#and david tennant and michael sheen too because their acting is what has me all hisjwbgkwownsjjtnwoahfjeid

[spider-avenger22]

Little Good Omens Headcanon of mine:

We know that Gabriel's eyes are a vibrant purple in Good Omens. Some theorize thay his eyes are purple because he's supposed to represent the most beautiful man, and the most beautiful woman, Elizabeth Taylor, also had violet eyes. Others theorize it has to do with being the Supreme Archangel of heaven.

I think it's both to a degree.

See, I theorize that Gabriel thinks very highly of himself, maybe even to a narcissistic degree. We can see that as he admires the statue of himself in the cemetery. He saw himself in someone who was valued as "the most beautiful," and so when he was appointed as Supreme Archangel, his status manifested in the color purple. Purple eyes and a purple accent color (his tie). It reflects a form of love or an angel equivalent.

I've seen people draw Supreme Archangel Aziraphale with purple eyes, and while I think that looks cool, I don't think that's what his eyes would look like.

In Season 2 episode 3, Aziraphale is driving Crowley's Bentley, and we see that it's yellow. He finds fondness and comfort in the color. And the Bentley doesn't mind either, considering it was content with Aziraphale and his driving style and preferences.

Now, what else is yellow in the show?

Crowley's eyes.

And when do we see Crowley's eyes the most?

With Aziraphale in his bookshop, the only place the demon feels comfortable to expose his eyes when in the presence of others.

So my theory is that when Aziraphale is officially appointed as the new Supreme Archangel, his eyes will shine yellow, the same yellow as Crowley's eyes. He'll probably have an accessory that is also yellow (tie, scarf, something) like Gabriel did with his tie. It will not only show his new elevated status but his devotion and still cherished love of Crowley even if they're on terrible terms at this point.

Imagine how off-putting that would be to the other angels, too. Here is this heathen, this human lover, this demon conspirator, now appointed to the highest position an angel, and his eyes are just like of the fallen one. The demon he's spent so much time with has obviously imprinted on Aziraphale in such a capacity that, even though he chose Heaven, the demon is still with him. He's been influenced so deeply that it reflects in his angelic nature.

[fuckyeahgoodomens]

From the podcast Where There's A Will, There's A Wake where Kathy Burke 'invites guests to see their death brought to life, as they plan their final days.' Episode with Michael Sheen :) (x)

Kathy: Let’s say if you were... let's say you’re were doing a new series of Good Omens with the great David Tennant-

Michael: Well, I don’t know about the 'great', but okay. With David Tennant, yeah.

Kathy: Who would replace you? I mean, who would put up with him, do you think?

Michael: I know. I mean, I’m loath to say it, but really, he should play both parts in it.

Kathy: Oh, okay.

Michael: Because originally we were... originally I was when I first... so Neil Gaiman, who wrote the original book with Terry Pratchett that the series was based on, when I first started talking to Neil about it, when he told me that he was going to do it, originally we talked about me playing the other part, the part David played. And one of the sort of things about us doing it is we’d never really acted opposite each other before because we’d usually be up for the same parts for many, many years so there's like... I mean it was... I think it was sort of between me and him for Casanova - when he did Casanova. I mean, he’s far too egotistical to let me know the parts I got over him but I, you know, I... there we are, that shows what the relationship is like - I’m quite happy to say the part that he got over me. But... so the fact that we were together in this was quite unusual, because normally we would be playing the same part. So that’s quite good in a way that... because they’re both... they’re sort of light and shade of the same person in a way. So once I did pop my clogs, maybe he would have to then... you know the way they do it, like... do you remember that film Dead Ringers where Jeremy Irons played twins? I mean it happens all the time now but that was the first time I've seen it. So I’d quite like to see David playing both parts. And it would be his homage to me.”

...

(and this one has a video! :))

Kathy: And talking about people that you wouldn't want there, who's just gonna fucking turn up anyway... I think you've got this person to do your eulogy, have you not?

Michael: Oh, God. I mean, yeah. There's no way around it.

David's voice: Michael Sheen... The dear departed Michael Sheen. What... what can I say about him that he didn't say about himself? Erm. Not much. Listen, he wasn't to everyone's taste, but I always quite liked him. He was the best in his price range. Without him, the world is a lot less... Welsh. Goodbye, Michael.

Kathy: Well, that was very short and very sweet. It was perfect. Thank you, David Tennant.

[thealogie]

picture this. you're michael sheen, beloved queer-friendly welsh actor and recent twilight saga vampire. you want your favorite book to become a tv show, and you want to be the lead. so what do you do? you befriend the author. he wines and dines you, you become a confidant in the scriptwriting phase. and in the process of the GO script you decide you don't want to be crowley, actually, you want to be aziraphale. you put in the work for months to influence the author to the same conclusion. so when neil gaiman comes to you one day saying, "i know you joined on to be crowley... but how would you feel about playing aziraphale?" you say, what a novel idea! i was feeling the same way, i just didn't want to say anything! let's do it.

you're michael sheen, the lead in the adaptation of your favorite book. you meet david tennant as your leading man, a rising star (and vocal fan of yours) you've had a few vague interactions with in the past. on set you immediately find the closest friend you have ever and will ever find in your life, and you know this. the romance you have in your (yes, your) show is ambiguous, but you're michael sheen. you think that romance needs to be explicit. so what do you do? you become a nightmare on set. you get really hands-on; you make costume choices, you make story decisions, you tell your author friend at the very end of filming: aziraphale is in love with crowley and realizes it in 1941. now go do it again.

so the author goes and does it again. you get a season 2. you get 1941 part 2. you're michael sheen, and you are the lead of the adaptation of your favorite book, and the romance you littered into the character you built from the ground up has become unambiguous. everything goes according to plan. but, you see, you have a problem: the author you have baby trapped is acting a FIEND on twitter and tumblr. he's saying everything he can to imply aziraphale and crowley aren't sexually attracted to each other. he's getting a bit too bold with his character assumptions, is all i'm saying. so here's what you're going to do: you play it up with your pal david tennant. you made a show with him during lockdown. you're going to depict your lives as even more intertwined and homoerotically codependent as previously possible. you grow even closer. your wives become best friends, too, because how could they not? this has been the plan since the beginning, too. your lockdown show ends. it wasn't enough.

so you, michael sheen, of course you put in the work. if david tennant's there, you're damn sure you're there physically, spiritually, biblically, in whatever capacity you can be. it's not hard. david tennant is a big fan of yours, after all, so he MAKES SURE you're always in the conversation. you have him wrapped around your little finger, this lovely little boy, and so you know what you do next? you become neighbors. you make your directorial debut casting your best friend's wife watching her husband and male neighbor initiate sex with each other. you play into the swinging rumors (that you, michael sheen, had started). you create a narrative that you and david tennant are two homoerotic besties, and is there more going on in the background there? any deeper conspiracy? who really knows, but what you do know is that the world is talking about it.

and you, michael sheen, your entire acting career has led to this moment, your gay quips, your oscar wilde sex scene (and the interviews following), all of your queer roles, EVERYTHING has brought us to this conclusion. you have created the lab perfect conditions where season 3 must have an explicit gay sex scene. i'm sorry neil, my hands are tied! the people are clamoring for me and david tennant to have sex-- i mean aziraphale and crowley to have sex, the public decided this all on their own! i really don't think you have much choice. but of course, i would never deign to tell an author how to practice his veritable craft. i concede to whatever version of series 3 you create, and i will happy to bring this beloved character to his deserved ending.

and why do you say this? because you're michael sheen. you're just an actor who incidentally stumbled his way into leading the queer romance adaptation of your favorite book that wasn't a romance, and you just read the script the way that it was given to you. and if series 3 means an explicit sex scene between you and your best friend david tennant, then what a lovely coincidence that you had absolutely no part in making happen. because what power do you really have?

