With only two more episodes left of this season, the remainder of The Walking Dead Season 6 is going to be pure chaos. With Rick and company’s conflict with The Saviors only growing in momentum, it’s safe to say the crap is going to hit the fan. One of the aspects that fans of The Walking Dead are most excited for is the grand entrance of comic book villain Negan. Of course, fans of the comic books know that one of Negan’s signature traits are going to be hard to adapt for TV. Namely, he’s got a mouth like a trucker.
Negan is an extremely eccentric character, and his potty mouth only adds to his strange charm. In the comics, Negan is known for dropping f-bombs like there’s no tomorrow. The Walking Dead showrunner and writer Scott Gimple recently opened up regarding what is and isn’t possible in making Negan’s TV debut as faithful to the comics as possible.
There’s no way he could drop that amount of f-bombs that he does in the comic on TV. There’s simply no way. In some way, it can’t be full on, but as long as we have the full-on version, they will come out and people will be able to watch them. That to me was the most important thing, that the full-on Negan exists and it’s available. What version gets on TV, that’s down to experimentation. Jeffrey’s performance is so amazing that I hope people aren’t hanging on the fact that we aren’t saying the f-word in that moment. Especially if they can watch it later. It comes down to either having it and censoring it out in some way or another or not having it. The one thing nobody wants to do is for it not being there to diminish the experience. So stay tuned. We might just on the internet have a supplementary audio program you can go to.
A few things are worth mentioning regarding Scott Gimple’s comment, which he made to THR. Let’s break it down.
First off, the fact that Scott Gimple said AMC couldn’t drop “that amount of f-bombs” make me feel like there may be the possibility of one or two fucks in the near future. Clearly The Walking Dead is not a family show, and shows a fair amount of extremely gruesome violence. If only the appropriate audience is watching the show, they could handle the f word being used. Additionally, we’ve recently seen American Crime Story: The People V OJ Simpson drop an f-bomb on cable TV. It seems the world didn’t end when Sarah Paulson ended the episode with that satisfying curse, so perhaps Negan will be able to do something similar in his upcoming debut onto the show.
Additionally, for those comic book purists, it seems that Jeffrey Dean Morgan filmed both profanity-fueled and more conservative takes. Since Scott Gimple is determined to have a potty mouthed Negan exist in one medium or another, we can presumably look forward to either a director’s cut on the DVD or digital versions with more profanity. This just highlights the team behind The Walking Dead’s true appreciation for their fandom. Classy move, Gimple.
Only time will tell exactly how profanity-ridden Negan’s dialogue was in the final cut. Luckily, we won’t have to wait too long to find out.
The Walking Dead airs Sundays on AMC.
