See Danai Gurira in exclusive portraits from EW's digital cover shoot

You can't Danai it

Actress Danai Gurira posed for EW's latest digital cover to honor the end of her tenure on The Walking Dead and to toast the next chapter of her career.

Gurira burst on to the scene in season 3, playing comic book favorite Michonne, but will depart The Walking Dead during the final episodes of season 10.

She has already found huge success outside The Walking Dead by moonlighting as Okoye in the MCU — starring in the first comic book film to ever be nominated for a Best Picture Oscar in Black Panther as well as the highest-grossing movie of all time in Avengers: Endgame.

Gurira is also an accomplished playwright, penning Broadway's Eclipsed. Next up, she'll team up once again with the play's lead and her Black Panther costar Lupita Nyong'o to bring a 10-episode miniseries adaptation of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's novel Americanah to new streaming service HBO Max.

"Born into this world as an African girl, I never understood the absence of voices and people who were similar to me," says Gurira. "It never made sense to me that I couldn't see that representation. It just has to happen, and I guess I'll have to do it."

"I'm an avid TV watcher. I watch a lot of things. I've watched how television has evolved over the last couple decades. Great television really, really excites me."

You won't find much success attempting to pry Black Panther sequel intel out of Gurira, who is as adept at protecting secrets as she is at protecting King T'Challa. "If you're talking storyline, I know absolutely nothing," she says. "You can't get it out of me because I don't have it."

"I'm still that same 9-year-old girl looking for myself on screen," she says. "I'm still that same girl. I'm still looking, so I've got to do it."