Lennie James says it was his decision to exit TWD for spin-off FTWD | DigitalSpy 

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Morgan Jones is set to become the first character to cross over between shows when season eight of

However, it turns out the producers consulted closely with the star rather than writing him straight in, and it was a decision he mulled over for quite some time.

"At the beginning of every season you have to sit down with Scott Gimple and he tells you what the arc of this season is going to be and what your character\'s arc is going to be," James told Digital Spy on a set visit. "You mostly don\'t listen to anything he\'s saying because you just want to know whether or not you\'re going to die.

"A couple of days later he phoned me up, said he forgot to talk to me about something and would I come back. So, I drove back to his house thinking he forgot to tell me that I\'m dying. I got there, I sat down, I got a bottled water and he said, \'By the way, this is not a conversation about you dying\'."

He continued: "My first reaction was, \'Oh thank God,\' but then he said it was much weirder than that. He talked about his new role of overseeing both shows and then he said, \'How would you like to continue the story of Morgan in

"At the end of the conversation Scott said that he was sure I had loads of questions and, to be honest, I probably did but I couldn\'t bring a single one of them to my lips. He asked what I wanted to do and all I was that said I was just going to leave and get back to him."

James recalled that he wanted to "let it sink in and figure out what I thought", as well as talk to his wife about it.

"We just started talking about it over the next couple of weeks and months as there was a lot to take on board. It wasn\'t a case of, \'This is going to happen,\' it was genuinely a case of what I thought about it, there was absolutely a choice," he added.

"It also wasn\'t a case of it being if it wasn\'t me or it wasn\'t Morgan then it would be somebody else, they were very much saying, \'We were thinking about doing this thing and if you\'re really not up for it, then we\'ll go [in] a completely different direction.\'"

We\'re yet to find out what Morgan\'s exit storyline will be, though the latest episode of

returns to AMC in the US on Sunday, April 15 at 10/9c. The new season begins Monday, April 23 at 9pm on AMC on BT TV in the UK.

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