‘I still get hate’: Old lady ‘smacked’ Jeffrey Dean Morgan over Negan killing Glenn
Jeffrey Dean Morgan reckons the Negan hate hasn’t faded — and one Glenn-related run-in even turned physical.
If you ever thought being a TV villain was cushy work, Jeffrey Dean Morgan will set you straight. Years after Negan first bashed his way into The Walking Dead back in 2016, Morgan is still catching grief for it — and not just the odd online moan, either. We're talking real-life purse attacks from grannies in coffee shops. He talked all about it on Josh Horowitz's Happy Sad Confused podcast and, naturally, the Negan business came up. Not that Morgan hasn't done other things — he popped up in Supernatural and Watchmen, among others — but no one ever accosted him for hunting ghosts or wearing a muscle suit.
‘Oh, I get people all the time that are just furious with the fact that I killed Glenn. He was so loved, and I never understood how they didn’t know it was going to happen.’
Morgan pointed out that if fans had read the comics, Glenn's (played by Steven Yeun) demise was right there on the page, so it shouldn’t have come as a shock. Still, as he put it, the whole thing seemed to leave viewers gasping for air — and they directed the full blast of their outrage squarely at him, not just Negan.
An elderly fan goes rogue
When Horowitz asked for the most unhinged bit of Negan-related blowback, Morgan went straight to a story involving him, Norman Reedus (that’s Daryl Dixon in the flesh), and a coffee stop somewhere in Georgia. Now, Morgan and Reedus, being the sorts who bond by riding motorcycles to random spots, had just parked up for a cup when an elderly woman and her granddaughter approached. The granddaughter wanted a photo with Reedus — all perfectly pleasant. But then the gran clocked Morgan, and apparently forgot where she was. She whacked him with her handbag, showered him with swearing (the colourful variety), and generally made her distaste felt — all because of what TV-Negan did to poor Glenn. Reedus’s take: get back on the bikes, pronto. Frankly, can’t blame him.
Jeffrey Dean Morgan says he would still get 'hilarious' and 'part of the deal' reactions walking the streets of New York today.
Morgan reckons that nothing's changed, even now — if you put him in New York on any given day, he doubts he'd be able to walk about without being given grief for Negan’s antics. It’s all a bit mad, but he takes it in stride, chalking the whole thing up as just 'part of the deal.'