The Walking Dead's Michael Cudlitz Reveals Alternate Abraham Death Line

03/23/2022 10:50 pm EDT

"Suck. My. Nuts." Those are the iconic last words of Abraham Ford on The Walking Dead, but actor Michael Cudlitz reveals Abe's final one-liner nearly had more color. The exchange happens when Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) lines up Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) and his pants-pissing group of survivors in the Season 7 premiere, "The Day Will Come When You Won't Be." After Abraham takes a swing from Lucille, Negan's barbwire-wrapped baseball bat, he cracks off one last Abe-ism as Negan bludgeons big "Red" to death before turning the bat on Glenn (Steven Yeun). 

During an appearance at Fandemic Tour Atlanta over the weekend, Cudlitz revealed an alternate line that was never filmed. 

"I was good with [my last words]. There was an alternate to mine that, if we had time [to shoot], we would have done and we didn't," Cudlitz said during "The Walking Dead: Fallen Heroes" panel with former co-stars Emily Kinney, Alanna Masterson, and Chad Coleman. "And I'm kind of glad we didn't because it makes a better story, but I think that their line was better. And it was, 'Suck my red nuts.' But we didn't have time." 

Asked about Abraham's last words during a post-show interview on Talking Dead in 2016, Cudlitz told host Chris Hardwick, "To actually insert something in there, I thought it was awesome. And I think it's very, very appropriate for him to go out that way." 

Though the line was written in the script, one exchange was not: Abraham flashing the peace sign to Sasha (Sonequa Martin-Green) as a silent goodbye. Not only did Abe's last line of "suck my nuts" get a laugh out of Negan, but it proved a memorable moment for Morgan in what was just his second episode of the show. 

"It just is a moment that I'll never, ever forget in my whole life," Morgan told Cudlitz over video chat on Friday Night In with the Morgans in 2020. "It just was our kind of a moment that we got to have, and I still to this day get baseball bats to sign that you signed that say 'suck my nuts' and it makes me fall on the f—ing floor every time."

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