America watched him get eaten alive by zombies — but IronE Singleton tells
Newsmax TV that the sins of the real world are far worse than the gory death millions watched him suffer on "The Walking Dead."
Singleton, who played "T-Dog" on the smash AMC series and was a neighborhood tough in the hit movie "The Blind Side," said on the Friday edition of "The Steve Malzberg Show": "Sin in the world. That's the epidemic I'm talking about, and sin covers a broad spectrum. I can relate to that because, in a sense, that is the life I was attached to growing up in the inner city of Atlanta. I grew up destitute, living in poverty."
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"My mother, she was addicted to crack, she was an alcoholic, and my father, I saw him two times in my life. My brother, he's been in and out of the justice system from the age of 14."
Singleton, 39, was no angel himself, having run wild in the streets for some 20 years.
"I carried a pistol, I sold drugs. What that whole life entails, I did it," he told host Steve Malzberg.
"But it seems as though it's broadened … it's not just a community problem, it's not just a citywide problem, it's not just a nationwide problem, but a worldwide problem, and that is the epidemic.
"So, on a smaller scale, that's what I lived, but it exists on a larger scale."
Singleton was able to clean himself up, eventually getting accepted by the University of Georgia, where he majored in speech communication and theater and played on the Georgia Bulldogs football team.
He's gathered his life experiences, along with tales from his acting stints in movies and television, in a new book,
"Blindsided by the Walking Dead: From Surviving the Streets to Slaying the Geeks", written with Juliette Terzieff and published by Myriad Press.
In addition, he's created a one-man show he's taking on the road.
Singleton has acted opposite such Hollywood powerhouses as Denzel Washington, Sandra Bullock and Nicolas Cage — but he'll forever be recognized as the tough but lovable zombie fighter Theodore "T-Dog" Douglas on "The Walking Dead."
He credits the show's huge following to its "attachment to reality," along with a healthy dose of ultra-gross zombie madness.
As for his swan song on the third season — that horrific moment in which a zombie ferociously chomp's into Singleton's neck and the blood and guts flow — the actor joked that the scene has had lasting trauma.
"That bite still hurts!" he laughed.
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