The Walking Dead: Dead City star revealed why he almost left the spinoff after season 2.

Jeffrey Dean Morgan plays Negan in The Walking Dead: Dead City and the flagship series. He has become one of the franchise’s most recognizable faces ever since his introduction in The Walking Dead season 5. However, in an interview on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, the actor explained how certain creative decisions almost made him part ways with the show.

Morgan admitted that he almost bid the hit zombie show farewell after his character significantly changed in the second season of the spinoff series. According to the actor, Negan lost his spark when the creative team made the character more serious, and as a result, less charismatic than he was when he first joined the franchise.

Additionally, Morgan explained that he felt The Walking Dead: Dead City season 2 took Negan in a direction that removed a lot of the elements that made his character memorable. From his perspective, Negan spent too much of the season being too emotional and overwhelmed. Meanwhile, the larger than life presence that had long defined him was almost completely gone.

Morgan said he wanted Dead City to bring back the qualities that had made Negan such an interesting character that was worthy of his own show. His frustration became serious enough that, on the final day of filming the second season, he contacted AMC and said that he was ready to leave the series. However, he ultimately decided to stay after the studio hired a new writer (Seth Hoffman) for the show who took all of his advice and concerns into consideration.

Morgan said he told Hoffman that the relationship between Negan and Maggie (Lauren Cohan) also needed to change. He felt the series shouldn’t be reusing the same problems that the characters have with one another. In Morgan’s view, their original dynamic had already been explored thoroughly enough and needed to evolve into something deeper for better or worse.

The Walking Dead: Dead City takes place several years after the original series. It revolves around Negan and Maggie as they make their way through New York City while searching for the latter’s son after he gets kidnapped. Their partnership is complicated because Negan brutally murdered her husband, Glenn (Steven Yeun), in the flagship show.

The Walking Dead: Dead City season 3 releases new episodes every Sunday at 9:00 PM ET and 6:00 PM PT on AMC and AMC+.