| Lori Grimes | |
|---|---|
| The Walking Dead character | |
.jpg) Lori Grimes, as depicted in the comic book series. | |
| First appearance | Issue #2 (comics) "Days Gone Bye" (TV series) |
| Last appearance | Issue 48 (comics) "Welcome to the Tombs" as a hallucination (TV series) |
| Created by | Robert Kirkman Tony Moore Charlie Adlard |
| Portrayed by | Sarah Wayne Callies |
Lori Grimes is a fictional character from the comic book series The Walking Dead and was portrayed by Sarah Wayne Callies in the American television series of the same name.
Appearances
Comic book series
Lori Grimes is displayed as an average middle class housewife living in Cynthiana, Kentucky. As the outbreak begins, she and her son, Carl, are evacuated out of the city with help from her husband Rick's best friend and working partner, Shane Walsh, in hopes of getting to where her parents live. During the evacuation, the guilt that she has been wracked with over abandoning Rick leads her to have a one-night stand with Shane,[1] which she deeply regrets afterward. She continually brushes off Shane's attempts at advancing and ignores him even more when Rick miraculously arrives at their campsite.
She soon finds out, after counting her missed periods, that she is pregnant; however, she hesitates to tell anybody until after Shane's death and their move back onto the road.[1]
She faces things such as morning sickness and mood swings throughout the first few months of her pregnancy. She and everyone else find relative stability at an abandoned prison, with hot showers, supplies, and security. While at the prison, she also begins to deepen her bond with fellow survivor Carol Peletier. She is frequently concerned with the well-being of both her family and the rest of the group. After giving birth to an infant girl that she and Rick name Judith, she remains extremely protective over her.
During the final stages of the prison assault led by The Governor, Lori suffers a fatal shotgun blast to the back while she is carrying Judith. When Lori falls, Judith is crushed to death beneath her weight.[2]
Lori's death leaves Rick and Carl emotional wrecks. Rick suffers frightening hallucinations of her, and for a while uses a phone and pretends to have conversations with her. He confides in Michonne, she too having experienced talking to a deceased loved one to help the coping process. Carl frequently blames Rick for Lori and Judith's death.
Television series
After Rick is wounded in the line of duty and left in a coma during the outbreak, Lori, believing him to be dead, is accompanied by Rick's best friend, Shane, towards Atlanta. They befriend Carol and her family while on the road, and later both groups settle with other survivors on the outskirts of Atlanta near an abandoned quarry. Lori, convinced of Rick's death by witnessing the military bomb Atlanta, eventually succumbs to her distraught state and embarks on a passionate sexual relationship with Shane (about which Carl is oblivious). As the two begin to settle into a kind of relationship, she is shocked (and overjoyed) when Rick returns with their scavenger group alive and well, though she quickly feels wracked with guilt over her affair with Shane. She bitterly ends her relationship with Shane, leaving him somewhat confused and leading to awkward confrontations between the two. When the group briefly spends time at the CDC, she is nearly raped by a depressed and drunken Shane, but fights him off leaving him wounded, humiliated and embarrassed by his actions.
As the second season gets underway, Lori slowly renews her friendship with Shane, though she continues to insist that any feelings between them during Rick's absence were genuine. Outwardly, she seems willing to look past Shane's previous actions and openly supports his contributions to the group, even as his behavior slowly becomes more chaotic and unpredictable. Days after arriving at Hershel's farm, Lori discovers much to her dismay that she is pregnant, and immediately realizes that the baby could be Shane's or Rick's. After struggling with whether to keep the baby (going as far as having Glenn retrieve "Morning After" pills for her and swallowing several before forcing herself to throw them back up), she begins to accept the predicament. However, before she is able to fully come to terms with the pregnancy, Rick, having found the boxes for her pills, confronts Lori about keeping the pregnancy a secret. Lori confesses that she struggled with the pregnancy, admitting the affair with Shane to Rick (which he nobly, if reluctantly, accepts and seemingly forgives her for) and expressing her fears about bringing a child into the broken world, where it would know only fear, hunger and pain. Reinforced by Rick's support, she finally accepts the pregnancy and makes it clear that, regardless of the child's paternity, it will be raised by her and Rick. Her attitude toward Shane softens following Dale's death, as she apologizes for all that she had put him through since Rick's return. The group is forced to evacuate the farm and onto the road after a massive herd of walkers descends onto the property, during which time Lori is separated from Carl and Rick, fleeing with T-Dog and Beth. Shortly after reuniting with Rick and Carl at the original rendezvous point on the highway, Lori learns of the circumstances of Shane's death, and is deeply disturbed by Rick's lack of remorse over killing Shane, as well as the fact that Carl put him down when he turned.
