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.
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00:00There are no small players in this.
00:03That's what's unbelievable about this production.
00:05Because it made me cry not once, but twice.
00:08It's the thing you least expect.
00:10You just feel honoured to be a part of.
00:12I know that sounds a bit cheesy.
00:14As soon as it was sent my way, it was like a complete no-brainer.
00:18And to be honest, just a joy.
00:21What are you doing here, Etty?
00:22He's coming, Inni.
00:25Yeah.
00:31I think there's a misconception about Morpheus as...
00:34He certainly is brooding and dark.
00:36But I think there's a misconception that his isolationism
00:41and his withdrawn contained qualities are because he doesn't feel.
00:49I think that he, in containing inside of him the unconsciousness of the universe,
00:56in containing inside of him all of our, every sentient being's dreams,
01:01he knows exactly how each and every one of us feels.
01:05And therefore, I think, is an extraordinary empathetic being.
01:10But the discipline required to hold that energy inside of him
01:15and avoid the catastrophe that miscontrolling it would cause
01:21means that he has to be rigorous and controlled.
01:27But I do think that inside him, there's this extraordinary vivacity and life.
01:35Yeah, I mean, so, so...
01:37I mean, similar to Doctor Who in terms of we explore many worlds, realms, states, travel.
01:42But, yeah, I mean, so, so distinctive.
01:47I mean, I was very...
01:49It's very...
01:50We're talking very much about how hard it is to describe Salman.
01:53It's so distinctive and so unique.
01:56And as soon as...
01:57And Neil Gaiman, I'm obviously such a fan of.
02:00So, as soon as it was sent my way, it was like a complete no-brainer.
02:04And to be honest, just a joy.
02:06Like, the character is so formed on the page, so complex.
02:10I like her.
02:11Like, she's hilarious.
02:13And she's unlike other characters that I've played before.
02:18And she's cynical and she's dry and she's...
02:20There's a lot of emotional complexity going on.
02:24She's a lone warrior in the world and tortured and wounded,
02:28but hilarious and pragmatic.
02:34And obviously getting to play Lady Joanna Constantine as well
02:37and kind of having the link between those two characters,
02:40but also being relatives,
02:43but Lady Joanna Constantine having a very different kind of cold,
02:47cunning calculation.
02:50And a very different relationship, I think, with Dream as well.
02:53It's...
02:54No, I think it's one of the real pleasures of the way television
02:59and film have developed in the last 20 years,
03:01is that you do get these really exciting projects
03:04that you just feel honoured to be a part of.
03:07I know that sounds a bit cheesy,
03:09but The Sandman is, for most people,
03:12one of the masterpieces in graphic novels of the past 30, 40 years.
03:17And I was... Because I've known Neil for some time,
03:19I know how much it means to him
03:22and how much it meant to get it right.
03:25You know, there was...
03:26It reminded me of how my friend Douglas Adams,
03:30with his Hitchhiker's Guide,
03:32if only he'd lived another 10 years,
03:34they really could have done it properly.
03:37The technology, but not just the technology,
03:39the budget and the will to make things properly
03:42and give them due care and attention,
03:45is at a high pitch at the moment.
03:47And so it's a kind of easy call, I found.
03:50The only reason we even exist is to serve them.
03:55I think I'd have to point to the whole of episode six
04:00because it made me cry.
04:03Because it made me cry not once, but twice.
04:06Once during the death scene when we meet Harry
04:10and once right at the end of Men of Good Fortune
04:13when Death and Hob get together in the pub.
04:16And that took me by surprise each time.
04:20I'm sitting there thinking, I wrote these words.
04:23I plotted this out in 1988.
04:25This has been part of my life, these stories, ever since.
04:30I read and reread them every time I had to...
04:34We reprinted them or I was checking the colour
04:37or anything like that.
04:38I know them like the back of my hand.
04:42And yet watching this thing that we've shot
04:47is bypassing all the thinking bits of my brain
04:50and is going straight into the emotion bits.
04:53And I can't believe that's happening.
04:56And there was so much pride in what Alan,
05:01in what the actors had done, in every part of that.
05:05I mean, you look at the pub every hundred years
05:10and look at production designers,
05:13costume designers and costume makers.
05:15Everybody came in to give us that
05:18for what, in the end of the day,
05:19is about half an hour of television.
05:23We shouldn't have been able to do that and we did.
05:26What Kirby Halbaptiste brings to Death
05:30in just making you go,
05:32oh yes, when I die, I hope you're there.
