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Since being introduced in the unforgettable The Walking Dead season 6 finale, Negan has become a staple in the zombie franchise. But star Jeffrey Dean Morgan says there was one point when he almost walked away from the character.
“I felt like last year we really got bogged down in [The Walking Dead: Dead City] season 2. Negan especially, from my point of view, all I did was cry, and he’d lost his charisma and everything that made him Negan,” said Morgan on the Happy Sad Confused podcast.
Set a few years after The Walking Dead series finale, Dead City follows Negan and Maggie as they travel through post-apocalyptic New York City in search of Maggie’s kidnapped son, Hershel. But due to Negan killing Maggie’s husband partway through The Walking Dead main show, the dynamic between the two was always strained, meaning that along the way, Negan lost a lot of his cheeky personality.
“I just wanted Negan back. I wanted his humor and charisma and his smartness back in the show, cause I felt like it just vanished,” added the star. Morgan says this led him to call the head of AMC on the last day of filming Dead City season 2, and basically hand in his letter of resignation. But the star was persuaded to stay. The spin-off brought on new writer Seth Hoffman, who Morgan says “injected so much” into the show, and took Morgan’s concerns on board.
“I remember having my first phone conversation with him one-on-one, ‘What are you looking for? What do you want to do?’ And I was like, ‘Well, the dynamic has to change. There has to be more to it than she wants to kill me and I’m trying to make her not kill me and talk her out of it and save her son.’ We’ve done it.”
Morgan returned to the character in Dead City season 3, which landed on AMC in July and is still airing weekly. Elsewhere in the universe, the fourth and final season of The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon is on the way, and is expected to hit screens in 2027.
For more, check out our guide on how to watch The Walking Dead in order, and keep up with new TV shows heading your way.