This is my favorite book I’ve read so far this year. A rare occasion where the author pulls off use of the second person pov. I really felt like I was a beloved welsh actor crossed with Machiavelli when I read this

[lauranthalasah]

Listen, Michael Sheen is an acting beast, we all know this, but what David Tennant is managing with Crowley, with half the time his eyes completely covered, having to use his voice and whole body expression to convey the subtleties of the character, the silences, the changes of tone, the small posture indications? It's a master class in acting! He could have chosen to go BIG to show it all, but so many times what he does is the other way around. That last scene with the two of them is fantastic! Michael is giving us all he has, and David has been showing eyes and voice work, and then he covers his eyes and that informs us too, about what the character is going through. But the scene continues, and now Crowley has his eyes covered, we should be having less from him than from Aziraphale, but we get so damn much! The work is so fucking subtle and at the same time it seems like he is screaming to us, that little sight after the "I forgive you"?! It killed me! The tone of his voice in the "I think I understand a whole lot better than you"??!!! AAAAHHHHHHH! The blank face when he is waiting by the side of the car, how he watches Aziraphale go, he stays there and watches until Aziraphale gets into that elevator, because he has to actually see his friend leaving him for good. His face while he is driving away... we see Aziraphale trying to smile through his breaking heart, trying to create this front, this mask. But Crowley looks dead, completely resigned, this is his lot in life, no matter what he does, he will always be wrong, or not enough, or whatever, he has been trying to get a friend for the last 6000 years, but he is not with Heaven, and he is not with Hell, and now he is not with Aziraphale either, he is destined to be alone, on his own, little, lonely side, and he has accepted it. IT FUCKING HURT! And it is all in a dead expression. David Tennant it's playing Crowley with his damn soul, man!

[icyolive]

IMO Crowley's brief "how long have you two been together" conversation with Nina was extremely important to the end of the season. This is where he puts two and two together, or at least what leads him to it. He already knew how he felt about Aziraphale; Aziraphale is his best friend, his only friend, His Person. (He says it outright and unapologetically several times in both seasons!) He already knew what human love is (although not the specifics of how to have a healthy relationship).

But it wasn't until Nina asked the usual human "couple questions"--so nonchalantly, so easily, not really even entertaining the idea that they could be not together--that he put those two previously unrelated thoughts together and started to realize they were very very similar.

Sure, he denied it--after all, it wasn't true, not exactly the way she was implying. But that's the face of someone realizing on a fundamental level... it's also not not true. If you take the extremely human concept of sex out of their relationship (something that's not strictly even required amongst humans!) it's preeeettty similar. He knew she was implying a different sort of relationship, but he also knew those questions did actually apply to him and Aziraphale.

As someone who had to be informed by friends that they were dating their now spouse.... that conversation with Nina is the "what? no." that comes right before the "ohhhhhhhhhhhh."

I don't think this significantly changed how he feels about Aziraphale, but it changed how he understands his feelings.

He's wanted to be around Aziraphale for years and years... but 'we're friends, let's hang out' hits a lot differently from 'I love you, I think you love me too, please be with me.'

If the Metatron hadn't interrupted, I don't think there would have been a kiss, at least not for a while; that kiss was such a desperate act, and didn't follow Crowley's usual pattern of gently offering temptations. But it wouldn't have happened without that conversation with Nina, either. Comparing their relationship to a human romantic relationship gave Crowley a new (physical! still physical! use your damned words!) vocabulary to express how deeply he feels for Aziraphale. And he used it in a last ditch effort to get Aziraphale to give up the charade and choose them.

And Aziraphale? He has such a beautifully complex reaction to the kiss because (in addition to the fundamental upheaval their relationship is suddenly going through) he too had never framed their relationship like that. He has that "ohhhhhhhhh, is this--?," right on camera, over a few short seconds, in the middle of an already emotionally charged argument, and out of the two of them, he's the one experiencing a whole lot of cognitive dissonance over the whole "friends with the enemy" thing. So there's this beautiful succession of emotions, anger and desperation and then he touches his lips and oh, but he's still angry and scared and rejected, too.

Anyway, enjoy this wall of text based on two split-second confused expressions performed by David Tennant and Michael Sheen, A++ acting.

[wrengrif]

Are we ready? It's Time...

For more GOOD OMENS WILD META.

I have been chewing on this one for awhile. Like, really ruminating on it. Probably because it's so far-reaching. For me, for others. It's a matter of the Journey From The Final Fifteen.

I will openly admit it, when I first came off the Final Fifteen, sometime in August/September (yeah, I was so worried about Season 2 I didn't watch it for a month after it came out and I realized I was right to do so.). I was, and still am, heartbroken. I was angry, despairing and wondering what the point of an ending like that was. I was angry at Neil Gaiman, I was angry at all the creators behind Good Omens. I was angry at Aziraphale, first, and then after about five minutes, I was angry at Crowley too.

Note, I was never mad at David Tennant or Michael Sheen. I respected their acting choices so much in the Final Fifteen. It was beautiful. It ripped my soul out through my chest. They are both brilliant. I know everyone has their favorite GO counterparts - they are mine.

Then a funny thing happened. A few weeks passed. I started fumbling around Good Omens Tumblr again. I'd been a big contributor during Detroit: Become Human (of which I am still a HUGE FAN, god I love that game.), and until Good Omens 2 came out, I was on the side of Good Omens fandom. Reading, mostly, but at the time I was very deep into my Wangxian fixation (haaaaah, I say, like I have ever left it. My dream AU is Aziraphale and Crowley in the Sunshot Campaign, causing trouble with Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian.). That changed after Final Fifteen. Now I was hurt, I was looking for comfort. I was looking for my fellow fans.

Clearly, I found you, you gorgeous bastards (saying nothing about your moms, unless you want me to). I started to read more meta, started having my own thoughts and carefully posting them. Reading fanfiction, and ... becoming less angry. Stepping back, to really look at the story. I was swallowing content like Aziraphale swallowed ox ribs. In the midst of this, I realized this wasn't The End of Good Omens, but merely the second part of a Trilogy. I'm a writer, I know what the second part of a trilogy is. It's where your heart breaks, it's the cliffhanger episode. I stopped being mad, and started loving the craft. I started to actually look at the scenes instead of just watching.

With that, I started to realize I had been missing so much. I realized I had been wrong, about a lot of things. My perspectives, and thoughts changed. Aziraphale wasn't at fault, he was a victim of the situation as much as Crowley was. Crowley left the bookshop, but he never left Aziraphale. He waited. He's still waiting. As more time passed, the more my thoughts evolved. Changed, formed anew, and I felt better for it. I decided to be hopeful about the whole thing. Yes, it was bad now, but there were enough signs and easter eggs to say this wasn't the ending we were going to get.

I healed, in short. I forgave. I'm waiting for our next chapter, because I know this story isn't done, not by a long shot. I'm waiting to see how our heroes will cope.

Rather like, I think, Aziraphale and Crowley will. The initial pain is going to fade, the anger, the feeling of rejection (whereas they will some day realize neither one of them were in fact, rejected.). The longing is going to kick in. They're going to miss one another more than they will ever be angry. There's going to be moments of grace, of forgiveness, partnered with sadness. What I think we forget, sometimes, is that Aziraphale and Crowley are 6000 years old. They've fought before. They'll fight again. With the fullness of time though, they'll come back to one another. They'll talk again.

Right now though, they've had time. Time to hopefully process (I really, really hope Aziraphale has had SOME time to process), time let the anger fade a little. Maybe not enough time - some of us here still need time - but enough to let them wonder ... is it really over? Maybe to realize, no. No it's not.

Time doesn't heal all wounds, but time does allow you to find equilibrium. I hope time will do the same for our angel and our demon. I know time helped me. I hope time will help us all.

