us to accept that things are going to change, and it's out of our control. We only have control to the choice to either want to survive or not. And I think it's very easy for us to, within this world, to say surrender and let go, but there's a tenacity. There's something in us that doesn't allow us to surrender, whether it's the interest of methane, whether it's our own personal interest. You know, we want to all at the end of the day, there's this instinct to want to live and want to see New York, what New York is.

GAIUS CHARLES:   Yeah. I think also your question is making me think of the show and the original Walking Dead and the whole Rick storyline where they're trying to create this utopia, or at least this commune where everybody can be together and everybody can have empathy for each other and we can rehabilitate Negan and all this kind of stuff. But you're fighting against the human nature for self-interest and dog eat dog and the hoarding of resources.

So, yeah, I think if we could all let go of that, yeah, we could all live together. It'd be great. But, you know, the reality is, you know, we're dealing with the darker sides of human instincts, and I think that's one of the things that makes the show so compelling.

DASCHA POLANCO:   The yin and the yang.

GAIUS CHARLES:   Yeah, for sure.