Josh McDermitt Looks Very Different From His Walking Dead Character
Whether speaking about the comic book series co-created by Robert Kirkman and Tony Moore, or the AMC television adaptation, The Walking Dead isn't about zombies (which aren't even called zombies in series parlance): it's about characters. Sure, there are still a wealth of pulse-pounding encounters with the undead, but it's always the relationships, the choices, and the conflicts that ground everything and make it a story worth telling. As it says on the back of every softcover graphic collection of the series: "In a world ruled by the dead, we are forced to finally start living."
Eugene Porter (Josh McDermitt) is no exception to this. Originally traveling with Abraham Ford (Michael Cudlitz) and Rosita Espinosa (Christian Serratos) on a mission to apparently end the worldwide plague, he's a resourceful, intelligent man, but far from a perfect one. Indeed, over the course of the AMC series, everyone else — and that means everyone else, friend or foe — is subject to the whims of his shifting priorities. He may not be physically threatening, but his unpredictability and wits make him a unique force to be reckoned with.
Though it has no bearing on his performance, it's interesting to note just how different Eugene actor Josh McDermitt typically looks in real life.
Josh McDermitt doesn't do the mullet look in real life
Eugene eventually fixes himself up and starts sprouting some gray hairs, but in his earlier appearances on the show, he had a mullet to end all mullets. An apocalypse may have decimated the world and all norms about physical appearance, so you could say it's okay, but ... had Eugene's hairstyle died with the old world, it's more than likely that very few survivors would have complained, or even thought about mullets ever again.
That's not to say McDermitt can't pull it off, because he absolutely does — and it absolutely fits Eugene as a character. The actor doesn't wear a wig, either: he committed to the mullet for all of his character's early appearances. He also had to dye his hair black, because in real life, his hair is strawberry blond, and he tends to wear it short.
If you stood McDermitt and Eugene next to one another, you could easily call them twins ... all but for the hair. It makes enough of a difference that, "twins" or not, they give off completely different vibes.
There's also Eugene's comics appearance to consider. Illustrated by Charlie Adlard (who took over for Moore after he left early in the series' run), the character is perhaps 10-15 years older than McDermitt. Adlard depicted Eugene with a mullet before, but the character was also seen with a braided ponytail, as well as with aviator goggles strapped to his forehead. Put this Eugene next to McDermitt, or the show version, and the resemblance is hardly there.