Daryl Dixon’s own spinoff show confirms he’s one of The Walking Dead‘s fan favorites. Norman Reedus anticipated how his character in The Bikeriders would be compared to Daryl, so he went out of his way to look very different.

Norman Reedus said he was serendipitously cast in The Bikeriders, and almost at the last minute. He told Radio Times that he met director Jeff Nichols by chance in Cannes when most of the film’s ensemble had been confirmed. Reedus jumped on the project when Nichols mentioned the movie would be inspired by The Bikeriders photo book by Danny Lyon. “Danny mentioned he was doing a film and I was doing the Daryl Dixon spinoff of The Walking Dead in Paris, so I bounced between Paris and Ohio [for the film],” he explained. Reedus revealed he was a long-time fan of Lyon’s work so he was excited to play any role in the movie.

“I had zero say in which character I would play,” he quipped. “[Nichols] said ‘I’ve already cast the whole movie, but there’s this part. Do you want to play it?’ I said ‘Yup.'” Reedus was confirmed to play Funny Sonny, a real person and a subject in Lyon’s photo book; the actor said his character was fleshed out from Lyon’s original stills. “You know, you’re looking at photos of Funny Sonny, and he’s… there’s not a lot about him,” he said. “But you can tell a lot about his personality, I think, through his photos, he looks like kind of a wild man. Always up to have fun, you know.”

Norman Reedus Didn’t Want To Look Like Daryl In The Bikeriders

Reedus might have anticipated how audiences would compare Sonny to Daryl from The Walking Dead, so he went out of his way to ensure they were different. “So we came up with this idea to have rotted teeth and the whole look of [Sonny]. And I hadn’t met the cast yet. So I sort of showed up that way… I didn’t want to look like Daryl Dixon in the film. You know what I mean? So we sort of created this character.” The resulting version is a brash, almost brutish Sonny in The Bikeriders, a stark contrast to the silent and capable Daryl from The Walking Dead.

Reedus said he road-tested the new look to see if it would work; he initially had a tough time adjusting to the dental prosthesis. “So I’m like walking around Ohio, going to, like, Starbucks and Target and all these places with these teeth in my mouth, trying to see if people could understand me! Because it takes a while to get used to talking with a mouth full of plastic teeth, you know.” Reedus stars opposite a stellar ensemble in The Bikeriders, headlined by Austin Butler, Tom Hardy, Jodie Comer, Michael Shannon, and Mike Faist as Danny Lyon.

The Bikeriders is now showing in theaters.