Bill Keveney

USA TODAY

LOS ANGELES — Jeffrey Dean Morgan is known for memorable TV romances — Denny and Izzie on Grey’s Anatomy, Jason and Alicia on The Good Wife — but it’s a whole different story with his latest: Villainous Negan is smitten with Lucille — a baseball bat.

“Negan loves this bat,” Morgan explains in an interview just hours after his character was seen bashing in heads with the barbed-wire-wrapped club on the seventh-season premiere of AMC hit The Walking Dead (Sundays, 9 ET/PT).

Lucille is “part of who he is and who he’s become in this apocalyptic world, and you’ll never see Negan without her,” he says. “It’s a little bit of a love story.”

For all that love, however, Morgan anticipated hatred coming his way after the zombie drama's much-anticipated return, which snared 17 million same-day viewers, a two-year high, and complaints about shocking carnage in scenes of Negan pulverizing survivor leader Rick Grimes’ top lieutenants, Abraham (Michael Cudlitz) and Glenn (Steven Yeun).

“That was a lot of violence,” Morgan admits. “When we shot it, there was even more. I think the shots that were really creepy were where you couldn’t exactly see what was going on except for the silhouette of Negan with the bat coming down, with the blood flying. I don’t know if you need to see the closeup gore of it all. It’s a lot.”

Seattle native Morgan, 50, whose resumé includes Starz's Magic City, CW’s Supernatural, CBS’ Extant, DC Comics film Watchmen and current release Desierto, was eager to try a different role. And Negan, the brutal, witty, charismatic leader of The Saviors, was one the longtime Dead fan had coveted since seeing him in the comic a few years ago.

“I was like, ‘Oh, that would be fun.’ So, when I was doing Good Wife, my agent called and said, ‘You’ve been offered this role on Walking Dead,’ and I’m like, ‘Who is he?’ " The answer: "We just know he’s the villain.’ I was like, ‘It’s (expletive) Negan. … It’s got to be Negan, and if it is, we’re going to do it.’ ”

When Morgan, who lives with his wife, Hilarie Burton, and 6-year-old son, Gus, on a farm in New York's Hudson Valley, arrived on set outside Atlanta last fall to shoot the cliffhanger and Sunday's premiere, he knew it could be challenging.

"I won't say I was intimidated, but I came in under harsh circumstances. You've got a tight-knit cast that is upset because they're losing two of their own. I was a little worried that I wouldn't be accepted," he says. "As it was, Andy (Lincoln) and Norman (Reedus) and the rest of the cast accepted me immediately. Now, I feel like this is my family."

Morgan embraced Negan’s dark side, which includes humiliating and breaking Rick (Lincoln) in retaliation for the killing of Saviors. He expected some fan hostility.

“I'm not going to make excuses for him," says Morgan. "But in this world, the people that have survived this long since the zombie apocalypse all have done things that are bad. Negan just happens to take a little bit of glee (in) exercising justice, but this is a man who also leads a group of people and keeps them alive. Rick's group has killed (more than 20) of his men, and so far Negan has only touched two of them."

Morgan has the charismatic presence and acting skill to make Negan a complex villain, says executive producer Greg Nicotero, who directed the bloody premiere.

"Jeffrey brings the smile and charm of a guy who is genuinely engaging, and then he immediately switches it to that menace. He can go from a little sarcastic and slightly wisecracking to a guy who is 100% in charge," he says, calling it "a coiled cobra intensity. The scene where he grabs Rick's face, you just see how powerful he is. ... Six seasons in, we've never seen fear on Rick's face, never seen Rick broken. This guy has been able to do something no one has been able to do."

In coming episodes, viewers will see Negan's home, the Sanctuary, where he has numerous wives, and will learn more about his nature.

"You're going to see glimpses of the human he once was. In this world, you're not going to be a schoolteacher forever. You can't survive," Morgan says. "I don’t think the hatred is going to go away, but maybe you’ll love to hate him a little bit as you get to know more about him, and he’ll make you smile when you probably don’t want to.”