Jeffrey Dean Morgan reacts to epic old-school Negan Dead City scene
Warning: This article contains spoilers about The Walking Dead: Dead City season 1, episode 2, "Who's There?"
He's baaaaaaaaaaack! The character of Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) has had an extraordinary arc on The Walking Dead, evolving from a quippy, ultraviolent lunatic who bashed in heads with a barbed wire-covered baseball bat for kicks to a thoughtful, remorseful soul who showed occasional flashes of both heart and humanity. But all that went out the window — or should we say through the window — on Sunday's "Who's There?" episode of Dead City.
"I was only a monster when I had to be," Negan told Lauren Cohan's Maggie early in the episode while explaining his actions back at the Sanctuary. "When I had to put on a show to protect my people." Little did he know then that another show was soon to commence.
While fighting off a group of attackers seemingly deployed by Negan's former ally the Croat (Željko Ivanek), the one-time Saviors leader decided an encore performance was in order — morphing back into the Negan 1.0 we first met in the woods back in the season 6 finale of The Walking Dead.
As enemies looked up from below, Negan walked into the second floor of a bank with a captured adversary and then proceeded to bash the baddie's head through three panes of glass. But he was only getting started. After berating one of his opponents for sporting both a neck beard and a rat tail, Negan tapped into his showman side and presented his own rhetorical knock knock joke, playing both the call and response:
"Knock knock."
"Who's there?
"Butter"
"Butter who?"
"Well, you butter get out your umbrellas because it is about to goddamn rain!"
And with that, Negan slit his prisoner's throat and disemboweled him so blood and guts poured over the balcony and onto the enemies below. (He then threw the body over the railing for good measure.)
The scene was a total throwback to old-school Negan, mixing equal measures humor and horror while showcasing what made him such an electric personality back in his baseball bat wielding days. And no one was more excited to see it than Morgan.
"I remember when I read the script and I read that scene, I called [showrunner Eli Jorné] and I'm like, 'Oh, thank God,'" Morgan tells EW. "I've been saying for years, 'Look, Negan's still in there.' The Negan that you love to hate is still in this guy. No matter what we try to do in a redemptive way with this character, Negan is Negan. I've been seeing it for years, and yet we've never had a chance to see Negan be Negan again. So that opportunity to do that again and bring out the showman and the guy that is not afraid to throw blood around was a joy for me as an actor."
Judging by the wildly enthusiastic audience response when the episode was shown at the Tribeca Festival, it was a joy for fans as well. "I was pulled from the audience right before that scene played," Morgan says. "And then I heard after that the audience just went nuts, which made me incredibly happy to hear. The fact that it went over so well with the audience and that they've been kind of craving this as well brought a lot of like, 'I knew it.' Because I've been saying, 'Look, they want to see it. I know they want to see the old Negan.' And the way it went over made me really happy. So let's bring on some more of that!"
What brought the scene to another level beyond just carnage, however, was what happened right after it — when Negan notices that Maggie has watched the entire thing. His mood and demeanor immediately change as the performance ends and a look of almost shame comes over the character's face.
"It could have been played a few different ways," Morgan says. "The way that I always looked at it was it is almost like, 'Oh s---. She saw behind the curtain.' She saw the Negan come out that he has been keeping at bay for years, and he never wanted her to see it again — probably for a lot of reasons. And I think he genuinely has been trying to change, especially when he was with our group."
Morgan notes that this episode is key to understanding Negan's psyche and the method beyond the apparent madness. "We saw him get defensive with Maggie earlier in the bathroom scene when he says, 'I am not that guy. I didn't do this s--- frivolously. I put on a show to save my people.' Negan believes that with all his heart."
Whether that is actually the truth or just a convenient justification is up for debate, but according to Morgan, "Negan, to Negan, is not a bad guy. He just happens to be someone who knows how to be effective. And his way of being effective and making change is bringing out that showman. He did it in the lineup, and he did it in the bank scene. That's a different kind of personality that he definitely has in him, but it hasn't come out in years."
Now that it has, what happens next is anyone guess.
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