Jeffrey Dean Morgan “couldn’t say no” to playing Negan again

After over a decade as the biggest zombie show on television, The Walking Dead is finally coming to an end, but the franchise isn’t dead yet. In fact, AMC is continuing to invest a lot of money into spinoff projects. For instance, Dead City will follow unlikely duo Maggie (Lauren Cohan) and Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) as they traverse a post-apocalyptic New York City!

Maggie and Negan are far from friends — Negan literally killed her husband — so it seems strange for them to get a spinoff together. Plus, the mere existence of the spinoff confirms that the two characters will survive through the series finale of the main show, ruining some of the suspense. These are the final episodes of one of the world’s most popular TV shows we’re talking about; nobody should be covered in that much plot armor.

Even Morgan has thrown some shade at executives about the manner in which AMC announced the project. “That’s not the way we should have gone about it,” he told Entertainment Weekly. “But this is how it was chosen to play out. And who knows? Maybe we couldn’t have kept the secret. But it seems to me we could have given it a shot. I would’ve tried to go about it in a different way, but look, that’s above my pay grade.”

Jeffrey Dean Morgan teases The Walking Dead: Dead City

Despite being a key figure on the show since his introduction in the season 6 finale, Morgan reveals that he simply “couldn’t say no” to further Walking Dead adventures.

As it happens, Morgan wasn’t always down to continue. “If you had told me that a year ago that I would be doing it, I would’ve said, ‘There’s no way. I’m going to end this and walk away,'” he told EW. “The new adventure awaits doing something else.'”

"I think that The Walking Dead ending and walking away from it would’ve been a noble thing for us all to do. But the story was so good and so worth telling that it simply came down to, I couldn’t say no. And I felt invigorated and wanted to continue it."

We’re excited to see Negan’s story continue! That said, we’re equally intrigued as to how and why he teams up with Maggie. Of course, Negan has a wife now and a child on the way, while Maggie has Hershel to look after. What’s so important that it makes them leave their families behind?

What we know about The Walking Dead: Dead City so far

This spinoff was originally named Isle of the Dead (which is objectively a much better title) but was ultimately renamed Dead City. AMC president Dan McDermott paints a very grim picture of how New York City will look after the apocalypse:

"Negan and Maggie’s journey onto the isle of Manhattan, where the bridges and tunnels were blown up at the onset of the pandemic, because the walker herd had just overrun the island and it’s been left that way for 12 years. And so now it’s a two million walker strong herd that is dominating the streets and making it treacherous and dangerous."

That’s a lot of zombies!

The Walking Dead returns for its final eight episodes on October 8 on AMC. Dead City does not have a release date yet, but the six-episode miniseries is slated to premiere next year!

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