‘Too much’: Star regrets infamous TV death

This scene was so stomach-churning it made some viewers boycott their favourite TV show – now, one star concedes they went too far. WARNING: Graphic.

WARNING: Graphic.

Eight years after the graphic death of a beloved TV character horrified audiences, one actor involved in the scene now concedes the show went too far.

Post-apocalyptic zombie show The Walking Dead opened its seventh season back in 2016 with an immediately controversial episode, showing the character Glenn Rhee (Steven Yeun) being killed by the fearsome Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan).

Glenn had been with the series from the start, and his death happens in full view of his fellow zombie apocalypse survivors, as Negan delivers blow after brutal blow to his skull with his barbed-wire-covered baseball bat.

At the time, the graphic and prolonged nature of the death of one of the show’s best-loved characters left fans horrified for its sheer sadism.

Negan makes a truly evil entry to The Walking Dead …

Glenn's death was near-impossible to watch.

In the stomach-churning scene, Glenn was shown somehow still upright after the first blows, struggling to speak with the top of his head caved in and one eye bulging out of his face, before Negan eventually finished the job.

In a new interview with Empire, Walking Dead lead actor Andrew Lincoln conceded that the death “might have been when we over-egged the omelette.”

“Maybe it was lingering too much,” he said.

Fans certainly agreed – the official YouTube upload of the scene has attracted more than 12,000 comments since it was posted seven years ago.

Some fans declared the brutal scene turned them off the show for good.

One viewer called the scene the “most depressing death in the history of The Walking Dead” – no easy feat in a show that regularly dispenses with characters in tragic circumstances.

“Hearing glenn suffer and struggle to even breathe while negan was talking is both disturbing and depressing to hear,” another fan wrote.

Several fans said that they stopped watching the show altogether after Glenn’s death, as it had disturbed them so much.

Andrew Lincoln now concedes the show went too far.

“Glenn’s death made me quit the show. I just couldn’t forgive how brutal they got to someone we all loved so very much,” one viewer wrote.

“THE saddest scene in The Walking Dead for me. After this, I stopped watching,” said another.

And it seems it was just as tough for those filming, with Lincoln telling Empire that the scene was one of “the most intense nights of shooting I’ve ever been part of.”

He said it was particularly difficult for Jeffrey Dean Morgan, who was a new addition to the show. Lincoln called him “one of the nicest guys you’re ever going to meet, playing one of the most unpleasant characters,” he declares” and said he was thrown in the deep end, performing the brutal scene “on his first day of work.”

“Everybody was on their knees and weeping when they weren’t on camera,” Lincoln recalled. “[Morgan] came over and went, ‘Is this normal?’ I went, ‘Yeah, everybody just keeps going.’ It was an extraordinary night.”

Originally published as ‘Too much’: Star regrets infamous TV death