As if there isn't enough mayhem in The Walking Dead universe, several members of the show's
cast have had to endure all sorts of setbacks, drama, and tragedies off screen. Let's take
a look at the tragic side of the personal lives of The Walking Dead cast.
The Walking Dead is very much an ensemble show, but after Andrew Lincoln's departure,
the closest thing we have to a lead is Norman Reedus. His Daryl Dixon has developed from
a surly, renegade sidekick to a full-blooded heroic character.
Reedus' grungy hair and rugged, outdoorsman good looks are integral in the character's
appeal, but according to Inside The Actor's Studio, he was once very close to losing his
looks in the grisliest possible manner. It was February 2005, and Reedus was leaving
an R.E.M. concert in Berlin — in a car singer Michael Stipe lent him, no less — when a
18-wheel truck hit the vehicle, sending Reedus flying through the windshield.
Thankfully, Reedus survived the incident, but his face was seriously messed up and full
of glass. He had to go through surgeries that he says left his face resembling a "hamburger."
While anyone who has seen the man can attest that he obviously got better, his face hides
a titanium eye socket and four screws in his nose to this day.
Andrew Lincoln's Rick Grimes was the guiding light of The Walking Dead until the first
part of season nine, after which both the actor and the character left for greener pastures.
Lincoln's personal life hasn't been quite as tumultuous as Grimes', but the actor has
still managed to sneak in a small amount of gore. In an interview with Metro, he revealed
that he once managed to get seriously bloody while onstage with acting legend Bill Nighy.
The pair was acting in a play called Blue Orange, and Lincoln was supposed to aggressively
remove a ring from his finger. Unfortunately, the costume ring had a pretty sharp edge,
and he managed to cut so deep into his finger that he actually sliced off a considerable
chunk.
Since the play was underway, Lincoln couldn't stop, so he just kept on acting for the remaining
25 minutes, spurting blood. This caused a very Grimes-like experience for the front
row. He reminisced:
"At one point, I had to say: 'You!' and gesture, and a spray of blood went from my hand across
the front row of the audience. It was horrific. All the ladies had their hands over their
mouths like they were going to be sick."
As The Walking Dead's awesome Michonne and the Marvel Cinematic Universe's equally amazing
Okoye, Danai Gurira is the epitome of a strong woman who can — and absolutely will – stand
for herself and others. The fact that she has struggled with racism in her personal
life is incredibly depressing. In an interview with writer-producer Scott M. Gimple, she
didn't go into specifics, but she described a time when her white ex-boyfriend was so
shocked by her stories that he claimed she was making them up.
"When I was in college, I witnessed my then boyfriend who was Caucasian gasp at me and
the issues I talked to him about concerning the racism I faced. When I would come and
talk about those injustices he would be like, 'That wasn't race, it wasn't that bad.' He
was constantly denying me the struggles I deal with every day and saying they don't
really exist."
Gurira also lamented that while the Black community has made plenty of attempts to improve
the situation, she feels that no change has happened when it comes to racial issues. However,
she's doing her part in the fight for equality and has demanded that the United States turns
anti-racism into an "institutionalized educational structure."
From Supernatural's John Winchester to Watchmen's The Comedian and, of course, The Walking Dead's
complicated villain Negan, Jeffrey Dean Morgan's resumé reads like a laundry list of charismatic
and strong characters. However, New York Moves tells us that if you ask Morgan's old management,
he was too ancient and talentless to be the awesome character actor that he very much
is.
"Punishment. Can't do anything without that."
In the mid-2000s, Morgan's acting dreams were shattered when his manager dumped him as a
client. She saw Morgan as "expendable" and "too old." Morgan did not take the news well,
and was unsurprisingly crushed. However, acting was the only thing he knew, and he felt he
had no choice but to persevere.
After switching managers, Morgan triumphantly scored a trio of career-making roles as Denny
Duquette on Grey's Anatomy, Judah Botwin on Weeds, and John Winchester on Supernatural,
in short succession.
Jon Bernthal's unpredictable Shane Walsh kept his tenure on The Walking Dead relatively
short. His death was suitably bloody, as Rick stabbed him in the chest while Carl later
gunned down his reanimated body. Bernthal, of course, then capitalized on his tough-guy
image and acting chops by moving on to the lead role on Marvel's The Punisher.
However, some challenges in life affect even the toughest stars. In 2018, Bernthal told
Men's Health that his hyper-masculine persona was of precisely zero help when his daughter,
Adeline, had a serious health scare. In November 2017, she had an encephalitis-induced seizure
and went into a coma. Bernthal was shooting the movie First Man at the time, but dropped
out in a flash and hurried to the hospital. There, he became a self-admitted panicky mess
while his wife — a trauma nurse — held everything together. He said:
"People talk about bravery like fake macho bravery, but my wife didn't flinch. What I
saw in my wife was courage and beauty unlike I'd ever seen."
Fortunately, the story ended on a positive note. Adeline woke after three days and made
a full recovery.
Chandler Riggs left The Walking Dead rather awkwardly in 2017, when his character, Carl
Grimes, was unexpectedly written out of the show and suffered a long, drawn-out demise.
Fortunately, Riggs himself hasn't had to deal with anything quite as horrifying. However,
after he left the role, fate took a dramatic turn for him as well. According to the Independent,
in November of 2017, Riggs was riding a horse when the steed unexpectedly threw him off,
and he suffered a concussion despite wearing a helmet. Unfortunately, it left him with
some lingering issues, including memory loss. Riggs said:
"For hours, I had no idea what year it was, how I got there, what happened, etc., and
I kept asking the same questions over and over again just to immediately forget the
answer."
