Hilarie Burton joins real-life hubs Jeffrey Dean Morgan on 'The Walking Dead'

It’s another one of those art-imitates-life situations coming up on the apocalyptic zombie drama The Walking Dead. Or at least it is now that Hilarie Burton has been cast as her real-life husband’s on-screen wife.Yup, you read that correctly. Burton has been cast opposite her husband Jeffrey Dean Morgan—aka the villainous Negan—as his character’s wife on the current tenth season of the AMC drama. “Been pretty hard to keep this a secret,” the One Tree Hill grad shared on Twitter. “But I love working with @JDMorgan. I love watching him become #Negan and take on that swagger. And I love the @TheWalkingDead family. They’ve been a part of our family for ages and I’m so grateful for their kindness.”

Been pretty hard to keep this a secret. ?But I love working with @JDMorgan . I love watching him become #Negan and take on that swagger. And I love the @TheWalkingDead family. They’ve been a part of our family for ages and I’m so grateful for their kindness. Xoxo #hereslucille https://t.co/9tRh7NB8WY

— Hilarie Burton Morgan (@HilarieBurton) November 3, 2020

According to ComicBook.com Burton arrives as a guest star just in time for one of the show’s six newly announced bonus episodes. Her installment is expected to air sometime next year when the 10^th season returns following the October midseason finale. (The show recently announced it is ending after season 11.) In the episode Burton plays Lucille, a character who succumbed to cancer before the viral outbreak turned people into Walkers. In the comics Negan had been cheating on his wife, which she knew about, but he broke it off in order to spend as much time with her as he could before she passed.In the comics and on the show Negan’s famous weapon of choice, a baseball bat covered in barbed wire, is named after Lucille. In Negan’s very first, 2016 appearance, fans became quite familiar with the deadly instrument after Negan used it to kill fan favourite characters Glenn (Steven Yeun) and Abraham (Michael Cudlitz).[video_embed id='2069211']MORE CELEB COUPLES: Common wants you to know him and Tiffany Haddish are still together [/video_embed]Burton, 38, and Morgan, 54, have been together for more than a decade, although they only made things official with a walk down the aisle in October 2019. They met through Burton’s former OTH costar Danneel Ackles and her husband, Supernatural’s Jensen Ackles. Morgan starred on Supernatural in a dozen or so episodes as John Winchester, aka Sam and Dean’s father.“When he came along, he was so sure of himself,” Burton told People earlier this year. “I was not a girl anyone pursued. I’ve always been alpha. And Jeffrey was like, ‘You’re going to be my girlfriend.’ It was so nice to be pursued. He’s a cute dude! And I liked that he knew exactly who he was. His confidence was intoxicating.”Now to see just how intoxicating (or is it deadly?) that romance will be once it plays out onscreen, in the world of The Walking Dead.[video_embed id='2030335']BEFORE YOU GO: Cat attempts daily hilarious attack on mail carrier [/video_embed]