[marley-manson]

okay the full review in a pros and cons list lol

pros:

uh my ship canon. i win, motherfuckers. fuckin 15 year old me was right this whole time, as always, but it's nice to see it acknowledged for once.

the confession scene also just kicked ass tbh

i gotta admire the cheekiness of the back and forth hesitant phrasing of their relationship, eg crowley referring to '...us' and aziraphale's 'i need you!' 'we can be together' etc until finally crowley just runs back to kiss him

and you know aziraphale was about to say 'i love you' before cutting himself off <3

touching his lips after too <3

the reasons for the break up felt reasonable to me and justified with the season's flashbacks to crowley questioning things and aziraphale's resistance

some pretty funny jokes, i laughed outloud a few times

michael sheen and david tennant do have excellent chemistry

never gonna say no to side lesbians even if they were incredibly bland

i think the way it was structured like a fanfic was a pro honestly lol. the plot sucked, i don't care about it, so it's nice that the story itself also doesn't care

amnesiac gabriel was endearing

crowley not kiling goats was cute

ty tennant was in it for about a minute and spent that minute hitting on aziraphale and it was fucking bonkers

no het

like i think job and his wife may have literally been the sole exception including like references to offscreen spouses lmao, i'm v impressed, and if this is penance for last season then i forgive.

i thought it was cute that gaiman incorporated the song he wanted for season 1 into this season as a plot point

beelzebub's new actor was so much better. and the flies were somehow kinda cute, i'll give the gabriel/beelzebub ship that.

good old fashioned lover boy. we all wanted it, they gave it to us, i appreciate it

here's my review: gay enough

cons:

mostly sucked as like, a narrative

tennant's fucking performance as crowley was so annoying, he or the director doubled down on what i hated last season and stripped him of all the endearing humanizing aspects of his performance and the result was like watching donald duck screaming for 6 episodes

the chemistry was still there but the actual pining kiiiiinda wasn't, actually lol. oh they referred to it in scripted moments, jokes, parallels, and straightforward statements, but they didn't... show it, particularly. until the confession nothing even approaches the tenderness and emotion of like any of their season 1 scenes, let alone the car scene or the bus stop scene or the ritz or the french revolution rescue or the blitz or eden etc etc. and david tennant did not say one word in that cute hopeful pining tone

to be honest after watching the whole show this is the most disappointing part. like the car scene??? could i not get a sequel to that? let crowley be tender!!!!

i think the reason we don't get scenes like that, other than perhaps uncomfortable restraint due to acknowledging the romance textually, is that they went from crowley practically begging aziraphale to cave and fuck him for centuries to crowley now angry repressed and needing a push to say anything, which also felt wrong to me, like iffy fanfic characterization

it was bad enough that i was nervous they were going to depict neither as actually aware of their feelings. thankfully they did not, and it still feels like crowley has been pining for a thousand years and they've both been aware but dancing around it, with the way the confession was phrased. that should be a pro, actually.

also yk all the obvious things. dumb jokes, a lot of bad acting (i feel like the director is at fault though tbf), not into the twee tone in general for the most part, a lot of scenes that were way too drawn out, utterly nonsensical narrative, characters doing things for no reason other than convenience constantly (why do the lesbians stay to help fight the demons? because their characters are more important and need more screen time), 0 stakes wrt heaven and hell because they're all so wholly ineffectual as antagonists and neither crowley nor aziraphale ever gave a shit about their threats, etc etc

oh lol nina sosanya being cast again as a brand new character, no relation to sister mary loquacious. it's not a big con since i like her and was happy to see her again, but it did feel lazy lol. at least give me the identical twin cousin explanation

was crowley living out of his car a joke bc they don't have the set from last season? did god not restore his flat like the bookshop? what's up with that? and how much time has passed since last season anyway? why didn't he get a new flat? why is he living in his car? what's going on?

nightingale references at the end felt tacked on and awkward to me tbh

ohhhhh raphael!crowley's very obviously hinted at and i hate that headcanon :/

crowley's kinda hilariously gary stuish honestly, making me really miss the book and even season 1 where he was like, yk, fucking incompetent sometimes. here he's lounging on couches without a care while being threatened by heaven and hell multiple times, pulling off perfect shots with no practice, waltzing into heaven without a second thought, bluffing demons easily and successfully, etc. and that's in addition to being right about everything and also being raphael like what happened to my dumbass low-level loser fave who fucked up the apocalypse by accident and lived in terror of phone calls from hell???

heaven and hell are "toxic" lol? that phrasing is so awkward, and like, i'd say minimizing but i guess tbf they didn't pose much of a threat in this season. but still c'mon, why you describing 2 murderous doomsday cults/cold warring governments as toxic like they're your annoying ex? especially after the running gag about nina's shitty girlfriend constantly therapy speaking at her condescendingly lol. how about 'hey remember how they worked together to try to kill us last season?'

oh gabriel/beelzebub of course lol, whatever happened to neil gaiman being unable to read fanfic or even people's headcanon posts for fear of accidentally plagiarizing ideas? bring back the separation between fandom and creator stat, fandom has way too much influence here and fandom fucking sucks

a little petty but honestly the kiss could've been good, yk? there's no reason it had to be bad, they could've just given into it for a bit for a hopeful romantic moment before aziraphale freaks and pulls away. like can i get 2 dudes to kiss with tongue at some point on my television here?

needs more queen

[miss-edith-cushing]

For the Good Omens ask game: 1, 9, 15, 24! :)

Aaaaaahhhhh, thank you so much for asking these questions!! Sorry for responding so late to them, I swear I enjoy them very much!

1. when did you first watch/discover good omens, and how did you find out about it?

I saw the trailer for it somewhere around November 2018 and thought 'Huh, this seems unique, and it has David Tennant in it, I might check that out'. And then I've forgotten about it completely. Then after the premiere of season 1 my dashboard was completely full of it, like, I can't remember how many people I've followed back then, but 90% of them were posting and reblogging posts about it. So I remembered that I wanted to watch it anyway, did it in the course of one week and the rest is history.

9. Have you seen any other work by david tennant and/or michael sheen?

Yes, yes, yes! I was aware of DT as a Tumblr's sexyman, but I first saw him in Jessica Jones, which I also watched because of the posts on my dash, and I became a little obsessed with him for a while. I've seen Casanova (if you guys haven't seen it, do it, it's so freaking good), You, Me and Him, Broadchurch, Bad Samaritan, Des and Inside Man. In my opinion he has a very uneven career when it comes to the quality of the projects he's involved in, which is surprising, but not uncommon (Peter O'Toole is the best example of it). But he always gives his 1000000% and I can't remember not enjoying seeing him performing.

I saw quite a few films with Michael Sheen and liked him before Good Omens, but never to the point of being a fan. I first saw him in The Queen or in Frost/Nixon, then in Midnight in Paris and Nocturnal Animals. Oh, and in the Twilight Saga obviously! Then after Good Omens I've watched Underworld, Wilde, Far From the Madding Crowd, and Prodigal Son. I'm planning to get back to watching Masters of Sex, he's so good in it. He's an acting chameleon and I don't that before Good Omens the fact that he's all those characters ever clicked in my head

Oh, and Staged! Obviously!

15. Do you have any good omens playlists?

I'm a dinosaur and I don't use Spotify or Youtube to listen to my music; there was one Good Omens related playlist that @racketghost created for @mochacoffee fic Call Me Your Angel (that was the name of the playlist too), but it's not on Spotify anymore. I've recreated it on my iPod, so I can't share it anymore, but I'll try to bully Racko to make it again.

24. what's a theory for season 3 that you NEED to be included?

My theory (which for me isn't even a theory, it's just so obvious I can't imagine it not being included in season 3) is that Metatron will try to erase Crowley from the Book of Life and that's what will make Aziraphale rebel against Heaven again; the same can happen to Aziraphale or to them both.

I would also LOVE to know what's up with Crowley not remembering some of the other angels and demons and why does he have passwords for Heaven's files (personally I would hate it if he turned out to be Raphael or was some another Heaven's VIP, I'm just curious about it).

EDIT: I just have stumbled upon gifs from Fright Night and yes, I've seen it too. How could I forget it? I have very good reasons to remember this film fondly, very, very good reasons.

[theonevoice]

Rumination n. 2 - About Fallen Angel

One aspect of Good Omens that I don’t see as much praised as the amazing writing of Neil Gaiman and the unbelievable performances of Michael Sheen and David Tennant, but I find crucial to the gut-wrenching beauty of this second season in particular, is the wonderful soundtrack by David Arnold.

The music of this show is just brilliant, to a point where it feels almost arrogant for me to point it out, like it would sound weird if someone came out of the blue saying “You know, that Beethoven guy is actually rather nice”. So I will just pick one single track that, to me, summarizes how much the soundtrack helps carry the weight of the story, packing layers over layers on each scene and adding to the writing and the acting an extra expressive space that can be filled with even more facets of the main themes.

