Though the former star of 'The Walking Dead' doesn’t think he could go back portraying the character, he does admit leaving the popular horror series led him to have 'an existential crisis'.
- Oct 6, 2018
AceShowbiz - Steven Yeun has admitted leaving "The Walking Dead" prompted an "existential crisis" which made him feel the "loneliness of life".
Yeun played popular character Glenn from the show's premiere in 2010 until his grisly death in the season 7 opener in 2016. He's since gone on to star in critically acclaimed movie "Sorry to Bother You", and will next be seen in Korean director Lee Chang-dong's "Burning". And he admitted in an interview that leaving TWD left him pondering the direction of his life.
"I left 'Walking Dead' and I kind of had an existential crisis — not because I longed to be back there, but because I was made to feel the loneliness of life, which is that decisions aren't made for you," he explained. "You get out of that show, and you're about to have a kid, and you're an adult now," continued the actor who welcomed a son with wife Joana Pak last March (17). "And you go, 'Holy s**t, I am in charge of my life. I am making choices'. There's no next step."
The 34-year-old Korean-American has since starred in 2016 action-horror film "Mayhem", Netflix's "Okja" and is doing voiceovers for animated shows "Voltron" and "Stretch Armstrong & the Flex Fighters". And he insists he has no plans to return to the TWD universe.
"Sometimes people pitch to me, 'Dude, wouldn't it be so cool if you did a Glenn origin movie?'" he said. "And I'm like, 'No, that'd be horrible.' That was so long ago. I was another person. I don't think I could go back there. That person was inherently trapped in whatever people thought he was. I fed into it and I believed in it, too — until I got out," adding that the show did give him the luxury of being able to turn down projects he's not passionate about.
"You get the cushion of having some income that you can save for a rainy day," he smiled. "That is still scary, but it makes you a little bit braver to pass on things. I realize how hellish it can be when I’m doing something that I don't believe in, that is retreading territory."
