TWD: Dead City’s Jeffrey Dean Morgan Weighs In on the Spinoff’s Rewriting of History: ‘That Is a Negan Truth’
Sunday’s episode of The Walking Dead: Dead City did more than just move along the mission to rescue Hershel, it also appeared to rewrite history. As Negan explained to the boy’s mother Maggie why abductor the Croat was so dangerous, Glenn’s murderer insisted that he himself wasn’t as bad. Negan had only been a monster, the Saviors’ former leader maintained, when he’d had to put on a show to protect his people.
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Which doesn’t quite track, not to viewers who remember that the reformed villain had had a harem of women who’d been coerced into being his “wives,” he’d made Carl reveal his empty eye socket and, worse, sing, and he’d already batted out Abraham when he let Daryl’s outburst justify Glenn’s murder before his pregnant wife’s eyes. So it begs the question: Did Negan believe what he told, of all people, Maggie? And does portrayer Jeffrey Dean Morgan buy it?
“I mostly think that’s true, and I believe that Negan believes it to be true,” the actor tells TVLine. “[That’s] his modus operandi as far as surviving this apocalypse, and he does excuse himself in certain places, obviously. He doesn’t think he’s the bad guy that he maybe is at times. But he absolutely believes that he has to put on a show, and that brings out the worst because it protects people. That is a Negan truth.
“Do I agree with that? Not always, no,” he continues. “And yeah, we have seen him do questionable-at-best things, but we’ve also seen him do some really good things. That’s what’s so much fun about playing Negan. He’ll do something great, then take five steps back, and do people know about it? Probably not, sometimes they do. But Negan is not a bad guy in Negan’s eyes at all.”