I’m thinking in particular of the scene at the end of ep. 2, with the pivotal dialogue that, for the first time, really cement the alliance between Crowley and Aziraphale as two individuals who are not entirely conforming to the expectations of their respective sides. By the time this dialogue rolls in, something massive has just happened: each of them has been caught red-handed by the other, doing and feeling things that negate their respective “company policies”. Crowley has been found out not wanting to destroy Job’s goats, let alone kill his children, and Aziraphale has been found out unable to endorse the dire implications of the Bet. Lucky them, this all happened between the two of them, nobody else is involved or informed, and this reciprocity allows them to pause for a moment and start reflecting on their situation. We know, of course, that this moment was waiting to happen since the conversation on the wall of Eden, when Aziraphale is visibly touched by the slightest sliver of doubt (his expression tells us that what Crowley is saying about God putting the Tree in such a prominent spot, as if to induce temptation on purpose, does make a point, despite him not wanting to speculate, possibly because he remembers all too well how dangerous it is to ask questions in Heaven), and since their meeting before the flood, when Crowley realizes that he doesn’t like the perspective of having innocent people killed, which is not a strictly demon-like thing to feel (and he knows it because his comment about the indiscriminate extermination of everyone via the flood is “this is more the kind of thing that you would expect my lot to do”, which, transitive property applied, means that he is upset about at least some of the things that Hell throws at the earth). But the Job encounter is the first time that all of this has actually been said (more or less) out loud by both of them.

So what about the music?

The track playing with the final dialogue is titled Fallen Angel, and I find that there is something heartbreaking in it. Yes, of course, it is a quote from Aziraphale’s line, when he desperately refers to himself as “a fallen angel”, but “fallen angel” is also what Crowley is, despite what he himself would like to think.

We talk a lot about how much Aziraphale is the one in constant denial – denial of Heaven’s dark sides, denial of his own sometimes shaky moral stance (let’s not forget that, between the Arthurian period and the meeting at the Globe, he has agreed to go around tempting people on behalf of Crowley, which means quite literally doing Hell’s work), most of all denial of his own feelings – and this is certainly true. But I feel that we should also recognize how much Crowley is in denial in his own way, specifically denial of the traces that his original angelic nature has left behind. Or rather, of those parts of angelic nature that he held on to even after being cast to Hell. Now, as much as I love the interpretation of their last exchange in ep. 6 as Aziraphale offering to “change Heaven for him” rather than asking him to change for Heaven, I still think that Aziraphale has been forcing on Crowley a distorted still-an-angel portrait because in doing so he is blocking out at least some of his internal struggle (and this “weakness”, in my opinion, makes his character even more vivid and lifelike). But I also think that Crowley’s angry reactions to having his chosen identity denied by the only person in the universe that is dear to him are tinted by the trauma of the Fall.

And the music in that scene, I believe, is telling us just that. Of all the tracks in season 2, I find Fallen Angel to be the most melancholy one together with The End?, and possibly even sadder: because The End? starts playing when both us viewers and the protagonists are in a literal, I would say almost medical state of shock, unable to master the emotional resources needed to process what just happened. Fallen Angel on the contrary is a desperately calm moment of reflection on what their situation in the universe is, on how their respective cages are hurting them, and how painfully hard it is to summon the courage to escape them, to even think of escaping them. It seems to me that even the set choice confirms this mood: after an entire episode spent almost exclusively in closed, sometimes claustrophobic spaces, they are finally “outside”, on the top of a cliff (like when they briefly met at the beginning of the episode, but now the dry canyon is a beautiful gulf), watching a calm blue sea under a calm blue sky: everything is wide open, vast, unobstructed, with no living thing around as if they are alone in the universe, their thoughts and fears can flow freely and unrestricted. And in this moment of honesty, when they for the first time open up to each other, we have Fallen Angel, which is not just sad, is also nostalgic. But how and why can it be nostalgic? If the title only refers to Aziraphale, nostalgia makes no sense, because his feelings in those moments are feelings of desperation and angst. But if the title refers to both of them, then it does make sense, because nostalgia is the pain of something that has been lost, and while Aziraphale has not lost anything yet, sitting next to him there is someone who has lost something that cannot entirely be forgotten. Surely, one could say that by now Aziraphale has lost his original “innocence”, but I would argue that, on the wall of Eden, having just given away the flaming sword, he was already letting that sliver of doubt creep in, and he was definitely not comfortable with discussing the flood. Furthermore, telling his first lie counts as a loss (of innocence and peace of mind) no more than it counts as a gain (of awareness, freedom, and self-actualization). On the other side, Crowley was denied the chance to work his situation out in such a safe space. He just lost his original status over asking questions.

If Aziraphale is in denial of the traits of his personality that make him not entirely angelic, Crowley is equally – if not more – in denial of the traits of his personality that still link him to an ideal of good that is, or at least should be angelical. And it is a quite visible denial. He is annoyed by the smallest allusion to his good qualities, but as soon as he lets his guard down he goes back to remembering that he “didn’t mean to fall”, just “hung around the wrong people”, that he “didn’t really fall”, just “sauntered vaguely downwards”. That’s why Fallen Angel can be nostalgic. It’s not just about Aziraphale contemplating for a moment that he could be (or deserve to become) a fallen angel, but it’s also about the actual fallen angel sitting next to him, who, as much as he wants to paint himself as tranquil and satisfied with his situation, is still aching from the absolute pain and terror that he felt when he was cast out of Heaven. He used to be, after all, the angel that we see before the Beginning: he was so sure that just asking questions could not get him into trouble, he had no intention of rebelling or leaving. This – obviously – does not mean that Crowley is still an angel or wants by any means to go back to being an angel: he could never go back to that, exactly because he has experienced too much grief to be ever able to fit in the narrow mould of an angel again, to be able to just bask in the joyous light of God’s will in the unshaken certainty that it is entirely Good and Just and Forgiving. He has first-hand experienced that it can be cruel and unjust and unforgiving. He has forged and conquered an identity of his own, but it is an identity born out of the pain of not having a place to belong. He had to carve out a new path for himself, he didn’t mean to, he barely realized that it was about to fall (“didn’t have anything on the rest of the afternoon… next thing I was doing a million light year freestyle dive into a pull of boiling sulfur”).

So let’s look at what is happening from Crowley’s point of view. There you have an angel that has just violated the Heavenly code of conduct, and he is so pure of heart that he is just going to turn himself in to a blind and vindictive authority. If he let him go ahead, there is a chance that this could give him a fellow “demon who goes along with Hell as far as he can”, but at what cost? If Aziraphale’s conflict is a conflict between living by his own independent judgment (which includes choosing Crowley over obedience to Heaven) and staying true to the side “of good, of truth, of light”, Crowley’s conflict is a conflict between the need to escape solitude by pulling Aziraphale to his side and saving Aziraphale from the trauma that the Fall gave him and that being fallen still gives him.

A couple of millennia later he will joke about how being damned “is not so bad when you get used to it”, but Fallen Angel playing under this dialogue in ep. 2 tells us that he would never put Aziraphale through what being damned really means. He is a demon who is actually saving an angel from the risk of becoming a demon himself, because he knows how deeply and irreparably that can wound your soul, to the point that you would rather lie than admit it. “I’m a demon, I lied”: I know what it means to be in this place, don’t drag yourself here, it’s a realm of exile and loneliness, let’s agree that an angel can still be an angel even if he steps out of line from time to time, let’s create a margin of maneuver that did not exist when all this happened to me. Now it’s too late for me, but not for you.

So, to wrap up, thank you David Arnold for your invaluable work.

[rainbowpopeworld]

Here’s the whole article, for those who want it without the paywall:

Good Omens’ Michael Sheen and David Tennant — TV’s new odd couple

by Dan Einav MAY 31 2019

The words “apocalypse”, “Antichrist” and “demon” are not exactly synonymous with romance, but for Michael Sheen the new TV series Good Omens is largely defined by the “same material that underpins romantic comedies”. The actor is alluding to the fact that the six-part adaptation of Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett’s beloved Armageddon-set novel revolves around the unlikely relationship between his character, Aziraphale, an effete and eccentric angel, and the Satanic nogoodnik Crowley, played by David Tennant, as they conspire to prevent an end-of-days battle between Heaven and Hell.

