Charlie Adlard, artist for The Walking Dead comic book, has openly admitted that he based the look of villainous character Negan on musician/actor/jack of all trades Henry Rollins. Thus, understandably, a lot of readers were clamoring to see Rollins play the character once he made his way onto the AMC television series based on the comic. Ultimately, the role ended up going to Jeffrey Dean Morgan, who is quite awesome in his own right and made an unforgettable debut as Negan in the final episode of The Walking Dead's sixth season.
Talking to Forbes recently, Rollins revealed that he did indeed audition for the role of Negan:
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."
Beyond his incredible presence and line delivery, part of what made Morgan's first scene as the character so memorable was the way it ended – with a cliffhanger that has left viewers deeply frustrated. As the episode came to a close, we were seeing through the eyes of a character who was being viciously beaten to death by Negan, repeatedly hit in the head with his barbed wire-wrapped baseball bat Lucille.
But who was on the receiving end of Lucille? We have to wait until the season seven premiere to find out, and the powers that be behind the show are doing everything they can to keep that reveal a secret. According to The Hollywood Reporter they've even gone so far as to shoot death scenes with all eleven of Negan's potential victims.
That would mean that there is footage in the can of Negan beating the life out of Carl, Rick, Michonne, Eugene, Maggie, Sasha, Daryl, Aaron, Rosita, Abraham, and Glenn. Chandler Riggs, Andrew Lincoln, Danai Gurira, Josh McDermitt, Lauren Cohan, Sonequa Martin-Green, Norman Reedus, Ross Marquand, Christian Serratos, Michael Cudlitz, and Steven Yeun have all performed the death of their characters.
Only one of those will play out on our screens when The Walking Dead returns this fall, but the other ten would make for a great home video bonus feature.