Howard Stern Has A Personal Vendetta Against A Walking Dead Star

Norman Reedus and Jon Bernthal discussed on the Real Ones podcast why Reedus has not been invited onto The Howard Stern Show.

By TeeJay Small
| Published 5 mins ago

Howard Stern apparently has an unexplained vendetta against The Walking Dead star Norman Reedus. During a recent appearance on Real Ones with Jon Bernthal, Norman Reedus sat with his former Walking Dead co-star to discuss why he’d never been invited to appear as a guest on the coveted Howard Stern Show on SiruisXM. A clip of the interaction is available to view via Youtube and while the pair couldn’t determine a concrete answer for the supposed animosity Stern holds for Reedus, Bernthal concluded that some day, some how, perhaps Reedus would finally guest on the show in the future.

Howard Stern has consistently remained one of the biggest voices in radio since his arrival in the medium back in 1975. Furthermore, Howard Stern is a well documented fan of The Walking Dead, and was at least at one point a huge fan of Norman Reedus’ character on the show, Daryl Dixon. This lead Reedus and former Shane Walsh actor Jon Bernthal to speculate where this animosity originally stemmed from during a recording of Bernthal’s Real Ones podcast, where he hosts weekly interviews with friends and colleagues, as well as important figures in modern history.

Jon Bernthal suggested, half jokingly, that Howard Stern’s beef with Norman Reedus initially began due to the pair being sat together during a social event years ago, in which Reedus recalled conversing and joking with Stern’s wife. Jon Bernthal assumes that Howard Stern harbors jealousy for Reedus due to his wife’s perceived affection for him. The Death Stranding protagonist was quick to shake this suggestion off however, stating that he barely spoke to Stern’s wife for more than a few minutes, and only discussed their shared love of cats.

In the clip, Norman Reedus also lamented a series of misunderstandings that he believes may have led to the rift, recalling a time when he recorded a lackluster sound bite for The Howard Stern Show, and later heard a segment in which Stern criticized his performance for what Norman Reedus describes as two straight hours. Reedus and Bernthal can both be seen hanging their heads in exasperation regarding this issue, as the pair recounted being huge fans of Howard Stern and routinely listening to his show while on set to film The Walking Dead together years ago. In the years since the show began, Howard Stern has had many cast members of The Walking Dead as guests on his show, including Jon Bernthal, and Jeffrey Dean Morgan, as Reedus states, “Everyone but me!”

Howard Stern is known to hold grudges, and seems to ban people from his show semi regularly. Among those banned officially from The Howard Stern Show are Simon Cowell, Mel Gibson, and former Howard Stern co-host Artie Lange, so Norman Reedus isn’t alone in this regard. Now that The Walking Dead has aired its finale, Norman Reedus is said to be leading a new spinoff show, The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon which is set to release on AMC this year. Perhaps Howard Stern will be forced to bring Norman Reedus on the show to discuss and celebrate the spinoff, or maybe this will cause Howard Stern to give up on the whole franchise, but for now, we’ll just have to wait and see how deep the well runs when it comes to this unidirectional feud.