In addition to playing the amazingly adept Michonne on the AMC hit show The Walking Dead, Danai Gurira is also a classically trained actress and an accomplished playwright.

The Zimbabwean-American actress recently posed for DuJour and spoke to the publication about her hit Off-Broadway play Eclipsed, which stars Lupita Nyong’o.

Eclipsed centers around five women, the wives of a warlord during the Liberian civil war.

“I was enthralled by an image I saw in the New York Times in 2003 of women in the Liberian war right when it was at its climax,” Gurira tells DuJour. “There were some women rebel fighters who were getting attention in the Western press because no one had ever seen anything like this. I was raised in Africa and I had never seen anything like it, women with AK-47s, dressed very hip and looking formidable. I was keen to one day pursue that story and put it on the stage.”