The Walking Dead stars Norman Reedus and Jon Bernthal discuss why Howard Stern has never invited Reedus to appear on his radio show.

The Walking Dead star Norman Reedus doesn’t understand why Howard Stern won’t have him on his radio show.

Reedus appeared on Jon Bernthal’s Real Ones podcast and discussed how the Walking Dead co-stars would listen to The Howard Stern Show every morning. Stern, a self-proclaimed Walking Dead fan, invited Bernthal and Jeffrey Dean Morgan to guest star but not Reedus due to his unexplained vendetta against the actor. The Punisher actor theorized Stern’s animosity towards Reedus started when he got along too well with the radio host’s wife at a premiere event. Reedus claimed the two simply talked about cats for “maybe three minutes.”

Despite Stern’s wife allegedly being in love with Reedus, the Walking Dead star revealed that Stern expressed disappointment in the actor’s promotional drop for The Howard Stern Show. “I have a creepy little voice, and it was super early in the morning, but yeah, I was so bummed,” Reedus said. Additionally, the Death Stranding actor ran into Gary “Baba Booey” Dell’Abate, Sirius XM executive producer, at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Abooey passed along the message that Stern “doesn’t want” Reedus on his show.

The Walking Dead Spinoffs

Even if Reedus can’t make it on The Howard Stern Show, he has his own Walking Dead spinoff titled The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon. The actor described the upcoming series as a “fresh start,” considering Daryl Dixon won’t have as big a cast as AMC’s original show. The spinoff follows Daryl as he tries to find his way home after waking up in France. “There’s history in the story,” Reedus said. “[i]t has the stuff that you want from the show, but it’s just picked up and put in a whole other dimension.”

Daryl Dixon isn’t the only Walking Dead spinoff in the works at AMC. The television network ordered two limited series, one focusing on Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s Negan Smith and Lauren Cohan’s Maggie Greene and another following Andrew Lincoln’s Rick Grimes and Danai Gurira’s Michonne Hawthorne. While the Richonne project remains untitled, Dead City explores Negan’s violent origin story.

“Negan has an opportunity to kind of fall into some old habits [in Dead City], because it’s all a survival mechanism for him, especially if he’s not with the group,” Morgan said. A November 2022 teaser trailer for Dead City gave fans a first look at post-apocalyptic New York City and Negan and Maggie’s complicated dynamic. This troubled relationship makes sense considering Negan brutally killed Glenn, Maggie’s husband, in The Walking Dead’s Season 7 premiere.