Thankfully, these issues subsided after a few days.
Portraying a treacherous and weaselly character can work wonders for one's career, but if
you ask Josh McDermitt, there's a flipside to the coin. McDermitt plays Eugene Porter,
a guy whose survival tactics over the course of The Walking Dead have included things like
falsely claiming to be a hugely important scientist and reluctantly siding with Jeffrey
Dean Morgan's villainous Negan.
"They're keeping me safe."
The latter move seems to have prompted some seriously misguided ire, to the point that
McDermitt started receiving death threats on social media. Things got so bad that, in
2017, McDermitt decided to quit social media altogether. Before doing so, he said:
"You can hate Eugene. I don't care. I'll argue that you're wrong, but you can think whatever
you want. But when you start saying you hope I die? I don't know if you're talking about
Josh or Eugene."
In general, McDermitt is not particularly fond of social media trolls. Before he himself
was targeted, he'd already defended co-star Alanna Masterson when she was drawing similar
negative attention from cyberbullies.
Sometimes, drama comes at you from weird and unexpected directions. Just ask Steven Yeun,
who played The Walking Dead's beloved Glenn Rhee until the character's demise in 2016.
According to the Korea Herald, it took the actor just one ill-advised social media "like"
to upset an entire nation.
In 2018, the South Korean-American actor found himself in surprisingly hot water when he
casually "liked" a picture posted by director Joe Lynch. The problem was that the image
depicted Lynch as a kid, wearing a shirt that looked a whole lot like the traditional Japanese
"Rising Sun" flag. The eye-catching flag is something of a pop culture staple, but many
Koreans see it as the symbol of the Japanese Empire, and specifically, its past atrocities
toward Korea and its people. Predictably, controversy ensued.
While Yeun did apologize the very next day, some Koreans took offense to the way he shaped
his message differently on the Korean and the English versions of his social media.
According to one critic, the English message hinted that Yuen feels that celebrities are
often wrongly judged by a solitary mistake on the internet, and that he isn't as sorry
as he made it sound in his Korean message, where fully admitted his mistake.
Seth Gilliam has portrayed Father Gabriel Stokes on The Walking Dead since 2014, but
the actor's personal life hasn't always been all that saintly. In 2015, Gilliam landed
in legal trouble when the police stopped him on Georgia Highway 74. He had been driving
107 mph in a 55 mph zone -- which was only the start of his troubles. After Gilliam confessed
to having a shot of liquor and three beers before driving, the officer also detected
a strong smell of marijuana, and subsequently found a joint. All of this combined to charges
of drunk driving, speeding, and drug possession. He was released after he posted a bond of
nearly $10,000.
Incidentally, Gilliam isn't the first The Walking Dead star who has been caught driving
drunk in the same Peachtree City area. In 2012, a 911 call about an "erratic" driver
led to the DUI arrest of actor Scott Wilson, who played Dr. Hershel Greene.
Alanna Masterson portrayed Tara Chambler on The Walking Dead from 2013 to 2019, which
is when her character's life ended at the hands of the Whisperer leader Alpha. The actress'
offscreen life isn't exactly devoid of drama, either, thanks to her tumultuous family relationships.
Masterson is a Scientologist, and is completely estranged from her father, Joe Reaiche. Reaiche
is a former member of Scientology clergy himself, having cut ties with the organization altogether
in 2005. This unfortunately came at the cost of his four children, including Alanna. Reaiche
has stated that he still loves his children but considers them "brainwashed."
There's also the matter of Masterson's famous actor brother, Danny. Currently, the actor
is in the hands of "Scientology arbitration" after facing accusations of assaulting three
women between 2001 and 2003.
Lennie James' Morgan Jones is one of the more prominent characters in The Walking Dead franchise,
having appeared in six different seasons. He even became a regular on the sister show
Fear the Walking Dead from season four forward. The character has suffered intense personal
losses, yet emerged from his troubles as a wiser, kinder man.
It would appear that Morgan's character is pretty much tailor-made for James. The British
actor told the Evening Express that he was only 10 years old when his mother died, which
ended up sending him and his brother to a children's home. He spent the next eight years
in the system, but as a minor silver lining, he says that he had a "broadly good experience
of council care."
James is aware that not every orphan is as lucky as him, and that less pleasant stories
about children's homes are all too commonplace. As such, he has become extremely involved
in the United Kingdom's care charities and is an ambassador for Barnardo's Children's
Charity, aiding them in their efforts to raise millions for good causes, as well as build
"gap homes" that help young people learn essential life skills before heading out on their own.
The production of a massive show like The Walking Dead requires tons of staff both behind
the scenes and in front of the camera, and sometimes, the most tragic things happen to
the people who aren't in the spotlight. Such was the case in 2017, when a stuntman died
on set. The entire production came to a temporary halt as John Bernecker, an experienced stuntman,
fell over twenty feet after a stunt went wrong and died at a hospital.
The incident left a lingering shadow over the production, as everyone tried to grieve
and cope. AMC said in a statement:
"We are deeply saddened by this loss and our hearts and prayers are with John's family,
friends and colleagues during this extremely difficult time."
Showrunner Scott Gimple and the actors also expressed their sorrow and gave their deepest
condolences to the stuntman's family and friends.
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