Not Worrying About Tomorrow

The Walking Dead may be entering its final season, but for enigmatic zombie slayer Norman Reedus, the show will always go on.

- KY HENDERSON

It's the kind of day that makes Los Angeles an advertisement for itself. The sun inches toward the glittering ocean behind a dusting of clouds, and a light breeze stirs the 70-degree air. There couldn't be a better afternoon for a motorcycle ride up the Pacific Coast Highway, through Malibu's twisty canyons, and then over the Hollywood Hills.

Norman Reedus is painfully aware of this.

"I've got to get on the bike," he says in a tone that suggests he knows full well his schedule will not, in fact, permit him to get on the bike. "It's a beautiful new green Tiger 900. The Mean Green Machine."

He's borrowing the motorcycle while in town, but Reedus already owns a couple of other Tigers. He's also a big Harley-Davidson guy, with a 1946 Knucklehead at his home in Georgia ("My neighbors hate it," he says, "because it's super loud") and a favorite root beer-brown 1987 FXR. (Sorry, Harley purists.)

Reedus has just finished filming the final episodes of The Walking Dead, on which he's played the beloved character Daryl Dixon for every one of the show's 11 seasons. Wrapping up a groundbreaking show after more than a decade seemingly would be a logical time for Reedus to take a break and enjoy the fact that he no longer has to spend his summers slaying gore-oozing zombies in the sweltering Georgia woods. His friends, he says, have told him to stop and smell the roses.

Reedus is going in a somewhat different direction. This year he's launching a whiskey brand, expanding his restaurant empire, filming another season of his motorcycle show Ride, publishing his first novel and-why not?-perhaps even getting married. That's all in addition to filming the first season of a Walking Dead spinoff that takes place in a new world that he promises will be far different than what fans are used to.