The Walking Dead: Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s real-life wife will play Lucille

Negan named his infamous barbed wire baseball bat Lucille after his dead wife. Now, the real Lucille will be on the show, played by Hilarie Burton Morgan.

Fans of The Walking Dead know Lucille as Negan’s infamous barbed wire-covered baseball bad he used to kill Abraham and Glenn in season 7, but we’re soon going to meet the real Lucille. That’s right, Lucille isn’t just a baseball bat, she was Negan’s wife, and she’s set to make her first appearance on the show. (Yes, he named his murder weapon after his wife. Yes, it’s weird.)

What’s more, Lucille will be played by actor Hilarie Burton Morgan, who just so happens to be Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s real-life wife.

The casting was confirmed by The Hollywood Reporter. Hilarie Burton Morgan is best known for her role as Peyton Sawyer in One Tree Hill. She will play Lucille in at least one of the six additional season 10 episodes of The Walking Dead coming in early 2021, which will drill down on individual characters.

In this case, it looks like we’re going to get some of Negan’s backstory. I’m betting the show will go back in time to adapt the Here’s Negan comic book by Robert Kirkman. In Here’s Negan, we learn about the events in Negan’s life that turn him into the evil villain we met on the show. While he’s always been a bit crazy, what really drives him round the bend is the death of his wife Lucille from cancer. As the zombie plague spreads, he abandons her body on her hospital bed to fight for his own survival. Upon finding his baseball bat, he names it Lucille.

In the later one-shot comic Negan Lives, Negan travels to the same hospital to give Lucille (the woman, not the bat) a proper burial.

We don’t know for sure if the episode with Hilarie Burton Morgan will adapt this storyline, but it’s the only source material that features the character. It’s a great little origin story as well, so it would be silly not to bring it to the small screen.

On Twitter, Hilarie shared her excitement over the news:

There’s a lot of story going into these six extra episodes. We already know that we’re going to see more of Lauren Cohan (Maggie), who already started filming. Whether we’ll only get more episode focused on Negan or more than one remains to be seen.

I am very excited to see what they do. In recent seasons, the show has been trying to turn Negan into the good guy, so adding a heartbreaking origin story would go a long way to humanizing him.

One thing is for sure: there will be a lot of chemistry between the two actors!

We’re sure to learn more during the first-ever The Walking Dead Holiday Special airing December 13 on AMC+. This talk show will be hosted by Talking Dead’s Chris Hardwick and will feature interviews of the cast — all virtual of course!

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