A lot of actors might eagerly welcome a long term role in AMC's The Walking Dead, but one of the show's former stars says he had enough by the time his character was killed off.
Tom Payne, who played Jesus for three seasons on the series, was ready to move on when his character's time came. "Ultimately it came down to just happiness in my job," Payne told ComicBook.com. "And I was just like, 'Well, I've done this for three years,' and that was the longest I've ever done any acting job."
"And I had kind of done everything that I wanted to do on the show, and I didn't really see the point in hanging around and just waiting for something to happen," Payne said. "We'd done some fight stuff which was really cool, but it didn't seem like it was really going to go -- his storyline wasn’t going to develop much."
"And everyone is like jockeying for position on that show and waiting for their time to shine, and I was just kind of over it, really," Payne added.
Payne's character was introduced in the show's sixth season in 2016. In Season 9, Jesus fell victim to an attack from The Whisperers.
"I just felt like my career and where I was going was had been on this ascendant, and The Walking Dead is absolutely the bedrock of my career now, and it really helped me carry on. But I just felt like, 'Okay, I'm done, and I'm ready to move on to whatever the next thing is.'"
AMC's The Walking Dead stars Norman Reedus, Danai Gurira, Melissa McBride, Josh McDermitt, Christian Serratos, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Seth Gilliam, Ross Marquand, Khary Payton, Cooper Andrews and Samantha Morton. The Season 10 finale is yet to receive a new air date.