Jeffrey Dean Morgan "Didn't Picture" Himself Hosting Destination X Until He Got This Advice
The Walking Dead star had reservations about hosting NBC's new competition series, but he had a little help from someone close to him.
Fans know Jeffrey Dean Morgan as a villain we love to hate, so hosting Destination X might have felt a little out of character, even to him.
The versatile actor opened up to People about NBC tapping him to head the one-of-a-kind competition series, admitting he thought the network “had the wrong person.” Of course, the real-life motorcycle enthusiast and tattoo lover proves he’s leading the charge — and the blacked-out bus — as a group of players are whisked away to destinations unknown for a chance to win a cash prize, but that almost wasn’t the case.
“I’m still not completely sure how the hell this happened,” he told People. “I am not like a typical host. I’m not Ryan Seacrest — who I love, and I think he’s excellent at his job — but that’s not me. I’m a bit on the crass side, and I’ve got a very sarcastic sense of humor, and I didn’t picture it.”
Why didn’t Jeffrey Dean Morgan think he was right for Destination X?
Morgan, perhaps best known for his work in AMC’s post-apocalyptic horror series The Walking and its spinoff The Walking Dead: Dead City, explained why he didn’t think he was the right man to host Destination X.
“I live on a farm, and I kill zombies, and I’m a dad, and I’m kind of a pain in the a--,” he confessed to People.
As previously reported by NBC Insider, Morgan — when not playing villainous characters as he had in The Walking Dead and Watchmen — is a doting family man who owns a candy store and lives on a farm in upstate New York.
Morgan told People that he struggled to balance his work as Walking Dead’s fan-favorite sociopath, Negan Smith, and the failing health of his father when contacted about hosting Destination X.
“There was a bunch of stuff going on in my life,” Morgan continued. “My dad was passing away in the middle of shooting, and I was a bit of a mess. I wasn’t sure how I was negotiating doing anything well at the time.”
What changed his mind?
It was thanks to Morgan’s wife, actress Hilarie Burton Morgan — who once hosted MTV’s Total Request Live — that Morgan agreed to the Destination X gig. Wife knew best because “she came from the world of hosting.”
“She said — in a very nice way, but much more diplomatic than I’m going to make it seem now — ‘You’re not getting any younger,’” Morgan recounted.
Mrs. Morgan believed her husband would find it “fun” to share himself in a new way on-screen.
Jeffrey Dean Morgan took notes from Peacock’s The Traitors
It made sense that Morgan took notes from The Traitors — now available to watch on Peacock — since he and Traitors host Alan Cumming acted alongside each other in The Good Wife. Plus, both shows consisted of the same creative crew, so Morgan was more than happy to “watch a couple of episodes.”
“Alan is amazing. He’s a showman — and I’m not that either,” Morgan said. “He’s created this whole persona that’s amazing.”
Morgan did say, however, that he had “so much fun being the ringmaster of the circus” as he spent more than a month filming around Europe for Destination X.
The geo-guessing show is the American take on the popular Belgian series, but Morgan knew it was best to be himself and not mimic the original.
“The host was this very slick kind of James Bond-y guy,” he recalled. “I kept saying, ‘That’s not me, either.’”
As he put it, NBC producers wanted an edgy kind of fella that “maybe people want to have a beer with.”
So far, Morgan is leaving his mark on the map, both figuratively and literally, in Destination X, airing Tuesdays at 10/9c on NBC and streaming the next day on Peacock.
Meanwhile, don’t miss why Jeffrey Dean Morgan said “there’s no way” he’d ever be a player in the series.
