Nine months after the the death of Glenn on the Walking Dead, Steven Yeun has a pointed message for his fans.
Although Yeun is grateful for his time on the series, he felt viewers didn’t realize the importance of Glenn until he died.
“I’ll be honest with you and put a full disclaimer here: I might not be objective, but I truly feel like people didn’t know what to do with Glenn,” Yeun said to Vanity Fair. “They liked him, they had no problems with him, and people enjoyed him. But they didn’t acknowledge the connection people had with the character until he was gone.”
For Yeun, there is a distinction between Glenn and other dynamic characters such as Rick Grimes and Michonne.
“A lot of the other characters are awesome characters, but they’re exactly that—they’re awesome and they’re to be in awe of: I wish I was that guy or that girl,” Yeun said to Vulture. With Glenn it was, I think I’m like that guy. You take that guy out of the equation and you do it in such a brutal fashion, there’s got to be some gut reaction to that,” said Yeun.
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He added Glenn always felt like he had to legitimize himself to everyone around him on the show. When he was on his own, it took him years to convince others he could be on his own.
Although Glenn was a fan favorite, it didn’t reflect in the marketing of the show. The series focused more on promoting other characters.
As an Asian American male in Hollywood, Yeun agrees there are obstacles for Asian Americans. While co-stars Andrew Lincoln, Norman Reedus, and Danai Gurira were featured on the covers of Entertainment Weekly, Glenn only got his cover when he was killed off.
“I didn’t think of it as racism, where it’s like, Oh, this is racist,” Yeun said. “I caught it in a way of Oh, this is how we’re viewed all the time—as part of some glob, some amorphous, non-individualistic collective.”
Yeun did say, however, Glenn’s death was one of the most memorable on the show, especially as an Asian character.
“Maybe it’s something to be said that you’ve never seen an Asian character die like that onscreen before — because we don’t have Asian people onscreen to die! Even when we do die, we die silently,” Yeun told Vulture. “But in this way, it was like holding up a battered skull to the world to be like, ‘Don’t forget, this Asian person existed in this medium and now he’s fu*king dead.'”
Yeun believes Asian Americans in this generation are stuck within expectations they think they should live up to and encourages them to be who they truly are. Although Yeun agrees there is systemic racial bias, he challenges other Asian Americans to reflect on how they contribute to perceptions or the solution, according to Page Six.
“That’s where we have to be realistic: At what point are you circulating and fulfilling the cycle of our underrepresentation? Because what I will say is that they’re waiting for us … Look at casting directors, projects, and how things are. They are literally waiting for Asian people, and they want to cast them. I think we’re at that precipice where they’re catching up on how to do it in the right way, but I see it happening,” he said.
Moving forward from The Walking Dead, Yeun is working on other projects such as the recently released film Okja.
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