I meet Sheen and Tennant in a fittingly infernally overheated room in a London hotel. For Sheen, the two supernatural beings they play are “the ultimate odd couple”, who have sustained a friendship over six millennia despite everything indicating that they should be mortal (or rather immortal) enemies. Not only because they embody the dichotomy between good and evil, but because they are essentially cosmic versions of the bickering, codependent pair played by Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau in the film Sheen references.

Aziraphale is the prim and proper one, modelling himself on an 18th-century dandy, while Crowley is impish and louche, more like a faded rock star than a disseminator of iniquity. They are unapologetically hammy roles — unlike the meatier ones in which the two actors have excelled in the likes of Frost/Nixon, The Damned United (Sheen), Broadchurch (Tennant) and Hamlet (both) — that could have felt contrived if it weren’t for the lively on-screen rapport the two have cultivated.

Their compatibility as a comedy double act is especially impressive considering that they had never shared a scene or stage before. When I ask how they set about creating a chemistry that we’re to believe has developed over 6,000 years, both are quick to deflect attention from their efforts, conferring praise instead on Gaiman, who wrote the scripts for all six episodes. “The chemistry is on the page. Those characters feel alive when you read them”, Tennant says, “[the rest] is being responsive to the person you’re playing with.”

This receptiveness is clear when we meet. Sounds of approval from one punctuate answers given by the other, and appreciative laughter meets every quip. Occasionally they bypass me altogether, directing their responses to each other. They’re terrific actors, so you never know, but this closeness feels entirely genuine.

Seeing this friendship in action I wonder whether they’d had a notably enjoyable shoot, one that made it difficult to heed the advice a young Sheen was once given by the venerable actor and director Fiona Shaw, to be careful not to enjoy himself too much.

“He’s not taken Fiona’s advice!” Tennant chuckles gleefully, but Sheen insists that he does indeed follow Shaw’s gentle admonition to this day. “Here’s the trick: you want people to think you’re having a good time, and we were, but the worst thing is seeing people enjoying themselves too much in the wrong way. It’s our job to make it look like there’s a sense of playfulness and life. What Fiona was getting at is ‘don’t enjoy your [own performance] too much’, don’t let it become indulgent.”

Tennant agrees. For him, it’s lighter roles in particular that demand a considered deftness, even if the characters are as cartoonish as they are in Good Omens. “Trying to make a soufflé can be harder than making sourdough!” he says, visibly pleased with his analogy, before continuing. “The death of comedy is when you start being terribly aware of funny lines. You just have to key into it and keep it real. The minute I try just to be funny is the death of it”.

But Sheen dismisses such self-effacement: “[David] has an innate sense of comic timing,” he assures me. Anyone who saw Tennant’s Hamlet for the RSC in 2008 will already know how skilled he is at disarming audiences by injecting unexpected humour into moments of gravity. “That’s the human experience isn’t it?” says Tennant. “We’re always trying to find the light in everything we can, because otherwise the monotony will take over”.

Despite sending up weighty themes such as religion and morality, Good Omens is at its sharpest when it focuses on the supernatural beings as they immerse themselves — even revel in — the relative banality of human life. They team up to save the world from destruction because they’ve grown fond of all its small delights: gravlax and Glyndebourne for Aziraphale; fast cars and the Velvet Underground for Crowley — far more appetising than anything transcendental. In fact, they are so attached to each other because they don’t quite belong on earth or with their peers in Heaven and Hell.

I put it to Sheen and Tennant that the celestial could be compared to celebrity, and I wonder whether they too have felt alienated by their status. “They’re in between worlds and have gone a bit rogue. I’ve definitely felt that for many years when I lived in America as my daughter was growing up, but I never felt quite at home there,” Sheen reveals. “I’d then go back to my hometown in Wales, but I’d never feel like I’m quite of anywhere. It’s hard to describe certain experiences that you have as an actor”. Tennant adds: “As an actor you can get cosseted and treated in a way that deludes you. You have to ensure the insanity doesn’t get you. I do cherish normality.”

The flipside is that stars are usually personally held accountable when a series fails to meet the expectations of the fans — and lovers of fantasy and sci-fi are often notoriously implacable. To say that a screen adaptation of Good Omens has been hotly anticipated is to understate the extent of the fervour Gaiman’s devotees have for his work.

Do the actors feel anxious about a potential backlash? “I read the book when it first came out, so I’m one of those fans and I’ve felt that weight of expectation,” says Sheen. “But Neil has said all the way through that he’s not making it for the fans, he’s making it for Terry [Pratchett, who died in 2015].”

Tennant, who is no stranger to opinionated fans from his days as Doctor Who, is a little more blunt. “You can’t make TV which pleases what people’s preconceived notions might be. You just have to make something you feel proud of and works for people who haven’t read the book”. Such viewers may find the show a little too winkingly arch and idiosyncratic at times; after all, it revolves around the hunt for the harbinger of Doomsday — an 11-year-old boy who’s mistakenly grown up in a sleepy Oxfordshire village, following a clerical error by an order of Satanic nuns.

But it’s this most absurd of plot devices that Sheen perhaps has in mind when we wrap up by talking about whether the show’s apocalyptic setting may resonate with our volatile world. “The major risk is not some demagogue waging war, it’s people not doing the basics. It’s the everyday mundane stuff that will get us in the end.” That’s a pretty sobering takeaway from what is at heart just a romcom.

This interview that goes back to the premiere of season 1 just details how even reporters feel the chemistry of Michael and David in the room.

This receptiveness is clear when we meet. Sounds of approval from one punctuate answers given by the other, and appreciative laughter meets every quip. Occasionally they bypass me altogether, directing their responses to each other. They re terrific actors, so you never know, but this closeness feels entirely genuine.

[ingravinoveritas]

Ok but the fact that the Tennants have a literal pride flag garland in their garden. (GT's story from this morning). That just made me smile.

(Not to mention that giant rainblow flag we've known them to have in their house. Like, they just have that. Similiar to a Tardis in their garden or a Michael Sheen cutout in their bedroom, they just have that)

I love that level of support and the values they share and also automatically teach the kids. It's so cool to see. Especially because it's easy to wish everyone a happy pride month on your Instagram and leave it at that - if you even do that. But they're owning what they're saying, it's authentic, you can see that there is real enthusiasm with real values behind their support.

It always makes me happy to see these things from them and after catching a glimpse of their decor during pride month (or maybe it's there all the time) I just had to mention it 🌈 <3

Hi, Anon! First, let me say that your ask earns 10,000 bonus points for the mention of the Michael Sheen cutout in David and Georgia’s bedroom. That is just *chef’s kiss* and yes. So much yes... To address the rest of your ask, I did see the posts from Georgia’s Insta stories last month--both the one you mentioned here and then a second one also featuring a Pride theme. Let’s get them here for the visual:

When the first story was posted, I remember wondering where this was coming from, as I don’t think Georgia has ever been this vocal about Pride in years past. I had initially hoped this was perhaps in support of David being bi (more on that in a minute, in response to another Anon), but it seems now that these posts are in support of Wilfred, who appears to be using they/them pronouns.

The other thing is that I do feel some degree of concern, because although I agree with you, Anon, that Georgia and David are owning their support of Wil and that this is something that’s continued on past Pride Month, we are still talking about a 9-year-old kid. And it would be unfortunately easy for Georgia to seemingly support Wil, but then turn around and make these posts and these gestures about her, in an effort to score points in a “Look at me, I’m a cool mom of a queer kid!” kind of way.

Is that what’s happening here? I hope not. I would love nothing more than to be wrong, but Wil was recently featured in an article in the Daily Mail (in relation to their role in Casualty), and already the people in the comments are tearing them apart and making all sorts of vicious comments about their gender identity. I’ve seen fans on Twitter discussing Wil, too, and while seemingly far more benevolent, let me again remind you that we are still talking about a 9-year-old child. It’s one thing to speculate about David’s sexuality or his and Michael’s relationship here, but it is entirely different when it’s a minor who cannot defend or speak for themselves and who, up until recently, had their face blurred out/censored on Georgia’s Insta posts.

