Norman Reedus talks early days on The Walking Dead
By Derek Johns
As the ninth season of The Walking Dead winds down and the season finale is just a week away, the show held a panel at PaleyFest LA where among other things, Reedus talked about his initial “chip on his shoulder” that came with being on the show.
According to Reedus one of his major problems initially was more or less fitting in with the rest of the cast, mostly because the then series regulars had spent considerably more time to get used to each other from all their time spent promoting the show beforehand. According to Reedus, he initially had trouble fitting in on The Walking Dead.
"“I came on in the third episode and that cast really knew each other. They had been doing press and they were all stupid-tight.”"
This may have ended up helping his performance in the long run though, particularly with Daryl’s initial role as something of an outsider.
"“There’s like 13 people who were just staring at me. And I immediately got a chip on my shoulder. I was like, ‘They hate me.’ And I realized, that’s who this guy [Daryl] is. ‘You hate me? I hate you, too.’ And that’s just how I started.”"
Perhaps the biggest and most understandable problem for Reedus though on the offset is that unlike the other major cast members, he had no comic book counterpart to work off of or do research on, essentially making him build up Daryl as a character from scratch. He touched upon this a bit saying “in the beginning I didn’t quite know what I was going to do yet” and “I kind of had an idea of the Southern thing and I did that a little bit.”
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These initial growing pains for Reedus are rather ironic in hindsight. Not only is he now the show’s de-facto lead, but he is also one of only two members of the original Atlanta group to still be around on The Walking Dead with the other being Carol and Rick to a lesser extent. In the nine seasons, he’s been on the show, he’s become such a fan favorite that Daryl might truly be the only character that’s become on the show, a feat that not even Andrew Lincoln was able to achieve.
What are your thoughts on Reedus’ early days with The Walking Dead? Give us your thoughts in the comment section.
Source: Deadline