'The Walking Dead': Jeffrey Dean Morgan Admits To Being 'Nervous' About Hilarie Burton's Appearance

KEY POINTS

Jeffrey Dean Morgan reflected on his wife's performance in "The Walking Dead"
The actor noted that it was a "challenge"
T he final season of the horror drama will return on Aug. 22

Jeffrey Dean Morgan says he had been "nervous as hell" about his wife Hilarie Burton's guest appearance in "The Walking Dead."

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly on Sunday, the 54-year-old actor talked about how the story structure started in the present and featured a lot of flashbacks in which his wife portrayed Lucille's character.

"It was a challenge. I mean, everything about it was a challenge," he recalled. "The fact that we shot this pretty fast and we had the COVID restrictions that we were battling with. The first thing f---ng thing I shot, the first scene up, was the scene in the bar."

"The big Negan speech to that guy, so he's back. He's now Negan. He's now season 7 Negan. He has just been born. It was that whole monologue to the bad guy," Morgan explained. "That was the first thing that I had in this episode."

"By the time I got to week 2 of this with Hilarie, we shot all of her stuff in three or four days, I think. We never left the basement that we were in. That was a joy. I couldn't have asked for a cooler deal of working with Hilarie," he told the magazine.

"I'm not going to lie, I was nervous as hell going in," he admitted. "I didn't know how she would be. I don't f--- around. I go to work. We better f---ing bring it. And it was great. That first day with her, I went home just like, 'Thank God!'"

Morgan also revealed that he and his wife got emotional during the filming.

"We never rehearsed. We couldn't even look at each other without like tearing up. It was very interesting. It was weird," he said.

"Luckily, they would shoot two cameras at the same time, so we would capture the performance in real time with two cameras," he explained. "We only did one or two takes of everything that you saw. It was great, because we couldn't have done it anymore, by the way. We were just wrecked."

"The Walking Dead" first debuted on AMC in 2010. Its creators announced on Sunday that the final season of the horror drama will return on Aug. 22.