Jeffrey Dean Morgan Accidentally Ate 29 Cockroaches Shooting A ‘The Walking Dead’ Scene

In a glimpse behind the scenes of AMC’s The Walking Dead: Dead City, the cast shared a hilarious anecdote about actor Jeffrey Dean Morgan‘s unwitting consumption of real cockroaches while they filmed.

The incident, which occurred while shooting a season 2 scene, showcased Morgan’s impressive, if unintentional, dedication to realism in his craft.

In a panel at Comic-Con in San Diego, Morgan’s co-star Lauren Cohan divulged the story, much to the actor’s chagrin.

“Can I just tee up, Jeffrey?” she asked. “He doesn’t want me to tell the story.”

“You can tell it,” replied Morgan. “It just shows that I’m an idiot.”

“It’s the funniest thing that happened all year, but it was only funny in hindsight,” Cohan said, but Morgan admitted, “No, it was funny at the time.”

According to Cohan, a scene required Morgan’s character, Negan, to be “eating cockroaches.” However, the production team failed to inform the actor that half of the “blobs” on his plate were actual insects, not the chocolate or custard he had been led to believe.

Morgan explained, “So, Negan’s being Negan, and he’s locked up half of his life and he happens to be locked up this half of his life, and he’s eating cockroaches. Half of the plate that I’m eating was real cockroaches, ‘cause it looks really good on camera, and half were like chocolate.”

“Nobody told me,” Morgan explained. “And I can’t see anything without my glasses on. I’m just seeing brown little blobs on a plate, and I’m eating ’em, and the take’s over, and I’m like, ‘Well, that sure didn’t taste like custard and chocolate.'”

Morgan only realized his mistake after he found “legs sticking out of [his] teeth.” He had unknowingly consumed “probably 20 real cockroaches in front of everybody.” The actor jokingly claimed that he had “gone full method” and “full Daniel Day-Lewis without knowing that [he] was doing it!”

Cohan, who directed the episode, denied any involvement in the incident and suggested that it may have been Morgan’s “cockroach fantasy” all along. The actor, however, attempted to shift the blame to karma and recalled a previous season 1 scene where he had refused to allow live insects to crawl into his mouth.

Fans of The Walking Dead can look forward to the return of Dead City in 2025 on AMC and AMC+, where they may or may not witness any more unintentional method acting from the cast.