A Punk Icon Was Almost Cast As Negan On ‘The Walking Dead’

Jeffrey Dean Morgan has remained mostly quiet over the uproar from The Walking Dead‘s season six finale, in which Negan’s fabled barbed wire-covered baseball bat Lucille said hello and goodbye to… someone. We don’t know who that someone is, and producers are doing their darnedest to make sure it’s kept a secret until the season seven premiere. All Morgan has said is that he “understand the fans’ frustration.” Meanwhile, if the person who Negan is based on, Henry Rollins, had been asked the same questions about the cliffhanger, he probably would have smashed some skulls himself.

While speaking to Forbes, the Black Flag singer said:

Since I didn’t get the part I can tell you this. I was up for the role of Negan because Charlie Adlard, who worked on the comic book, based that guy on me and so I was a shoo-in for an audition. The internet was wild with speculation because in the upcoming season they were going to introduce the character. A woman that works in my office put my name and the character’s name into an internet search and all this speculation came up. I went for the audition and there were five pages of really cool dialogue with all these curses and it was beautiful, but I didn’t get it.

I later saw a photograph of the guy who did get it and he looks almost exactly like the comic book rendering. The woman at my office watched the episode where he turns up, the dialogue that I auditioned with was in the show and she said, “It should have been you.” Obviously it wasn’t or this conversation would be very different but that happened. I had to sign one of those documents where you can’t talk about it but now it’s over and done with… so yeah, I was up for that part. I get great auditions, I auditioned for stuff like Narcos, too, but rarely does anything come my way. (Via)

I once saw F*cked Up and Off! open for Dinosaur Jr. Between sets, Henry Rollins interviewed Dinosaur Jr. singer and lead guitarist, J Mascis. For some reason, a presumably wasted guy in the crowd decided this was the perfect time to throw his shoe at Rollins. So he did. Rollins, now a 50-something man, didn’t jump off the stage and attack the dude; instead, he looked at the culprit straight in the eye, and while menacingly pointing at him, explained exactly what he did wrong and what would happen if he ever threw another shoe again. It was the scariest thing I’ve ever seen. Jeffrey Dean Morgan is excellent as Negan; Henry Rollins would be goddamn terrifying.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HGb7yo4SFM

(Via Forbes)