One of the most widespread talking points of The Walking Dead lately has been the pre-sex scene between Negan and Alpha that mesmerized and repulsed viewers in equal measure, and led to a nationwide shortage of bleach as people doused their eyeballs to exorcise the unwanted images. Now, in response to the furor surrounding it, it’s been revealed that Jeffrey Dean Morgan wasn’t fully naked during the disturbing moments.
The scene was brought up in an interview with Norman Reedus, who portrays Daryl on the show. Despite their characters being bitter enemies on screen, the pair have developed a close friendship off it, and he explained his interaction with Morgan after discovering the circumstances of how the scene would be shot.
“I do remember when that was written and I was like, ‘Jeff!’ And he’s like, ‘What? What? Samantha doesn’t want to get naked so I don’t really have to get naked.’ And I’m like, ‘That’s not what I heard. I heard Samantha wants to but you don’t want to.’ And he’s like, ‘Well no, you know, I’d…’ He was just stumbling on his words and I was like, ‘You know what? I’ve been butt naked on this show several times in front of everybody! And he ends up wearing this like flesh colored ballerina bottoms and these ballet bottoms! And not only that, then he’s got like a beige colored diaper on top of that. You can’t see anything!”
Although the series often features brutal violence, sex has been kept to a minimum, used even more sparingly than the limited swearing featured. Personally, in a post-apocalyptic scenario, I’d be all for getting laid as frequently as possible because you never know when you might meet a brutal and agonizing end, so you might as well get whatever enjoyment out of your short life as you can – but maybe that’s just me.
Anyway, it’s standard practice for actors to have some kind of covering during scenes of genital mashing to prevent any potentially unwelcome contact, but the image that Reedus’ description conjures is so ludicrous that it can’t help but be burned into your brain even more than the scene itself. Given how the – for lack of a more accurate and equally concise word – relationship between Negan and Alpha develops in the comics, it’s unlikely that the scenario will be repeated, so if The Walking Dead does feature any more knocking of boots, it will hopefully be far less traumatizing.