Tuesday nights in the summer months are generally dominated in primetime by NBC with America’s Got Talent, but AGT isn’t the only hit show the network has on Tuesdays at this point in the 2025 TV schedule. Destination X is a new travel competition show that takes contestants all over Europe in a bus with blocked out windows, and they have to connect clues and face physical challenges to try and identify where they actually are in pursuit of a grand prize. Jeffrey Dean Morgan of The Walking Dead franchise is the host, and if he seems like a surprising choice, he would likely agree based on some recent comments!
While Morgan once might have been most recognizable for playing (pre- and post-death) Denny on Grey’s Anatomy or John Winchester on Supernatural with questionable parenting skills, he’s likely best known nowadays as the baseball bat-wielding bad guy Negan in The Walking Dead world. Most recently, he starred opposite Lauren Cohan in Season 2 of The Walking Dead: Dead City. All of this is to say that the actor is known mostly for scripted TV shows, and in an appearance on Late Night with Seth Meyers, Morgan explained why he thought he was the wrong guy for the Destination X job:
I thought they had it wrong. You know, it’s kind of a Ryan Seacrest type gig…I thought NBC had the wrong phone number.
I can’t blame Jeffrey Dean Morgan for immediately assuming that somebody like Ryan Seacrest would be the obvious choice for a new hosting gig. Seacrest shot to fame as host of American Idol back as far back as the first season of the original run on Fox, and has landed hosting gig after hosting gig to the point that he now is the master of ceremonies on Wheel of Fortune. Seacrest is a professional host; Morgan is an actor with a long list of credits. He went on:
And I said no a couple of times. And they kept coming back and saying ‘No, we think that you have this…’ They wanted somebody rough around the edges.
Apparently, the people at NBC tasked with casting the host for Destination X were set on Jeffrey Dean Morgan, to the point that they weren’t taking “no” for an answer. Morgan went on to say that he thinks “what NBC saw” was that he does “like causing issues for other people and I enjoy it.” And – to quote the competitor known as Biggy – “dadgum” it, he is delivering for the contestants of Destination X!
According to The Walking Dead villain, he didn’t ultimately sign on for Destination X just because he wanted to have fun causing issues for the players. He credited wife (and One Tree Hill alum) Hilarie Burton for some words of wisdom, saying:
But it was my wife who was like ‘Do this,’ because I’m not a spring chicken anymore, and bouncing off the pavement after a zombie wipes me out is getting harder. So, she was like, ‘Give this a go, it’d be nice if people saw your personality,’ the devious [bleeped out] side.
Destination X may have him trekking all over Europe to torment the players who are vying for the grand prize, but at no point has he had to wield a baseball bat wrapped with barbed wire to try and fend off a horde of zombies and/or fans who still begrudge Negan for what he did to Steven Yeun’s Glenn.
New episodes of Destination X air on Tuesdays at 10 p.m. ET on NBC, immediately following America’s Got Talent. You can also stream episodes next day with a Peacock subscription. Only five episodes have aired so far, so it wouldn’t take too long to catch up if you haven’t been tuning in so far.
