Norman Reedus Refused To Let Daryl Dixon Wear This Item In ‘The Walking Dead’


There are many iconic things about Norman Reedus’s character, Daryl Dixon, on AMC’s The Walking Dead. From his crossbow to his motorcycle, the character has a legion of fans that couldn’t imagine Daryl any other way. However, according to Norman Reedus, there was one item that he simply refused to allow his character to wear.

According to Comic Book, Norman Reedus flat out refused to have his Walking Dead character wear sunglasses when AMC suggested the idea. In fact, during Dan Fogler’s 4D Xperience podcast, Reedus was emphatic in his belief that Daryl Dixon shouldn’t wear this item.

Originally, AMC wanted Daryl Dixon to wear the sunglasses for perceived safety reasons after he had a change of motorcycle a couple of seasons ago on The Walking Dead. A stunt person had commented at the time that if Daryl was riding without safety eyewear he could, potentially, sustain an eye injury while riding the poorly maintained backroads surrounding the communities in The Walking Dead.

“They tried to put sunglasses on me — we had a new bike a couple seasons ago, and a lot of it was on gravel, a lot of the roads they picked. And somebody in stunts or somebody said, ‘He needs glasses because a pebble could hit him in the eye!'”

The idea was proposed and went ahead. In fact, there is even a remnant of this concept in a McFarlane toy that depicts Daryl Dixon riding his motorcycle and shooting at walkers while wearing eyewear. However, for the actor, after wearing sunglasses for one scene in The Walking Dead, Norman Reedus made the creative decision to override perceived safety and those above him at AMC and ditched the sunglasses.

“And we did one scene with me wearing glasses and I was like, ‘This is f**king stupid.’ I won’t wear a helmet, but I wore glasses? You know what I’m saying? And I was just like, ‘It’s just too cool, with the glasses, like f**k that s**t.'”

In addition to this creative decision by the Walking Dead star, Norman Reedus also drew the line when it was suggested he hold his crossbow incorrectly on account of the correct positioning covering the actor’s mouth.

“I have to fight for that, because in the beginning, the crossbow — how you hold a crossbow — covers your mouth,” Reedus explains.

“So if you gave me lines while I’m shooting or pointing at something, they’d be like, ‘Can you lower the crossbow and shoot it from your hip?’ And I’m like, ‘That’s not how you shoot a crossbow. You don’t shoot a crossbow from the hip. What are you, Scarface?'”

Season 9 of AMC’s The Walking Dead will return to AMC on Sunday, February 10, 2019, at 9 p.m. ET/PT.

Share this article: Norman Reedus Refused To Let Daryl Dixon Wear This Item In ‘The Walking Dead’
More from Inquisitr