Netflix's 'The Sandman' - Cast Interview
The cast of Neil Gaiman’s “The Sandman,” including Tom Sturridge (Dream/Morpheus/The Sandman), Gwendoline Christie (Lucifer Morningstar), Stephen Fry (Gilbert), Kirby Howell-Baptiste (Death), Jenna Coleman (Johanna Constantine), Vivienne Acheampong (Lucienne), Vanesu Samunyai (Rose Walker), Allan Heinberg (showrunner) and Gaiman himself, joined CinemaBlend to discuss the masterful adaptation on Netflix. Watch as they discuss the incredible set pieces, translating characters from page to screen, the scenes that made the comic creator cry, and so much more.
Transcript
00:00 There are no small players in this.
00:03 That's what's unbelievable about this production.
00:05 Because it made me cry not once, but twice.
00:08 It's the thing you least expect.
00:10 You just feel honoured to be a part of.
00:12 I know that sounds a bit cheesy.
00:14 As soon as it was sent my way, it was like a complete no-brainer.
00:18 And to be honest, just a joy.
00:19 What are you doing here, Etty?
00:22 He's coming, Inni.
00:24 Yeah.
00:26 What's the biggest misconception about Morpheus?
00:31 I think there's a misconception about Morpheus as...
00:34 He certainly is brooding and dark.
00:37 But I think there's a misconception that his isolationism
00:41 and his withdrawn, contained qualities
00:46 are because he doesn't feel.
00:50 I think that he, in containing inside of him
00:54 the unconsciousness of the universe,
00:56 in containing inside of him all of our,
00:58 every sentient being's dreams,
01:01 he knows exactly how each and every one of us feels.
01:05 And therefore, I think, is an extraordinary empathetic being.
01:10 But the discipline required to hold that energy inside of him
01:15 and avoid the catastrophe that sort of,
01:18 that miscontrolling it would cause,
01:21 means that he has to be rigorous and controlled.
01:26 But I do think that inside him,
01:29 there's this extraordinary vivacity and life.
01:35 Yeah, I mean, so, so, I mean,
01:37 similar to Doctor Who in terms of we explore many worlds,
01:41 realms, states, travel, but, yeah, I mean, so, so distinctive.
01:47 I mean, I was very, it's very,
01:50 we're talking very much about how hard it is to describe Sam,
01:53 and it's so distinctive and so unique.
01:56 And as soon as, and Neil Gaiman, I'm obviously such a fan of,
02:00 so as soon as it was sent my way,
02:01 it was like a complete no-brainer.
02:04 And to be honest, just a joy.
02:06 Like, the character is so formed on the page, so complex.
02:10 I like her.
02:11 Like, she's hilarious.
02:13 And like, she's unlike other characters that I've played before.
02:18 And she's cynical and she's dry.
02:20 And she's, there's a lot of emotional complexity going on.
02:24 She's a lone warrior in the world,
02:27 and tortured and wounded, but hilarious and pragmatic.
02:34 And obviously getting to play Lady Joanna Constantine as well,
02:37 and kind of having the link between those two characters,
02:40 but also being relatives, but Lady Joanna Constantine,
02:45 having a very different kind of cold, cunning calculation.
02:50 And a very different relationship, I think, with Dream as well.
02:54 It's, no, I think it's one of the real pleasures
02:58 of the way television and film have developed in the last 20 years,
03:01 is that you do get these really exciting projects
03:04 that you just feel honoured to be a part of.
03:07 I know that sounds a bit cheesy, but the Sandman is, for most people,
03:12 one of the masterpieces in graphic novels of the past 30, 40 years.
03:17 And I was, because I've known Neil for some time,
03:19 I know how much it means to him,
03:22 and how much it meant to get it right.
03:25 You know, there was, it reminded me of how my friend Douglas Adams,
03:30 with his Hitchhiker's Guide, if only he'd lived another 10 years,
03:34 they really could have done it properly.
03:37 The technology, but not just the technology,
03:39 the budget and the will to make things properly,
03:42 give them due care and attention, is at a high pitch at the moment.
03:47 And so it's a kind of easy call, I found.
03:50 The only reason we even exist is to serve them.
03:55 I think I'd have to point to the whole of episode six,
04:00 because it made me cry.
04:03 Because it made me cry not once, but twice.
04:06 Once during the death scene when we meet Harry,
04:10 and once right at the end of Men of Good Fortune,
04:13 when Death and Hob get together in the pub.
04:16 And that took me by surprise each time.
04:20 I'm sitting there thinking, I wrote these words.
04:23 I plotted this out in 1988.
04:25 This has been part of my life, these stories, ever since.
04:30 I read and reread them every time I had to,
04:34 you know, we reprinted them or I was checking the colour
04:37 or anything like that.
04:38 I know them like the back of my hand.
04:42 And yet, watching this thing that we've shot
04:47 is bypassing all the thinking bits of my brain
04:50 and is going straight into the emotion bits.
04:53 And I can't believe that's happening.
