Morgan ended up being the perfect actor to combine the bloodthirsty sadism with the confident alpha-male charisma, but a production can never hang all its hopes on one actor. Even if the top choice responds to the material and wants to play the part, a scheduling conflict could put the kibosh on the whole thing and necessitate a replacement. Some actors are reluctant to commit to a TV series.
So, even though Morgan was interested in playing Negan, and it seemed like a done deal, the producers still needed a Plan B. So, they considered giving the role to someone else — and that someone else would’ve completely changed the trajectory of the show.
Matthew Lillard Was The Backup Casting Choice For Negan
Lillard has been in the news a lot recently. Not only has he been out promoting his return to the Scream franchise; he was the subject of an outpouring of love after Quentin Tarantino launched into a completely unprompted tirade lambasting Lillard and a bunch of his contemporaries. So, Lillard has been doing a lot of interviews and giving us a peek behind the scenes.
In a recent appearance on Kristian Harloff’s The Big Thing Podcast, Lillard revealed that he was almost cast as Negan in The Walking Dead. While he was at Comic-Con to promote Twin Peaks: The Return, Lillard bumped into the Walking Dead team and the showrunner told him that he had the part “for like 10 minutes.”
They’d sent an offer out to Morgan, and when it looked like Morgan might not accept the offer, they briefly moved Lillard to the top of the list and decided that he would play Negan. But, about 10 minutes later, Morgan accepted the offer and Negan’s on-screen fate was sealed. As much as I love Morgan’s performance as Negan, Lillard would’ve been an interesting choice.
Lillard admitted that his portrayal of Negan would’ve been very different from Morgan’s. He said that, while Morgan is “super badass and masculine” as Negan, he would’ve taken a zanier, more comedic approach to the role (which, to anyone who’s seen Lillard’s work in Scream and Scooby-Doo and Without a Paddle, should come as no surprise).
Lillard’s Negan Might’ve Improved The Walking Dead’s Darkest Season
The introduction of Negan is the watershed moment that turned The Walking Dead from a global phenomenon to a cultural niche. When Glenn’s eye popped out of his head, a huge chunk of the audience tuned out for good and never came back. Only diehard Walking Dead fans stuck around for the remaining seasons and all the spinoffs that came after.
The Walking Dead built up to Negan’s introduction all throughout season 6. He was teased as the show’s big bad, with a larger (and more sinister) community than anything we’d ever seen before. And when he finally showed up in the season finale, he lived up to the hype. He was genuinely terrifying, and he immediately made his mark by killing off a major character, just like he did in the comic.
But the show made the baffling, Dallas-style choice to show the killing from the victim’s P.O.V., then making the audience wait a few months before revealing who was killed. After a summer’s worth of speculation, The Walking Dead came back for its highly anticipated season 7 premiere, which turned out to be one of the most grueling hours of television ever produced.
This notorious episode, “The Day Will Come When You Won’t Be,” was the breaking point for a lot of viewers. The show had been going downhill for a couple of years, but when we spent an hour watching Negan eviscerate Glenn and torture Rick and nearly force him to cut off Carl’s hand, The Walking Dead just wasn’t fun to watch anymore.
Therein lies the biggest problem with The Walking Dead’s seventh season, arguably the show’s darkest installment. Once Negan shows up and Rick and his group are under the thumb of the Saviors, the series just devolves into miserable torture porn. Every episode is a slog, watching these characters we love get terrorized and tortured.
Morgan was undeniably perfect for the role of Negan, but Lillard’s take likely would’ve been less genuinely threatening and more wacky and lighthearted. He said himself that he would’ve played the part funnier, similar to his work in Serial Mom and Five Nights at Freddy’s. He would’ve played Negan as a post-apocalyptic Stu Macher, and that might’ve saved season 7 from feeling like excruciating torture porn.
Jeffrey Dean Morgan Was The Perfect Actor To Play Negan
While it would’ve been interesting to see Lillard’s take on Negan, Morgan was the absolute perfect actor for that role. Imagining someone other than Jeffrey Dean Morgan playing Negan is like imagining someone other than Bryan Cranston playing Walter White, or someone other than Antony Starr playing Homelander — he was born to play this character.
Morgan’s own favorite Walking Dead episode, “Here’s Negan,” exemplifies what made him so perfect for the part. The episode goes back and shows Negan’s tragic past with his wife, Lucille, the namesake of his barb-wire-wrapped baseball bat. Negan was madly in love with Lucille, but he was unable to treat her terminal illness in a post-apocalyptic world and she died, leaving him bitter, broken, and alone.
In this episode, against our better judgment, we actually care for Negan. This is the sadistic monster who beat Glenn to death in front of our eyes, and we actually feel bad for him. No one other than Morgan could’ve pulled off both sides of this character. Morgan is Heath Ledger’s Joker-level creepy when Negan is threatening people, but he’s also somehow still sympathetic in this flashback episode.
In the hands of any other actor, it wouldn’t work. They’d be believable as the murderous monster, but ring false with the sympathetic side, or nail the sympathetic side so well that the monstrosity never shows. Morgan kept The Walking Dead watchable for a few more years with that magic trick.