Metro Weekly

Walking Dead actor: Claims I don’t want my character to be gay are “BS”

“This is total BS by the way.”

Background-the-walking-dead-with-Daryl-Dixon

–Actor Norman Reedus, who portrays Daryl on AMC’s The Walking Dead. Numerous publications carried rumors from GLOBE magazine that the actor was unhappy with the possibility that his character could come out as gay in the show, citing an unnamed insider close to the star, who claimed that Reedus didn’t want to lose his female fanbase. “Norman isn’t anti-gay in his personal life, but he’s become one of the biggest male sex symbols in television,” the source said. “He gets thousands of fan letters from women each week – along with dozens of marriage proposals.”

Reedus’ refuting of the claims makes sense, given he told GQ magazine in September that he and producer Frank Darabont spoke about Daryl’s ambiguous sexuality at the end of the first season. “He said, ‘I’ve got an idea for Daryl. He’s gay. Would you be interested in that?’ I was like, ‘Let me hear you out.’ He said, ‘Well, he’s prison gay. Like, you’ll catch him looking at a member of the same sex, but if you mention it to him, he’ll just stab you and be like, What the fuck? He will never admit it.’ I was like, ‘That’ll blow minds — let’s do that.'”

The Walking Dead‘s creator, Robert Kirman, told ComicBook.com in August that there were “very specific ideas about Daryl’s sexuality, while showrunner Scott Gimple told TV Line that “There’s still a question as to what Daryl’s orientation is.”

Reedus’ original Tweet follows.

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