Last spring, The Walking Dead introduced us to Negan, one of the show's most memorable villains to date. His first outing on the small screen set up the fact he was about to bash someone's head in, and in the months leading up to this fall's premiere there was a lot of speculation regarding who would bite the dust. Interestingly, some of the people involved with the show acted like they knew who would be killed off while others said numerous takes were filmed to make things more convoluted. Now that we know Abraham and Glenn died, The Walking Dead's Josh McDermitt is happy to set the record straight. He says he knew for months that Abraham would die at the beginning of Season 7. Here's his direct comment:
Gosh, we'd been saying good-bye since... it seemed like months. [Michael Cudlitz] told us months and months before we ever shot it, so it felt like every time I saw him was another farewell, you know?
Josh McDermitt, who plays Eugene on the long-running show, revealed that he is friends with Michael Cudlitz, who formerly played Abraham on the AMC series. Prior to the Season 7 premiere, Cudlitz had told people he would be leaving the show, so McDermitt knew. And he was honestly asked about who would be dying any time he would leave the set.
In an interview with Vulture, Josh McDermitt also squared away exactly what happened before the premiere. While actors like Norman Reedus were brazenly admitting they knew what would happen before it happened on the small screen, other members of the cast were contending they didn't know. As it turns out, they were the ones lying to everyone. Here's what McDermitt himself was doing:
Yeah, I was lying to everybody. My friends and family were getting asked, 'Who did Negan kill?' and so if I didn't throw them off, then they'd accidentally spoil it and not realize it.
While it sucks to lie to people, I'd still argue that's better than what Steven Yeun had to do several months earlier when The Walking Dead left us with that dumpster cliffhanger. During that time, Steven Yeun was literally tasked by the AMC series with hiding out in an apartment and avoiding the public. He called it his "Atlanta apartment jail." In that context, lying to people rather than holing up sounds way better.
Now, Eugene is also in Negan's clutches and his future is very much up in the air. Of course, as The Walking Dead is well into Season 7 at this point, Josh McDermitt likely knows exactly where Eugene is going in the coming weeks. Of course, if you ask him about it, he'll surely just lie to you.
New episodes of The Walking Dead air on Sunday nights at 9 p.m. ET. To find out what else is heading to TV, take a look at our midseason premiere schedule.
