It feels like an eternity ago now, but once upon a time, Jon Bernthal played the unstable and merciless yet lovestruck Shane Walsh in the AMC Hit,The Walking Dead. While Bernthal’s star has since risen following his time playing Shane, he recently got candid on what it was like when his time wrapped withThe Walking Dead.
Bernthal, who has developed a reputation for being the tough guy in a lot of his acting roles, admitted that he wept when the show killed off Shane duringThe Walking Deadseason 2’s penultimate episode primarily because of how much he appreciated the work he had been involved with and those he worked with on the show.
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In an interview withConan O’Brien, Bernthal said that, following Shane’s death, he visited the set to grab a few things, but after watching how wonderfully coordinatedThe Walking Deadwas following his departure, Bernthal admitted how emotional he got while watching it all unfold. “I wanted to go say goodbye to everyone. Instead of just saying goodbye, I just sat on this rock in the woods and watched this sort of beautiful symphony,” Bernthal said. He then admitted he cried because his participation in a well-rounded production truly was over. “I just palpably understood that I’m not part of that anymore… I sat there, and I weeped, and I felt sorry for myself, and I knew it was over.”
Since his time playing Shane onThe Walking Deadcame to end in 2012, Bernthal has since accumulated even bigger roles in movies such asThe Wolf of Wall Street,Baby Driver,Ford vs. Ferrari,andThe Many Saints of Newark, among the many others he’s played over the past decade. Perhaps his most iconic role as an actor came when he portrayed the Punisher, which he played inDaredevilin 2016 andThe Punisherfrom 2017 to 2019. The character may or may not be brought back now that Disney has the rights to all the Marvel shows previously produced on Netflix.
Bernthal’spraise forThe Walking Dead, which gave him his first break as an actor, makes sense because Shane played a huge part in how things turned out on the show. While he very clearly was an antagonist who was motivated by selfishness more than anything else, Shane understood that in the zombie apocalypse, you cannot take your chances on allying with anyone who you do not know personally. You look out for number one no matter what in a situation like that. While Rick ended up killing him, he did so because he adapted Shane’s philosophy, which played a part in how he survived for so long.
And it was Bernthal’s portrayal as Shane that wound up making a name for himself in Hollywood. While Shane was not the traditional beefcake character, he was headstrong and did not compromise at all when it came to his values. Bernthal would go on to take more muscle-type characters as it went along, includingthe aforementioned The Punisher, but it all started for him when he played the unrelenting Shane Walsh onThe Walking Dead. Even if it was only for two years.
The Walking Deadis now available on AMC Plus.
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