Jeffrey Dean Morgan has cultivated a wide array of diverse roles over the years. Following his early beginnings as a television guest actor on things like Star Trek: Enterprise and Angel, Morgan has become a household name thanks to his breakout roles in Supernatural and Grey's Anatomy, as well as his comic book movie credits as the Comedian in Watchmen and Thomas Wayne in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. But Morgan might best be known for playing the infamous Negan on The Walking Dead, a role he's had since 2016.
However, despite his massive success in recent years, one of his early roles almost convinced Morgan to abandon acting. On a recent episode of Hot Ones, Morgan discussed with host Sean Evans how his guest spot as an alien scientist on Star Trek: Enterprise almost forced his career to come to a premature end.
Appearing in the third season episode "Carpenter Street," Morgan played a Xindi-Reptilian scientist named Damron. The episode's plot concerned Damron and two fellow Xindis time-traveling to the year 2004, where they set up shop in Detroit to develop a virus to prevent humanity from becoming a viable threat in the future. Luckily, temporal agent Daniels sends back Captain Jonathan Archer and T'Pol to investigate and stop Damron from unleashing the virus. The Enterprise officers are successful and Archer ends up killing Damron, bringing the Xindi bodies and equipment back to the future with them.
Morgan has previously made clear his strong feelings about the role. In 2012, he had told Entertainment Weekly that he had taken the role "to pay my bills." But the heavy prosthetic requirements to play the alien character became overwhelming for Morgan. "I was claustrophobic. I’d go home in tears. This was the job that made me want to quit acting," he explained.
When asked about the Entertainment Weekly quote on the Hot Ones episode, Morgan reiterated his stance on the heavy makeup, lamenting the "straws in my nose." He went on to add to the statement he made in 2012: "I've never been on a set where I went home at night and just thought 'What am I doing? I’ve made the worst fu**ing decision of my life. I don’t ever want to be an actor again.' Like, I was sure that this was just wrong, and it almost made me quit."
Thankfully, Morgan ended up not acting on his impulse. In the years following his Enterprise guest spot, he broke out into stardom with his roles as John Winchester in Supernatural and Denny Duquette in Grey's Anatomy. Soldiering through the claustrophobic makeup experience may not have been easy for Morgan, but his success as Negan should help make up for it.