Jeffrey Dean Morgan accidentally ate 20 real cockroaches on Dead City set

Never let it be said that Jeffrey Dean Morgan will not do everything in his power to sell a scene — even if he has no idea the commitment he is making to his craft. That came to light when the cast of AMC’s The Walking Dead: Dead City stopped by Entertainment Weekly’s suite at Comic-Con in San Diego on Thursday.

When asked to share a fun anecdote from the set, Lauren Cohan decided to turn the tables on her costar. “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 added, before Morgan admitted “No, it was funny at the time.”

Not just funny, but seriously disgusting. So what exactly happened? Allow Negan himself to tell the sordid tale of what down while filming on a season 2 scene: “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.”

Sounds like a pretty standard filming practice. But there was just one problem: “Nobody told me,” explains the star. “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.’”

You can probably guess where this is going, but wait, it actually gets worse! Because it just kept going. “I’m bitching after every one. And they’re all looking at me like I’m an idiot. Finally, there’s, like, legs sticking out of my teeth, and I realize that I’ve been eating cockroaches. Nobody told me there were real cockroaches at all. That wasn’t an option. I was told chocolate or custard. No. Probably 20 real cockroaches in front of everybody, and everyone kind of knew except for me what was going on.”

It's an impressive — albeit unintentional — dedication to realism. “I went full method.” Morgan says, laughing.  “I went full Daniel Day-Lewis without knowing that I was doing it!”

The man who plays Negan then skillfully attempted to shift the blame to Cohan, who is helming her first episode in season 2. “Was that you directing that?” he asks. To which Cohan replies, “No, I would never let that happen!” before shifting tacks herself. “You knew they were there. Don’t lie. It was your cockroach fantasy.”

However, Cohan thinks the incident could be karma for what happened — or didn’t happen on a season 1 scene. “You remember in the first season, we land behind the wall of cars and buses, and we were supposed to have them crawl into our mouth,” she prods her costar.

Replies Morgan: “Yeah, they were going to crawl into my mouth, and I was like “NOPE! Not doing that!”

Apparently, it was only a matter of time.

Watch the video of Morgan and Cohan reminiscing about the former’s inadvertent snack at the top of the article, and then keep your eyes for Dead City’s return in 2025 on AMC and AMC+.

Sign up for Entertainment Weekly's free daily newsletter to get breaking news, exclusive first looks, recaps, reviews, interviews with your favorite stars, and more.