And while I understand that Wil is starting their acting career, that doesn’t mean throwing them straight into the deep end, either, or that it’s okay for Georgia to seemingly give the green light to this type of discussion. If it came down to it, though, I think David would absolutely put himself in the line of fire to protect Wil, in whatever form that may take. Because if Wil is indeed queer/struggling to figure themself out, I think David understands it on a personal level, and would want to be there for Wil, to make them feel safe, because no one did that for him when he was going through it.

That’s what this is really all about, in my opinion. Rainbow flags and socks and face paint are all great, but can ultimately end up being performative if there isn’t tangible, meaningful action behind them. I hope that Georgia is and will continue protecting Wil. I hope that this support and flourish of Pride will last throughout the year, and will be extended to David if he ever decides to come out. Most of all, I hope what we’ve seen is as authentic as it appears to be, for Wil’s sake, and the sake of all the other kids.

So those are my thoughts on Georgia’s pride posts. I appreciate you sharing yours with me, too, Anon. Thanks for writing in! x

[fuckyeahgoodomens]

Ineffable Con 2020 Fun Facts

Fun facts from the Ineffable Con 2 (2020) guest panels :): 

Neil Gaiman, Douglas Mackinnon and Rob Wilkins

David G. Arnold (the music composer)

Claire Anderson (the costume designer)

Peter Anderson (Peter Anderson Studio created the opening title animation and in-show graphics)

Paul Adeyefa (Disposable Demon)

Jeremy Marshall-Roberts (the owner of Mary the Bentley)

1. Neil Gaiman, Douglas Mackinnon and Rob Wilkins

What do they have from Good Omens:

Rob has the statue from St. Beryls, all four motorbikes from the four horsemen, Crowley’s Devon watch, box signed by David Tennant with Crowley’s sunglasses and Aziraphale’s cocoa mug with Michael Sheen’s DNA :).

Douglas has the playing cards from Episode 1 and heavily annotated Good Omens book they used for filming with inscription by Neil: ‘For Douglas, make us love, make us cry, 3rd August 2017’.

Neil has Aziraphale’s chair from the bookshop that he bought from the BBC and he uses it for Zoom meetings.

What is their favourite thing that was not in the book and was added to the TV show:

Neil: all of the first half of Episode 3 - an absolute joy.

Rob: also the beginning of Episode 3.

Douglas: David Arnold’s music and Peter Anderson’s front titles.

Could Aziraphale get out of the Bastille easily if he wanted to?

Neil: if he could: absolutely. Did he have any conception of the mess he was in: probably not. It’s one of Neil’s favourite pieces of acting - the absolute delight on Aziraphale’s face when he realizes that Crowley’s there and then he turns around and rather petulantly, grumpily goes oh it’s you - that moment of joy on Aziraphale’s face when he realizes that he’s been rescued is one of Neil’s favourite things. 

Neil and yoghurt starter: I had this slightly mad thing where I would explain to everybody that fans were yoghurt starter. And I said, ‘Basically you start out with yoghurt starter and you put it into your warm milk and you leave it, and the yoghurt starter goes off and turns the entire thing into yoghurt. 

Neil realized that there was a cat in his house (Neil doesn’t have a cat :)). After the panel Neil said that he was going to look for the cat with a can of sardines and Douglas joked that he would find Michael Sheen in a cat costume.

What was the best and worst about making the series:

Douglas: the best - the camaraderie, getting to know the people, the cast and crew. 

Rob: the best - realizing that the book could be translated to the screen and watching it happen. The worst - coming to the end of the shoot and saying goodbye to everybody.

Neil: the best - the amount of love from everybody, the worst - fighting budget battles (producers wanted gone all of the cold opening and the death of Agnes Nutter).

Did they expect that Good Omens would attract so many LBGTQ+ people and how they feel about that:

Neil: Yes, absolutely. There are definitely people out there who seem to think that I accidentally wrote a love story with all of the beats of a love story including a break-up halfway through, without somehow noticing that I’d written a love story. And I may not be the brightest candle on the candelabra, but as an author who’s been doing it for a long time, I’m very well aware of when I’m writing a love story, thank you very much. And so from my perspective I knew that the love story would be one of the driving things that would get us from the beginning to the end. And I also made a bunch of decisions about our angels and our demons in terms of casting, in terms of gender that everybody backed me up on, which I loved. You know, the idea that the archangel Michael is played by Doon [Mackichan] is something that is... or Beelzebub is Anna Maxwell Martin, whatever, there’s... it’s not like we are going: these are women, there are men, we are going: these are demons, these are angels. They... this is not a thing. And also doing something like Pollution, where you go in and go: okay  well if we were doing this in... if 1989 was now, if there were they pronouns, we probably would have done that. We didn’t think of it at the time but that’s no reason why we can’t do it now. And we did and I remember having a... not exactly a battle, but a... my very tiny skirmish with one of our execs who was very nice and very bright and was like: ‘Why are you saying they?’, and I’m like... and I... explaining, and he’s like: ‘Well I’ve never heard of that before.’, and I’m like: ‘Oh, okay, but trust me, just trust me, it’s all fine, just trust me.’

Douglas: And you know I have to say, just following on what Neil’s saying, I’ve been directing for quite a while, and I tend to notice if characters are falling in love, I tend to notice a love story happening in front of me, and I think it’s there, and everything is meant, guys, everything is meant.

Neil added: I would just say, there are some things that you do while you’re writing a script intentionally. The fact that... I wanted to do this, well, it was a thing I did that I really enjoyed doing... where whenever people accuse them of being a couple: they don’t deny it, they don’t argue, there’s no flustering on their part. They absolutely… you know, everybody… what I’m trying to say is:  yes, other people in the story are perceiving them as a couple too. And here is Uriel perceiving them as a couple, here is wonderful Dan [Starkey, playing the passerby] …and you know, you do scenes like that because that’s... you are trying to make a point here and you’re trying to make a point on how people are perceived.

Season 2, yes or no [fiends, all three of them!]:

Douglas: What’s that?

Neil: Of what?

Rob: Is it muted for me as is for everyone else?

Neil confirmed that they are going to be Funko Pops. [yay!]

2. David G. Arnold (the music composer)

He didn’t read the book before he was approached to do the music. He was asked to do it by Douglas Mackinnon he knew from the Victorian episode of Sherlock and he said yes before even knowing what it was about because he wanted to work with Douglas again.  

The first piece of music he wrote for the show was the brass band doing the Lazing on a Sunday Afternoon [Episode 6, in the park before the kidnapping].

The second piece of music he wrote was the lullaby that Crowley sings to Warlock. He always liked the lullabies like in Mary Poppins so he said to Neil: Why don’t we do it like Walt Disney, but if Walt Disney was possessed by Satan? That was about 7 months before he needed to write anything again while they were shooting and it kept going round his head the whole time - the melody stuck with him and when it came to the Opening Title of the show, this became the middle bit.

The original opening title was Everyday by Buddy Holly and each episode was supposed to be closed with a different version of it: a death metal version, an angelic choir version, a carmina burana version... and he actually made all those. But he likes to find the musical identity of the show and put it in the opening titles because it’s important and it tells you: ‘This is the word you’re going to experience’, so he wrote his own opening title with the lullaby in the middle and played it to them [probably Neil and Douglas] with Buddy Holly as the backup and: Neil just turned around in his chair and said, ‘That’s Good Omens.’. From that point the instructions were with no rules, just to create whatever he wanted: the further you can go the better, the weirder and the stranger you can think the better. It’s a rare thing to be shown a world like Good Omens and be let free to run around in it. 

His favourite ending title is the Queen one in Episode 1.

One of the reasons he didn’t do a theme for Crowley and a theme for Aziraphale is that the theme of the show is theirs - it’s theirs and they share it and it’s both of theirs and there is no separating in that regard. 

