Steven Ogg played Negan’s right-hand man Simon on AMC’s The Walking Dead for a few seasons before getting killed off. In a new interview, Ogg expresses that he was told “you’re not doing that” after he had made an unscripted change. This change was in season eight’s Worth, where Negan was pitted against Simon. The change Ogg wanted to make was to make his character more defiant against Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s character.
The change was that rather than Simon turning away from Negan, he looked him dead in the eye. This was something director Michael Slovis did not like. Ogg stated:
“I thought I’m gonna face him. I’m gonna kneel, I’m gonna turn around, and I’m gonna put my arms behind my back, and I’m just going to stare at him. ‘Bash my head in, kill me, but you’re gonna look me in the eyes. Let’s do this’. So I made that choice, and then … they were like, ‘Interesting choice, Steven, but you’re not doing that. You’re not gonna be facing Negan eye-to-eye, turn around.'”
Ogg continued:
“So that’s what happens when you have a good production, you can try stuff and they can sometimes appease you. Sometimes they just say, ‘That’s not right.'”
Ogg also recalls that he and Morgan had wanted to fight instead of the scene they ended up acting out. He explained:
“We wanted it dirty. A kick in the nuts, a punch in the nuts, something bad. But you’re told you can and can’t do certain things. So that’s why the eye gouge right away, we at least said Simon gets [a disadvantage] — once you’ve been poked in the eye, it throws you off. So that was sort of the thing that we hoped sold it, is that he was disabled by the poke in the eye and it allowed Negan to get the upper hand.”
Ogg also said that the scene they did end up with was a compromise between he and Morgan. What did you think of Simon’s end in The Walking Dead? Make sure, now that the season has finished; to check out Ogg in TNT’s Snowpiercer series.
Source: CB
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