Jeffrey Dean Morgan Reacts to Negan’s Dead City Kill: “He’s Back”

[This story contains spoilers from The Walking Dead: Dead City Season 1 Episode 3, “People Are a Resource.”] “I ain’t goin’ anywhere.” That’s what a defiant Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) said when confronted by Luther (Michael Anthony) in Sunday’s “People Are a Resource” episode of The Walking Dead: Dead City. Luther found the wanted poster describing Negan as “antisocial, prone to extreme violence, with above-average intelligence and charisma” — and that he’s not to be trusted. But with Negan on a mission to save Maggie’s (Lauren Cohan) son from the Croat (Željko Ivanek) — an exchange that gives his ward Ginny (Mahina Napoleon) shelter at Maggie’s home at The Bricks — Negan refused to leave. 

“I really hope this doesn’t turn into something it doesn’t need to,” Negan told Luther, standing his ground against the burly ally of native New Yorkers Amaia (Karina Ortiz) and Tommaso (Jonathan Higginbotham). But when Luther cornered him in a kitchen, Negan fought him off with a frying pan and then a cheese grater that he scraped across Luther’s face. The fight ended with Luther stumbling backward and being impaled on a pipe, and Negan pressing his victim’s head to finish him off.

“The face-grating killed me,” Morgan told EW.”I was like, ‘Really? I’m going to get him with a face-grater?’ But thisis a guy that’s like 6-foot-6, and 200-some-odd-pounds of muscle. Youknow, Negan is not that guy. But that survival instinct kicksin with ‘What can I use to, to fight back?’ A cheese grater happened tobe at hand, and that gets that guy off of him.”

Like Negan’s bloody knock-knock joke  in last week’s “Who’s There?” episode, Negan’s violence was in response to danger. As Morgan pointed out, Negan attempted to talk his way out of the fight before going “there.”

“There’s that whole dance that happens beforethe cheese grater where I’m trying to step around him. And I warn him agood three, four times — ‘Look, I don’t want it to go here. It doesn’thave to go here. Let’s not take it there.’ And he is like, ‘It’s goingthere,’” Morgan said. “So Negan again is trying to be that guy that we have known thelast couple years and do the right thing. But when it comes down to it,and it’s a matter of survival. Negan is Negan, and if it’s means pushinghim down on that pipe that’s coming out of the ground and giving alittle smile, there he is!”

The villainous Negan who taunted and tormented his enemies on The Walking Dead is “back, in a way,” added Morgan. “I think people were wondering if itwas a good idea or not to let that Negan come out again. And I alwayshave been like, ‘We have to. It’s so important. It’s who this characteris, and we can’t take that away from him.’”

Morgan explained: “If he wants to live to see tomorrow, and ifhe wants to actually save Hershel and get to the Croat, he knows what hehas to do. A lot of that is putting on that show, and that show isgoing to be violent and it’s going to be ugly, but it’ll make y’alllaugh because he’s always got something funny to say.”

New episodes of The Walking Dead: Dead City premiere Thursdays on AMC+ and Sundays on AMC.

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