When Norman Reedus suffered a concussion while filming the series finale of “The Walking Dead” in March, his publicist told EW he was “recovering well” ― but in a new interview he said the injury left him in fear for his life and was far worse than the public knew.
“Oh dude, that was horrible,” Reedus told EW. “That whole ordeal for me personally was terrifying. I thought I was going to die.”
Details about how the injury occurred have not been released.
Just like his survivalist “Walking Dead” character Daryl Dixon, Reedus knows how to forge ahead. The actor has endured his fair share of injuries across 11 seasons of the hit AMC show, which will end in November. He once fell off a motorcycle, for instance, and cut his hand on a prop.
On March 11, however, Reedus suffered a concussion so bad he had to be hospitalized for weeks. Details of the incident remained sparse and suggested Reedus was simply taking his time to recover. The actor himself, many of whose scenes were finished by a stand-in, now begs to differ.
“It was very serious,” Reedus told EW. “It was scary. I’ve been hit in the face and the head a million times. I’ve gone through car windows, but that one rung my bell.”
“I had a neurologist. I had all sorts of shit,” Reedus added. “I failed the light test. I had a security guard in the driveway, just in case. I was holding onto the walls walking through the rooms. It was nuts.”
Reedus has indeed gone through a car window before. Struck by an 18-wheeler in 2005 after an R.E.M. concert in Berlin, he required surgery for a new titanium eye socket and four screws in his nose. At the time, Reedus was convinced his career was over.
Cast in one of the most successful TV shows of all time a few years later, however, Reedus has more than bounced back. While his concussion weeks before wrapping the finale started a long road to recovery, he was ultimately more concerned about his work ethic.
“You’re shooting over a year, and now we’re having to postpone some of the shooting because I’m lying in bed,” Reedus told EW. “So the guilt of me not being at work and people are like, ‘Are we going to go a week over? Are we going two weeks over’ — that was bothering me.”