Jeffrey Dean Morgan Calls His Walking Dead Character, Negan, “A Dictator”

To survive the zombie apocalypse, you have to bend the rules a little. As long as those rules aren't put in place by Jeffrey Dean Morgan's character, Negan, that is. According to Morgan's interview with Entertainment Weekly, Negan rules with an iron fist (or, rather, a barbed wire-covered baseball bat) for a very specific reason. Morgan reveals that Negan's backstory comes from a preamble that creator Robert Kirkman sent to him, which shows a softer side of Negan. That doesn't last very long once people start zombifying: "After the apocalypse hits and the zombies start taking over the world, you see Negan trying to help people, and no one listens to him," he explains. "They get killed, and so finally he gets to the point that he becomes a little bit of a dictator." The Walking Dead villain first made his appearance with his group of "Saviors" — and "Lucille," his baseball bat — in the season 6 finale. Lucille smashed down on (at least) one Walking Dead character, but we won't find out who met their maker until Sunday's season 7 premiere. According to Morgan, Negan wasn't always so murder-happy: he became that way when he realized he couldn't save everyone in the most moral way. "I think you see him kind of make a shift, because he starts off really trying to help people and save people, and when they don’t listen to him and they’re constantly getting killed, he becomes a little bit more brutal in his tactics, I guess." The world of The Walking Dead is certainly brutal in its own right, so it sounds like Negan will fit right in with the mayhem season 7 should unleash.