About Aziraphale and Crowley’s relationship reflected in the music score: It’s interesting isn’t it, because the relationship changed in a way slightly frequently and majorly infrequently. It seemed right from the start that their relationship was somehow seeded and planted and had begun by the time we saw them even though they may not have realised it themselves, you know, with the pair of them on the wall, considering one is a demon in the Garden of Eden and one is an angel. They act very charitably towards each other and they act with a lot of things you might not expect. And underneath that there is a sort of sense of togetherness and support even though they both know that their paths are going to diverge and they have different responsibilities. So I always felt like, right from that moment, when the wing came up on the wall, that there was something special about their relationship. Three moments that stuck with him: in Episode 3 saving the books in the church when they completely rely on the other for survival in the way that they were very open about, one in the car outside the nightclub in 60s Soho - the Holy Water, you go too fast for me, that genuinely tearing, that there was reluctance in those words that he spoke and that sort of things as a composer is gold, it’s about making those moments more, and in the last episode in a scene they’re not event in when we see Adam and Dog in the fields and Anathema that music there which celebrates Crowley and Aziraphale’s music which is the theme of the show - their shadow has passed over everyone’s emotional journey, and everyone’s emotional journey is theirs as well. The argument in the bandstand was important as well.

His favourite leitmotif from the series is the lullaby.

About the scene in the car in episode 2 when Thomas Tallis changes into Queen: Terry’s favourite piece of classical music was the Thomas Tallis piece [Spem in Alium] so Neil asked if they can go from Thomas Tallis - a choral piece from 16th century - to We Will Rock You, and: ‘You never say no. You don’t say that you can’t do it. What you have to do is to be the first person who solves the problem.’ In the end it was a two-days work just for this little bit and he mentioned that he never had these sorts of challenges anywhere else before.

His favourite non-musical detail in the show - the crucifixion, how the scene was shot, how it was upsetting, and how it was made more effective by Aziraphale and Crowley’s inability to stop it, that they had to observe and watch it, that it had to happen. I remember seeing that at the time and thinking, I wasn’t expecting that level of brutal honesty, in terms of the pictures that I was looking at and what they chose to show. And I think all the more effective for it. 

3. Claire Anderson (the costume designer)

When creating the costumes for the characters she started with mood boards. 

Aziraphale - she knew that he needed to have something winglike in his collar so that’s why there are sweeping lapels very often. Using velvet [for the waistcoat] because that was nice and soft and had all the appropriate qualities. His watch and fob that has little gold wings hanging from it and other tiny bits of symbolism. Tartan bow tie. Beautiful cashmere checkered trousers - not quite tartan but a nod to it. A mid to late Victorian coat, Michael only made his decision on the coat a couple of days before the filming. Aziraphale in the present settled on a ring with angelic symbol and harp cufflinks, earlier his ring in ancient times has got a much more roughly hewn set of wings on it, so before jewellery making became sophisticated he modernised slightly - he magicked it up to be a bit more modern, more gentleman signet type of ring, but he never modernises entirely. His heart is much more in the past.

After they began to define Aziraphale they started to look at how the Heaven army of angels might look - the element of tartan came sort of from Aziraphale and the angels have a not-tartan kilt with a semi military type jacket and a military band across that might hold arms or not, because they are not really violent. She used spats to make them look quite neutral and genderless so hiding fastenings and concealing little details like that seemed a way to do that.

Gabriel doesn’t wear spats because he’s on Earth such a lot. His shoe has a cover with two buckles on the side giving the same neutral element. He wears a cashmere light-as-air suit.

The other angels are all in bastardized versions of what era they may have died in, so they could have died in the 1930s or the 1800s and the costume would have an element of that era about it - though of course as an angel you can change things.

The Quartermaster Angel - the costume is a combination of slightly Indian type military, maharaja pants, longer spats from another era, all combined pieces of military tailored to be magical and slightly nonsensical, as Heaven might be.

Crowley - she felt that he wrapped around like a snake sheds its skin so she wanted something double breasted because that seemed to envelope his snakey charm. David wanted to be more casual than wearing a suit. Under his collar he always has a flash of red like the snake that he comes from - the red belly. They put a red seam into the sole of his boots so always there is a hint of where he came from. The red tie in the blitz. He was more rock and roll than Aziraphale and modernised more to a snakehipped rock and roll star really. His present jacket - the fabric there is quilted, they found an 80s jacket that had elements of things they enjoyed - part of that was that it had a slightly quilted quality to the fabric which was like a textured snakeskin. It took quite a long time to create the fabric and then to make the jacket from that - they quilted some fabric and washed and whooshed it repeatedly to create a bit of puckering in it. He has a snakey scarf around his neck like a chain mail linked scales of skin scarf that he wore that complemented his neck chain. The trousers he wore in Victorian times are the same he wore in the 60s when he meets young Shadwell. His present trousers - slightly waxy denim - we just were looking for a slithery finish. Crowley’s neck chain - there is only one in the world - her tailor has a Gothic church full of interesting stuff like busts and drapes with old things, this chain mail scarf was there and David was looking for something to complete his costume and liked it. 

Hastur and Ligur are her favourite characters - they were so enjoyable to create. She had an amazing book of 1920s and 30s criminals and they used that as a starting point, because they were all quite worn out and bedraggled and poverty stricken and like hell might be ideally. They burnt and decayed the bottom of them as if they were rotting from the Earth and rotting back into the ground - all demons have sort of gators as if they were rotting from the ground up.

One of the most difficult things was the demons - when they realized they had a few days to create hundreds of demons in South Africa (4-5 days for almost 200 demons). It was as if I had been dissolved in holy water when they asked me for another 150 costumes.

The sleeves of Anathema’s coat have been inspired by a Victorian cycling coat. 

The historical costume that Newt’s ancestor wore influenced his and Shadwell’s costumes - they used elements of the historical costume to put a little cape on Newt and Shadwell and their wax coats to give them the quality of that look. Newt's costume has a lot of mustard to make him feel a bit awkward and uncomfortable - it's not the most flattering colour on a northern European complexion.

The nuns’ headdress needed to look a little bit demonic - she bought a whole book on nuns’ headdresses for research. They also used the V in the nurse's apron because that was nicely demonic. The nurses' watch has got this Satanic symbol at the top - a little take on the medical since old nurses’ uniforms used to have watches.

For Madame Tracy she went back into the 70s, slightly Biba-esque makeup and a cape. They had only one pair of her goggles so it was always a nightmare to find them.

Which part of the cold opening is her favourite: I love ancient Rome because there is at least 6 to 12 metre of fabric in a toga and that was quite fun wrapping that around the boys and creating those., and her favourite was the Globe.

The lapels represent wings in every way and every shape and every form. Wings are very important.

4. Peter Anderson (Peter Anderson Studio created the opening title animation and in-show graphics)

The first thing that the director Douglas Mackinnon (with whom he worked on Doctor Who and Sherlock) said to him was: for all the graphics, for all the title sequence, for everything, I want you to promise me one thing, and that is very, very simple, promise that you send me emails that say: ‘this might be absolutely nuts, but my idea is...’.

The opening title it’s full of easter eggs - it’s a type of sequence that’s been designed to watch a thousand times, for example: on the escalator down to Hell there is one character running up deciding that he doesn’t want to go to Hell or the sea is full of plastic bags because we don’t look after the planet.

Every single face in the title sequence is either Crowley’s or Azriphale’s, they are repeated all the way through - inspired by Neil saying that there’s good and evil in all of us, so there is a grand procession of people of all the characters from the story - marching towards Armageddon - but all the characters have been taken over by good or evil. And along the way our two heroes are kind of playing tricks on each other, doing good, doing evil

The opening title combines multiple elements - two dimensional animation elements, three dimensional animation elements, CGI and live action (the people in the procession were created by live action on a travelator). So the result is a kind of strangeness - such as 3D figures with 2D animated tracked heads - which makes it unique.

Their first idea and version of the opening title was based on tapestries of old, subverting them, but then they wanted something more new and fresh.

Both Douglas and Neil were an important part of the opening title creation process.

The opening title sequence took about a year to make from the creative start with four intensive months towards the end.

One of things that inspired him was a Bauhaus theatre image from 1930s.

Question if the hand-drawn font for the graphics will be a purchasable font: no, because it was original and it’s unique and it was created just for this - it was for the love of the show and the story and it will be kept there.

In the scene where there are three photos of witchfinders - Neil and Douglas revealed in the DVD commentaries that two of them are their grandfathers - the third one is Peter’s great uncle.

Originally the signs telling us things like ‘Thursday’ or ‘Mesopotamia’ - were done as if somebody (who was living inside the television screen) ran up close to the screen and showed us the sign. In the end they simplified it, only showing the signs. The one time that it was sort of left in the show was when in Episode 5 a little demon in the video game shows a sign ‘GAME OVER’.