04:56 And there was so much pride in what Alan,
05:01 in what the actors had done, in every part of that.
05:05 I mean, you look at the pub every hundred years
05:10 and look at production designers,
05:13 costume designers and costume makers.
05:15 Everybody came in to give us that
05:18 for what, in the end of the day,
05:19 is about half an hour of television.
05:23 We shouldn't have been able to do that, and we did.
05:26 What Kirby Halbaptiste brings to Death
05:30 in just making you go, "Oh, yes, when I die, I hope you're there.
05:35 You'll make things better. It'll be OK."
05:39 That thing, I don't care that it took us a thousand auditions
05:46 to get to Kirby, because we got Kirby at the end
05:51 and it's like, "OK, that thing is the thing that we wanted."
05:54 That feeling of speaking truth,
05:56 that feeling of being the person at the end
06:00 that you love and you care for,
06:02 the person you would like to imagine
06:06 was there for your child, for your parent,
06:09 for your sibling, for your loved one at the end.
06:13 I thought about giving up,
06:15 but I have a job to do it, and I do it.
06:19 What I think is beautiful about all of our episodes
06:24 is whether you see a character for a single episode
06:27 or for multiple, each of these episodes stands alone.
06:31 They're almost like short films.
06:33 So, you know, there are no small players in this.
06:39 It's absolutely not about screen time in something like this.
06:43 There is a magnitude and a weight to every single character
06:47 that is in The Sandman, and fans of The Sandman will know that.
06:50 And new fans, people who have figured out Sandman
06:54 through this show will see that,
06:56 that every single character, no matter how long you see them,
06:59 has such weight.
07:01 So to me, it is a case of absolute quality over quantity.
07:08 And thinking about the representation of Lucifer,
07:15 I mean, like Kirby's been saying about portraying death,
07:18 it's a concept, you know, Lucifer is the epitome of evil.
07:22 But for me, what the comics did so beautifully
07:25 was that they presented a very human quality.
07:30 So you believed that was a person.
07:32 You could see it.
07:33 You could see all the complexities and the conflicts,
07:36 the internal conflicts, the wonderful thing that Neil does so well,
07:39 which he just turns things on their head.
07:41 It's the thing you least expect.
07:44 And I wanted to be really, we all did,
07:47 wanted to be really faithful to the comics.
07:49 But at the same time, it was thrilling to be able to
07:53 actually bring my interpretation, what the comics had given me,
07:58 what had fired in my imagination through reading them,
08:01 through talking to Neil, looking at Neil's original source material,
08:05 and also looking at my own range of material.
08:08 And Lucifer's a part I played before on stage years ago,
08:13 and I'd always wanted to revisit it.
08:15 This was like a kind of glorious opportunity
08:18 to explore something about evil,
08:21 which is extremely relevant in our modern world.
08:24 Tell us what power of dreams in hell.
08:29 No, but it really was.
08:31 That's what's unbelievable about this production,
08:33 is that everything, I mean, beyond the impossible, was built.
08:39 So the first thing that came to my head was hell.
08:42 It was extraordinary to be inside Lucifer's lair.
08:46 And that floor was stone.
08:49 Those columns were marble.
08:51 The murals were painted on the walls.
08:53 The fire burnt your face.
08:55 And it's such a difficult thing when you do a job like this,
08:58 the kind of leaps of imagination that are required.
09:02 And what was so special was that the production design team
09:07 and everyone involved made those leaps so much smaller
09:12 than they needed to be because they made it.
09:16 And, yeah, I mean, the first thing that came into my head was hell.
09:21 And there wasn't genuinely, I don't think,
09:25 one piece of green screen in that sequence that I worked with,
09:32 other than, like, maybe sitting outside a window or something.
09:35 And that was just-- it's just--
09:38 it's incredibly easy to tell the truth when you can touch the truth.
09:43 Yeah, it's a gift. It's really amazing.
09:45 In my case, selfishly, we went-- we were down in Surrey, I think it was,
09:51 in a sort of quarry for one of the final scenes of episode 10
09:55 where I get turned into something that is a spoiler alert.
10:00 And it was on one of the hottest days we had that year.
10:04 It was not the hottest day.
10:05 And as you probably noticed, I wear an entirely green, thick tweed waistcoat,
10:10 coat, and cape, and hat, and moustache.
10:15 And I-- it was very hard to think of anything
10:18 other than wanting to dive into an ice bath.
10:21 So the secret is, "Oh, the agony, gentlemen, ladies,
10:27 the agony of having to perform."
10:30 Didn't you find that? But we coped, didn't we?
10:32 Because we have very kind people giving us fans.
10:35 But you-- and you had some great locations to work in as well.
10:38 Yeah.
10:40 We-- the first location that we filmed at on my first day,
10:46 which was the scene where we arrived in England to see Unity.
10:52 And it was a gorgeous, gorgeous big building.
10:55 And I think that was just-- it was so nice to just, like, look at it.
10:59 I love old buildings, so it was just the right-- real treat.
11:02 I just had the weirdest dream.
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11:10 you
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