As the third season opens up, Rick and Carl have both grown distant from her. She has become paranoid about the baby, contemplating a variety of negative outcomes that include death for one or both of them. Due to complications during labor, she eventually gives birth by Caesarean section (C-section) with the help of Maggie. This causes her to pass out and die from shock. Carl, who was present during the operation, shoots her to prevent re-animation.
In the fifth episode, Rick enters the boiler room where Lori gave birth, and finds her corpse missing, and it is suggested that it has been eaten by a single walker with a distended stomach, although there are no skeletal remains. Rick is about to cut open the bloated belly of the dead walker to see his wife's remains, but instead repeatedly stabs the belly in a rage. In episode 6, when Rick believes that he is receiving phone calls from people who can help his group survive, only to later hear voices of the people he has lost during their struggle for survival, Lori's voice being the last he hears. In episode 9, Rick sees a vision of Lori while deciding the fate for Tyreese's group. Rick lashes out at the vision and orders it to leave, while the rest of the group believe that Rick is lashing out at Tyreese's group, who leave in fear. In episode 10, Rick sees Lori first by the makeshift gravesite, then at the bridge outside of the Prison. Rick tells Hershel that he knows Lori isn't there, but he believes that seeing her is a sign of something. In episode 15, Rick sees Lori standing on the prison catwalk as he searches for wire outside to tie up Michonne. Rick tries to convince himself that Lori isn't really there, although Lori doesn't disappear when he glances back up. Rick drops the wire and departs back inside the prison. In episode 16, Lori once again appears to Rick on the prison catwalk as the group departs due to the impending attack by the Woodbury group. After Rick, Daryl, and Michonne return to the prison with Karen, Tyreese, Sasha, and the other Woodbury citizens, Rick looks back at the catwalk and notices that Lori's vision is no longer there.
Development
Casting
Lori Grimes is portrayed by Sarah Wayne Callies, who was cast in the series in April 2010.[3] Callies saw an issue of the comic book series while at a bookstore in Vancouver. "I was looking through for the latest issue that had just come out and the owner of the comic book store came up to me and said, 'I see you're checking out The Walking Dead," she stated. "It's amazing.' I said, 'Yeah, I'm a huge fan.' And he said, 'You know they're making a television show for AMC. It's supposed to be really good.' I kind of looked at him and I froze. I just went, 'I'll keep an eye out for it.' And I ran out of the store."[4]
In the comics, Kirkman resolved the love triangle between Lori, Shane, and Rick very quickly, but in the TV show he decided to spend more time exploring this relationship.[5]
References
- ^ a b The Walking Dead #8 (May 2004)
- ^ The Walking Dead #48 (April 2008)
- ^ Patrick, Andy (April 30, 2010). "Exclusive: Sarah Wayne Callies Joins 'Walking Dead'". Entertainment Weekly. Time, Inc. Retrieved March 2, 2012.
- ^ Fall, Christina (November 15, 2010). "Q&A - Sarah Wayne Callies (Lori Grimes)". AMC. Retrieved March 2, 2012.
- ^ Collis, Clark (November 1, 2010). "'The Walking Dead': Comic book series creator Robert Kirkman answers our questions about last night's shocking pilot". Entertainment Weekly. Time, Inc. Retrieved March 4, 2012.
External links
- Template:IMDb character
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