"Maggie could stab him": Jeffrey Dean Morgan opens up on playing Negan in The Walking Dead: Dead City

A new The Walking Dead spinoff titled The Walking Dead: Dead City will air on Sunday, June 18, at 9 pm ET on AMC. The show is set in the city of Manhattan, New York, and Lauren Cohan's Maggie Greene and Jeffrey Dean Morgan's Negan will be seen in lead roles. Their mission in this spinoff will be to rescue Maggie's son Hershel, who has been taken hostage by a sinister villain named "The Croat."

Apart from Cohan and Morgan, The Walking Dead: Dead City will also star Gaius Charles as Perlie Armstrong, Željko Ivanek as "The Croat," Mahina Napoleon as Ginny, Jonathan Higginbotham as Tommaso, Trey Santiago-Hudson as Jano, and Michael Anthony as Luther, among others.

In an interview with TV Line, Jeffrey Dean Morgan said that due to the nature of the on-screen dynamics between Maggie and Negan, there is always a chance that one could kill the other at any given moment.

“Look, I think they could kill each other at any minute. Maggie could stab him [any second], you know what I mean?," he said.

---

The Walking Dead: Dead City: Jeffrey Dean Morgan gets candid about complex relationship between Maggie and Negan

While it seemed like Maggie and Negan had accepted their fate at the end of The Walking Dead, that was far from the truth. They had no idea that they were going to meet once again, but this time for different reasons.

Jeffrey Dean Morgan shed light on the plot and mentioned that Maggie will now have to track down Negan, which is the last thing she wants to do, as she needs his help.

"That’s not how the story went. So now we’re going to catch up with our characters a couple of years later. Maggie has to track down Negan — probably the last person she wants to be dealing with — because she needs his help," he said.

Lauren Cohan, who plays Maggie, added that fans will find the two characters in a "pretty tense state."

"I think Maggie has come to a place where she is reminded daily about the Glenn situation in dealing with Hershel. The wounds are open and fresh and bleeding again, and as much as it pains her to have to go to Negan, he is the one man who can help her," Morgan continued.

Maggie and Negan will soon be seen teaming up to bring back Maggie's son Hershel from a dreaded criminal named "The Croat." While they need to coexist, Negan might help Maggie for retribution. He is aware of the pain he caused her and badly wants the widow to forgive him for killing her husband.

"Throughout the show, we have these moments where they almost connect — like there may be something that both of them see in each other that they understand. But within the scene, that’s gone, and it’s back to the hatred again," he mentioned.

He ended his statement by saying:

"It’s been fun getting to push those boundaries and play with that in a way that we never really got to on the main series because we just never had the time."

---

The official synopsis of The Walking Dead: Dead City reads:

"New walkers, new villains, New York! Maggie (Lauren Cohan) forms a lethal alliance with Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) to rescue her kidnapped son. Together they will try to navigate the mean streets of NYC. If they can survive #DeadCity, they can survive anywhere."

Created by Eli Jorné, The Walking Dead: Dead City is the fifth show of The Walking Dead franchise and it will premiere on June 18.