'The Walking Dead: Dead City' star Jeffrey Dean Morgan gives insights into new ruthless scene

Jeffrey Dean Morgan offered a glimpse into The Walking Dead: Dead City's latest episode, which aired on August 23, 2026.

The action drama features a star-studded cast including Lauren Cohan as Maggie Rhee, Jeffrey Dean Morgan as Negan, Gaius Charles as Perlie Armstrong, Zeljko Ivanek as the Croat, Logan Kim as Herschel Rhee, among others.

There is a brutal scene in the latest episode, showing Jeffrey’s character, Negan, shoots Fabian in the head as a result of threatening Maggie.

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, reflecting on the scene, Jeffrey elaborated, “Fabian implies that he’s gonna take out Maggie. And for Negan, that’s an immediate decision. He may have survived with just a bottle hit had he not said that and threatened Maggie. And he did it in such a way and used verbiage that I remember I found irritating at the time. He was calling her a bitch and all this stuff. And I remember that kinda getting under my skin.”

As Sylvain White has directed two episodes of The Walking Dead: Dead City. Praising his directing style, he further spoke about his experience with White, stating, “He did The Losers and the last episode of The Boys I did. So I called him after we did The Boys and was like, 'Hey, would you come and do our show?' And he was like, 'F--- yeah!' He did two episodes and that was one of them. And he has a great way with knowing how to set a scene and where to put cameras to make the most of that scene — especially when we’re working at a clip like we work, which is shooting something crazy like nine pages a day. And that was a big scene.”

Looking back at the latest thrilling scene Jeffrey shared, despite Negan and Maggie’s soft relationship, Fabian’s one mistake of intimidating Maggie drew out a ruthless side of Negan that is still present somewhere inside.

He said, “You’ll see the continuation of this scene, and he just sort of loses his f---ing mind for a moment there. But it starts with the Fabian, and his fatal mistake was threatening Maggie. It was just a fun scene to shoot.”

“It’s also important, I feel, because it establishes that just because Negan and Maggie have a softer relationship now, there is still nothing soft about Negan,” he added.

Noting, “Yeah, not every scene with Maggie is contentious now and you feel like someone’s gonna get stabbed at any moment. And we have this kind of relationship that we’ve never got to have before and actually communicate, which was a first for us as Maggie and Negan, and as Lauren and Jeff.”

“So that was sort of a big joy in the season. And me protecting her the way that Negan does, he only knows one way to go. And it reverts back to the [first introduction of] Negan, which I’m always fighting for. I don’t ever want to lose that. I don’t care how and why and who he becomes in this growth — because he has grown in a lot of ways since we first met him — there has to be that loose cannon aspect to him and that carefree kind of smartassy,” Jeffrey Dean Morgan further explained.