Jon Bernthal Says He Cried When Leaving ‘The Walking Dead’

AMC’s The Walking Dead is currently in its 10th season, and during its time on television, viewers have said goodbye to numerous characters, including Shane Walsh, played by Jon Bernthal. And according to a report from Comic Book, it was an emotional farewell for the actor who appeared on the series for two seasons.

Before the apocalypse, Bernthal’s Shane was a police officer and partner to Rick Grimes, played by Andrew Lincoln, at the King County Sheriff’s department. During an encounter with escaped convicts, Rick is knocked unconscious and is later rushed to the hospital by Shane, where he remained in a coma. When Shane realized that his friend may never wake up, he took Rick’s wife, Lori, and their son, Carl, and headed out in search of other survivors and a safe place to stay in Atlanta. The trio finds a group of survivors and sets up camp. During this time, Shane and Lori became romantically involved, after accepting that Rick was likely dead.

Rick eventually wakes from his coma and makes his way to Atlanta, where he takes charge of the group and Shane becomes his right-hand man once again.

In Season 2, Shane assumes the role of antagonist driven by his loss of Lori and his jealousy toward Rick. The two men soon found themselves on opposite sides of several issues and Shane becomes determined to get rid of his former friend. Shane decides to challenge Rick, pulling a gun on him, but Rick ends up stabbing him in the heart and killing him on the spot.

Bernthal later appeared in Season 3 as a part of Rick’s hallucination, and then once more in Season 9, as previously reported by The Inquisitr.

“After I got killed off ‘Walking Dead’ — they killed my a** off ‘Walking Dead,’ they killed me twice,” Bernthal said. “They’re like, ‘You are definitely not coming back!’ They took my scripts, they’re like, ‘You’re done!'”

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“I just sat on this rock and watched everybody, just the whole thing working. I might have shed a couple tears, because I was gonna miss them,” he continued, referring to a scene from the show that he couldn’t participate in because his character was no longer alive.

Bernthal went on to talk about the tight-knit cast of the earlier seasons and credits them for giving the project 100 percent at all times.

“Those folks are still some of my best friends in the world. And the bonds that were formed in the beginning of that show, a family was formed. We were all in it together.”

After stepping away from The Walking Dead, the actor went on to star in The Punisher, as the show’s main character.