Fans watched Andrew Lincoln star as Rick Grimes over the course of 120 episodes of The Walking Dead. But there was one person who refused to watch Andrew Lincoln on the show: Andrew Lincoln.

It wasn’t anything specific about The Walking Dead that Lincoln did not want to watch. Well, that’s not entirely true. There was one thing he specifically did not want to see — himself. Lincoln explained to EW back in 2013 why he refused to watch The Walking Dead.

“The original reason is the fact that I don’t actually enjoy looking at myself,” Lincoln said then. “It’s a self-conscious thing of watching myself and going, ‘Oh I like it when I do that. That’s kind of cool.’ And then, ‘Oh, I don’t like it when I do that.’ And that defeats the object of what I want to do as an actor, which is to try and be in the role and not be self-conscious. I watch great actors that I admire beyond all things and I see them replicate [themselves], and it’s very hard not to. I don’t want to do that. I just want to leave myself alone as much as I can. It breaks the spell, it breaks the magic somewhat.”

Well, unfortunately for this actor, the spell has now been broken. That’s because not only is Lincoln back playing Rick Grimes on The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live (which premieres Feb. 25 on AMC), but he is also one of the creators and executive producers of the spinoff series, meaning “I had to watch it for the first time.”

And watching it meant watching himself. Taking on the executive producer role was “a huge error of judgment,” jokes Lincoln… at least we think he’s joking. Because that meant taking on executive producer duties in putting the show together. And you can’t exactly put the show together unless you… you know… watch the show. “We had to get into the edit,” Lincoln explains. “And you can’t call yourself a producer and go, ‘Thanks, guys! I’m done. Good luck with the edit.’”

So what was it like for Lincoln to have to watch himself playing Rick Grimes on The Ones Who Live? “I mean, it was the belly of the beast,” he says. “It was like aversion therapy. I had a week of vomiting in my car while looking at it, but then was able to distance myself. The way I was able to watch it and get through the initial shock of me playing Rick was focusing on everybody else in it. It was amazing to sort of watch.”

Millions of Walking Dead fans no doubt agree.

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