The Walking Dead star Steven Yeun has admitted he felt "cramped" while playing his character Glenn on the show.

The actor was a staple of the AMC show before being killed off in season 7, and spoke to Slate about representation, and how that informs the projects he chooses to work on.

"I think representation is key and paramount. But it's like all social mandates or ideas – they have to stem from an actual willingness and desire to do it," Yeun said. "I want to be attracted to a project as a human being...

"Now, if we want to get supercerebral and break it down, 'Should I do this or not?' you get into arguments like, 'Does this character put me in a space where I'm just doing a thing that the American white gaze is asking me to do?' Those are the things that I'm trying actively to avoid.

Noel Vasquez/GC Images

"I won't speak for other Asian American actors, because I don't know what they're being offered," Yeun continued. "But for me, it's like: nice guy, dependable, supportive, benign. Beige. And as a Korean man, I am not beige."

When asked if he ever felt "beige" playing Glenn, Yeun said: "I felt beige with Glenn. That was a little bit of the frustration that I could never explain to the wider society, to fans of the show.

Gene Page AMC

"Am I incredibly grateful, and did I have a wonderful time on that show? Yeah! I wouldn't take that experience back at all. I made lifelong friendships. I got to learn so much. But I will say that I felt cramped.

"I felt like there wasn't space for me to fully spread all of who I was, and that was partly due to me, too, because when I started, all I was trying to do was to work within the parameters that they were giving me. And then, over time, I just outgrew it."

He continued: "That's why it was beige. Because he was meant to be the heart of that show. When you look back, you go, 'That's great, everyone wants to be represented that way. Why wouldn't you want to be a perfect being?' But I don't wanna [play] perfect, because we're not perfect.

Gene Page AMC

"And that's a thing that I wasn't able to feel for a while, because I was holding up this ideal that was way bigger than me, way larger than any single human can possibly do. I became less and less interested in doing that."

The Walking Dead airs on AMC in the US and on FOX and NOW TV in the UK.

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