“I just refused to do what they wanted,” said Tom Payne, who left the AMC series in season 8.
After 12 years, 11 seasons and 177 episodes, The Walking Dead ended on November 20, 2022. The outcome of the AMC series has gone largely unnoticed, but no one can take away its status as a phenomenon that has revolutionized not only the post -apocalyptic genre, as well as the lives of its participants.
Indeed, although in the end Walking Dead has ceased to be what it was in its heyday, the actors had to answer, for years and years, questions related to the zombie storyline. Regardless of how long they have been since their last appearance or how many seasons they have been in, they all bear the mark of having survived, as well as very unusual behind-the-scenes stories.
One of the most curious was revealed by Tom Payne, who played Paul Rovia from seasons six to nine. Better known as Jesus, the character has been welcomed with open arms to be a major figure in the comics, responsible for introducing survivors to a new community. Although the arrival of him was very different from the source material, the essence of Jesus remained the same: a good guy, a good advisor and a good companion.
The first to fall in love with the qualities of his character was Payne himself. For this reason, at a certain point in the series, when he saw Jesus’ best virtue threatened, the actor refused to pronounce one of the lines that were in the script. And, although Payne jokes about it, the character was written out in the following season.
In his passage Walking Dead, Jesus had shown a pacifist stance in the war against the Saviors and clearly clashed with the vengeful attitude of Morgan (Lennie James). However, in the final moments of season 8, the writers decided to tear down the benevolent facade of Jesus and show their sympathy for Maggie’s (Lauren Cohan) desire to kill Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan).
In the scene in question, Maggie and Daryl (Norman Reedus) conspire to kill the leader of the Saviors, convinced that Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) and Michonne (Danai Gurira) shouldn’t have spared his life. “We need our strength, the ability to defend ourselves better. We have to have it,” Maggie tells Jesus in her Hilltop office.
So when Glenn’s (Steven Yeun) widow informs him that they’ll wait for the right time to prove Rick wrong, Daryl takes his side. “Yes. Let’s do it,” approves the biker.
like the portal Comic book reported at the time, Payne revealed on the 2022 Atlanta Fandemic Tour that he objected to saying the line that he agreed with Maggie’s revenge plan. “They wanted me to say, ‘Yeah, let’s go.’ I spent the entire season discouraging Negan’s death and any fight against humans. I just refused to do what they wanted.”
According to Payne, the way he delivered the line was “a little indifferent”. No wonder, in the final version Jesus is only shown supporting the building of the Hilltop. “They cut me up and then killed me the following season,” Payne recalled with a laugh. “But it was very difficult for me.”
“At that point, I told them, ‘I’m not going to lie. I can’t lie for the cameras because they’ll know.’ I spent the entire season against war and against murder. As much as my character was supportive of Maggie, it felt weird for him,” added Payne. “I honestly couldn’t do it as an actor and just turned it down. So they scrapped it.”
Jesus has left the cast of Walking Dead with the arrival of Alpha (Samantha Morton) and her group of Whisperers. One of them kills the man during a scuffle with a mob in a cemetery. His death helped the protagonists discover the kind of threat they would have to face.
Source: Terra
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