The Walking Dead actor reveals incredibly dark plotlines cut from the show

The Walking Dead is a show where the dead rise to devour the living. In this world, it is often said that the living are the true villains, which tracks, since the non-zombie characters have been responsible for some truly heinous sh*t over the years. They’ve captured unsuspecting travelers to butcher and eat, some keep the heads of their victims in aquariums, the Whisperers left a baby to be devoured by Walkers because it was too young to understand the need for silence, Negan is way too close with that baseball bat, and so on.

So color me baffled that producers apparently told Lew Temple, who played Axel — a prisoner rescued by Rick Grimes and his merry band of survivors in season 3 — that his character couldn’t be a serial killer…that’s too much for this show?

“I showed up with the idea that I was going to be serial killer and foreboding, and then the day of, got a note to switch that,” Temple said on the Talk Dead to Me podcast. “‘No no, we’ve gotta lighten things up a bit, we’ve been pretty dark.”

I guess it was pretty dark for Carol’s daughter turning back up as a zombie, and then the gruesome death of Dale, and then Rick killing his best friend Shane. Maybe AMC had a point.

As it turns out, there’s a very good reason Axel wasn’t allowed to go nuts…yet. “There were some episodes that were written where I do take Beth out into the woods and slaughter her. And so we didn’t get to any of those,” Temple revealed.

"That was why I kept buttoned up, he was gonna come undone and be totally Henry Rollins tattooed. The whole thing about being a drug addict was all a facade, the thing about the squirt gun and pistol is all bullshit."

Another abandoned script saw his character beat Carol (Melissa McBride), who had already suffered spousal abuse at the hands of her husband in the first season. I’m pretty glad they kept this stuff out of the show. “I mean, just these really dark things that the writers were talking about,” recalled Temple. “And then all of a sudden, it’s like, ‘Oh, we painted ourselves in the corner, the Governor is showing up and he’s gotta draw blood or he’ll be impotent. He’s gotta draw first blood. And it’s looking like you’re gonna get the short straw.’”

As it turned out, the writers decided that Axel was in prison for robbery, not any of the horrible stuff they were considering before that. And, in the end, Axel earned the trust of the group and died a good guy.

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h/t NME