'It got to the point I didn't want to do it anymore': New Walking Dead villain Jeffrey Dean Morgan wanted to give up filming brutal season premiere
It is the television episode so brutal it traumatised long-term fans.
And new Walking Dead villain Jeffrey Dean Morgan has revealed filming the season seven premiere was so harrowing for the cast members he actually wanted to quit.
The 50-year-old's character Negan bludgeoned long-running character Glenn Rhea to death with his baseball bat, which he charmingly calls Lucille, and almost had Andrew Lincoln's Rick Grimes chop off his own son's arm with an axe.
Brutal: But Walking Dead villain Jeffrey Dean Morgan said he wanted to quit while filming the show's intense season opener
And filming the scenes was so intense, and went on for so long, that he had to resist the urge to walk off the set.
He told Interview magazine: 'That whole episode was hard, and also because I did go through and smack everybody with Lucille at a certain point. Everybody took a hit.
'All of that was hard. It got to the point where I didn't want to do it anymore.
'Emotionally I was completely drained—all of us were, I would imagine.
Say hello to my little friend: He said he ended up hitting everyone on the show with his character Negan's charmingly named baseball bat Lucille
Gone but not forgotten: He bludgeoned long-running character Glenn to death with his bat
Big leap: Jeffrey has gone from starring in Grey's Anatomy to being a Walking Dead villain
He said the hardest thing to shoot was the moment Negan almost forced Rick Grimes to chop off his son Carl's hand with an axe, before changing his mind at the last moment after seeing his foe's spirit was broken.
Andy and I just went through the ringer. It was a hard episode, and having to get there time and time again to do these horrible things.
'They're all good people, and I love them—the whole cast—so to keep riding them as hard as I was riding them, in-between takes it was like, god, you've got to catch your breath a little bit. It was just so f***ing heavy at all times.'
And the former Grey's Anatomy favourite said it was the sheer grind of filming that got to him.
He said: 'In the show that aired, there's no let up, and it was like that for 10 days for us. It wasn't just 40 minutes of it; it was 10 days of that, every day, all day.'
Chop, chop: He said the scene where he forces Rick to cut his son's hand arm off was the toughest to film
Oh boy: It looked like Carl was going to have tough times ahead
Despite this Jeffrey, who became a fan of the comic book series after becoming hooked on the TV show, also said he had no hesitation at taking the role when it came up.
He said: 'I was doing The Good Wife and got a call one night from my agent who said, "The Walking Dead is offering you the role of a villain."
'I said, "Well, what's his name?" And they were like, "You know, they won't tell us, it's a secret."
'And I knew immediately—I knew because I watched the show and knew where we were—and I'm like, "It's f***ing Negan! And I'm going to f***ing do it."'
Last minute repreave: Just Andrew Lincoln's character is about to carry out the order he changes his mind
Broken man: And Rick has lost all will by the end of the harrowing episode
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