05:35You'll make things better.
05:36It'll be okay.
05:39That thing, I don't care that it took us a thousand auditions
05:47to get to Kirby because we got Kirby at the end
05:51and it's like, okay, that thing is the thing that we wanted.
05:54That feeling of speaking truth,
05:56that feeling of being the person at the end
06:00that you love and you care for,
06:02the person you would like to imagine,
06:06was there for your child, for your parent,
06:09for your sibling, for your loved one at the end.
06:13I thought about giving up,
06:16but I have a job to do it and I do it.
06:19Well, what I think is beautiful about all of our episodes
06:24is whether you see a character for a single episode
06:27or for multiple, each of these episodes stands alone.
06:31They're almost like short films.
06:33So, you know, there are no small players in this.
06:39It's absolutely not about screen time in something like this.
06:43There is a magnitude and a weight
06:45to every single character that is in The Sandman
06:49and fans of The Sandman will know that.
06:50New fans, people who have figured out Sandman
06:54through this show will see that,
06:56that every single character,
06:58no matter how long you see them, has such weight.
07:01So to me, it is a case of absolute quality over quantity.
07:08And thinking about the representation of Lucifer,
07:15I mean, like Kirby's been saying about portraying death,
07:18it's a concept.
07:20You know, Lucifer is the epitome of evil.
07:23But for me, what the comics did so beautifully
07:25was that they presented a very human quality.
07:30So you believe that was a person.
07:32You could see it.
07:33You could see all the complexities and the conflicts,
07:36the internal conflicts,
07:37the wonderful thing that Neil does so well,
07:39which he just turns things on their head.
07:41It's the thing you least expect.
07:44And I wanted to be really, we all did,
07:47wanted to be really faithful to the comics.
07:49But at the same time,
07:50it was thrilling to be able to actually bring
07:54my interpretation, what the comics had given me,
07:58what had fired in my imagination through reading them,
08:01through talking to Neil,
08:02looking at Neil's original source material,
08:05and also looking at my own range of material.
08:08And Lucifer's a part I played before on stage years ago,
08:13and I'd always wanted to revisit it.
08:14So this was like a kind of glorious opportunity
08:18to explore something about evil,
08:21which is extremely relevant in our modern world.
08:24Tell us what power of dreams in hell.
08:29No, but it really was.
08:30That's what's unbelievable about this production,
08:33is that everything, I mean, beyond the impossible,
08:37was built.
08:39So the first thing that came to my head was hell.
08:42It was extraordinary to be inside Lucifer's lair.
08:46And, you know, that floor was stone.
08:49Those columns were marble.
08:50The murals were painted on the walls.
08:52The fire burnt your face.
08:54And, you know, it's such a difficult thing
08:57when you do a job like this,
08:58the kind of leaps of imagination that are required.
09:02And what was so special was that the production design team
09:07and everyone involved made those leaps so much smaller
09:11than they needed to be because they made it.
09:15And, yeah, I mean, the first thing that came into my head
09:19was hell.
09:21And there wasn't genuinely, I don't think,
09:25one piece of green screen in that sequence
09:29that I worked with,
09:32other than, like, maybe sitting outside a window or something.
09:35And that was just, it's just,
09:38it's incredibly easy to tell the truth
09:41when you can touch the truth.
09:43Yeah, it's a gift, isn't it?
09:45In my case, selfishly, because we went,
09:49we were down in Surrey, I think it was,
09:51in a sort of quarry for one of the final scenes
09:54of episode 10, where I get turned into something
09:58that is a spoiler alert.
10:00And it was in, it was on one of the hottest days
10:03we had that year.
10:04It was not the hottest day.
10:05And as you probably noticed,
10:06I wear an entirely green, thick tweed waistcoat,
10:11and cape, and hat, and moustache.
10:15And I, it was very hard to think of anything
10:18other than wanting to dive into an ice bath.
10:21So the secret is,
10:24oh, the agony, gentlemen, ladies,
10:27the agony of having to perform.
10:30Didn't you find that?
10:31But we coped, didn't we?
10:32Because we had very kind people giving us fans.
10:35But you, and you had some great locations
10:37to work in as well.
10:38Yeah.
10:40We, the first location that we filmed at,
10:45on my first day, which was the scene
10:49where we arrived in England to see Unity.
10:52And it was a gorgeous, gorgeous big building.
10:55And I think that was just,
10:57it was so nice to just like look at it.
10:59I love old buildings.
11:00So it was just a real treat.
11:04I just had the weirdest dream.