TWD: Norman Reedus Reflects on Working With Michael Rooker

In the first season of The Walking Dead, Dixon brothers Daryl (Norman Reedus) and Merle (Michael Rooker) shared no scenes. After Daryl’s drug-dealing, racist redneck older brother cut off his own hand on an Atlanta rooftop, Reedus and Rooker wouldn’t appear together until a wounded Daryl hallucinated Merle in the Season 2 episode “Chupacabra.” It wasn’t until “Made to Suffer,” the midseason finale of Season 3, that the Dixon duo actually reunited. But it was short-lived: just episodes later, Daryl put down a zombified Merle after the Governor (David Morrissey) murdered his brother in “This Sorrowful Life.” 

Reedus and Rooker may have only appeared together in a handful of episodes of The Walking Dead, but like the Dixon bros., they’re bonded for life.

“Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer is one of my favorite movies. And Rooker, not only is he a tornado in person, but in that film, he’s a tornado. He’s so good in that,” Reedus said on stage at New York Comic Con. 

The Daryl Dixon actor shared a throwback photo, which you can see below, taken “right when he and I were starting to get in our brotherhood” on The Walking Dead. Reedus added: “I have so many fond memories of working with Michael, so I chose that photo.”

Norman Reedus brought this photo from the first days of working with Michael Rooker. Also says he has a crossbow at home from every season. Calls the audience psychopaths and praises Melissa McBride. #NYCC #TheWalkingDead pic.twitter.com/B9iB6unFOt

— Murphy's Multiverse (@MultiverseMurph) October 8, 2022

Reedus originally auditioned to play Merle in the first season from then-showrunner Frank Darabont, who created the Daryl role for Reedus after the Boondock Saints actor impressed the show’s casting directors.

“He started out so different. He was put on that show to rob those people, he finally earned some respect from those people, and then he stood up for those people,” Reedus said of Daryl and Merle’s early plans to loot the Atlanta group. “I think the character in that photo is much different from the character [on the show now].”

Neither of the Dixon brothers exist in the Image comic book created by Robert Kirkman. Reedus helped tone down and shape Daryl, who in early scripts was “taking drugs and I was saying all this racist stuff, and I was like Mini-Merle.”

“I brought all the writers together and I was like, ‘I don’t want to be that guy. I want to be the guy that grew up with that and is ashamed of it,’” Reedus said during a 2019 convention appearance. “And what it did was, when Merle left the show, it allowed me to sort of step up and be the man that I wouldn’t have been if that wouldn’t have happened. So in a weird way, the zombie apocalypse kind of blossomed Daryl out to be a real guy.”

Follow @CameronBonomolo and @NewsOfTheDead on Twitter for TWD Universe coverage all season long. New episodes of The Walking Dead‘s final season premiere Sundays on AMC and AMC+.