Outside of his work on it, what was his favourite thing on Good Omens: spending time with Douglas and Neil, and also working with Milk VFX - I think I can honestly say it's the best job I've ever worked on with the nicest people. 

5. Paul Adeyefa (Disposable Demon)

He first read the book when preparing for the audition - the character wasn’t in the book but he got into it, loved it and couldn’t put it down.

He didn’t know about the name Eric until the script was published and people started calling the demon that, he really likes the name and thinks it fits.

There was a version of the script where the demon was going to be dressed in different costumes each time he was discorporated (for example one in long hair wearing a dress) - they would be all the same but different incarnations, in one version they had different accents. 

The first scene he shot was the one where the demon goes to Heaven to deliver the Hellfire (and also wants to hit ‘Aziraphale’ which was cut). That first day was also his favourite moment of shooting because there was an immediate welcoming atmosphere and everyone was lovely and in love with the production.

Disposable Demon is like a permanent intern, running errands for the higher ups in Hell.

His favourite part of the costume were the eyelashes (though he loved the whole costume).

If he could change anything about the costume he would also want cool contact lenses - some brightly coloured ones.

Question what animal (like other demons have on their heads) comes to mind when we see the Disposable Demon: he didn’t think about it at the time, but later he saw people talking about his horns as bunny ears and found it interesting, and also the facts that there are so many of him and that he is quite happy and friendly for a demon so the bunny makes sense, so he might be a sort of a rabbit. Or perhaps something goat type because of the horns.

Question if there is another role in Good Omens he would have liked to have played: he always thought that the four horsemen were very cool and Pollution was his favourite so probably Pollution (also was the most jealous of Pollution’s contact lenses). 

If there were a season 2, he would be there in a heartbeat.

Question about Eric’s feelings on Crowley, if he’s a bit of a Crowley fan: I think he might be. There is something about Crowley and how he is somehow a little bit different from the rest of the demons. - and the Disposable Demon has, much like Crowley, interest in the human world. He could well be 6,000 how many years old, the same as everyone else, but he seems to have this younger vibe and I think he thinks that Crowley is quite cool.

Good Omens fandom is his first experience with a fandom of this scale. It speaks a lot, the fact that this kind of very, this minor character, a character who is only on screen for a very short amount of time gets any kind of attention at all, it's quite amazing really, it goes to show how big and enthusiastic the fans are. I never experienced anything like that.

6. Jeremy Marshall-Roberts (the owner of Mary the Bentley)

When Crowley used a miracle to switch off the Bentley lights in Episode 1 at nuns manor it was done by: there was actually a very small guy called Louis turning on and off the switches quickly.

David Tennant was allowed to wear the snake eye contacts for only 3 hours a day otherwise they could damage his eyesight.

For Mary, the Bentley, it was the second time she was ‘blown up’ on film - first being in the Endeavour with Inspector Morse about three years earlier.

He was a bit nervous during filming the bookshop fire scene because the Bentley was so close to a real fire - not wanting the paint to blister. The car was moved off after a few minutes of filming but still.

About the damage to Mary: Unfortunately, we overran, and Rob my stunt driver had already booked a holiday and off he went and so when he returned in January, on the 10th of January, I had this new driver who really had no clue how to drive old cars, so I showed him around, I showed him to go around corners. He came around the corner, the door was not closed properly for some reason and the door flew open as he went around. And instead of slamming on the brakes which is extremely efficient and would stop him straight away he kept on going, hit another car and really smashed the door quite badly. It did take the car off the roads for 10 months. The door was completely remade because of this accident and it cost the total of  £24 000 to rebuild the car to get it back to running as it is today.

The Bentley’s part most difficult to maintain and service is the engine. 

Would Mary be available for a potential season 2: definitely!

[cobragardens]

You know the eyepiece of a spyglass, or a telescope? That's an oculus. The bit you look through on a microscope to see the tiny lives so far beneath your own? That's also an oculus. That skylight in Aziraphale's bookshop? Guess what that's called.

The oculus of Aziraphale's bookshop is a symbolic reference to the panopticon, in that it is a giant eye looking down and always watching Aziraphale even in his own space.

(Oculus literally means "eye," btw.)

And this is why Aziraphale and Crowley have spent 6,000 years never speaking freely or touching or spending big chunks of time together but instead acting at every meeting as though they are barely acquaintances, and unfriendly ones at that: they know there's a nonzero chance they're being watched or listened to at any time.

It's why Aziraphale freaks out in 1601 when Crowley mentions they have an Arrangement and have helped each other dozens of times, even though he's clearly not opposed to the Arrangement itself.

It's why Crowley won't let Aziraphale call him "kind" or "nice" in 1793 or 1827: those are flagged words in Hell's audio surveillance of its own agents.

It's why in 1862 Aziraphale insists they have little in common because he's an angel and Crowley is Fallen but Crowley doesn't take offence at that, despite everything they went through in 1827: he knows Aziraphale has to mount an angelic-sounding protest in case Heaven are listening.*

It's why Aziraphale tells Crowley "You go too fast for me" in 1967 about THEE slowest-burn relationship in history: in 1941 a single surveillance photo and a rumor of them working together is enough to endanger Crowley's life.

It's why both Garden of Eden and Hell look like the Ministry building in fucking Brazil, one of the bleakest dystopian films ever made.

Aziraphale and Crowley have no privacy. They are always potentially under surveillance, and they know it. They know they can count only on their masters' inattention affording them the opportunity to meet at all, and they have backup plans in place for how to excuse themselves when they are discovered.

Panopticons are no longer theoretical prisons. Humans have built dozens of them, because they work really well at doing exactly what they're designed to do: instilling fear and despair and enforcing compliance.

And btw this is why I think it sucks such major goat ass to scrutinize and gossip about David Tennant's and Michael Sheen's relationships with each other and their partners. Imagine what that makes their lives like. Did we not learn from middle school how awful it is to have to live with people always watching and whispering about us? Did we not learn that from Good Omens?

*Notice how Aziraphale has become, after c. 850 years, comfortable enough to mention the Arrangement aloud, though. Kind of the same way he gets drunk in 2011 but doesn't so much as sip Mr Dalrymple's whisky in 1827. It takes him time. And yeah, maybe some of that is because he's more rigid and conservative in his behavior, but we know from his conversation with the Starmaker that some of that is because he's very rightly afraid.

Kinda disturbing how in the show heaven turns out to have surveillance photos of crowley and aziraphale it’s quite dark if you think too hard about it — how they can never truly feel safe and they have no privacy, not really

[good-omens-classic]

Been thinking about the modernization of the narrative of Good Omens from the novel to the TV series prompted by those last posts.  DISCLAIMER: its actually been a while since i either watched the TV show or read the book so i might be misremembering stuff 😅

If i remember correctly, in the early stages of production of the TV show Neil Gaiman stated the aesthetics of Heaven and Hell were being updated to be less like countries at war, as they were in the novel, and more like factions of a corporation, with Heaven being the top office and Hell being the basement.  And he said this was to representing the shifting social anxieties of the time - the novel was written on the heels of the Cold War, and so has a lot of spy and soldier aesthetic to it, whereas nowadays we are all looking with a skeptical eye at Disney and Nestle as large corporations do whatever the hell they want without consequences.

I think this modernization is an effective one, but one that changes the flavor of the narrative slightly, and in a way that makes it less appealing to some people and more appealing to others.  One is not necessarily better than the other, and given one is a new TV show and one is an old novel so it’s hardly accurate to compare the size of fanbases, I can’t even say one is necessarily more or less appealing/popular than the other.  I think that the TV show was well-made, but there were a few small key changes in the writing that move the narrative away from the reasons why I got absolutely obsessed with the novel.  I think that David Tennant and Michael Sheen did a pretty good job acting the directions and script they were given, my main things I don’t like are kind of with the writing decisions (and tbh the costuming still but that’s petty 🙄)

I think it’s probably part of my upbringing, which was fundamentalist Protestant and honestly, obsessed with violence, that I don’t want to engage with a story where Hell is bad because it’s the dirty basement of an office building.  That’s a legit way to depict Hell, and one that has interesting thematical implications, but I personally want to read stories where Hell is fire and brimstone so that I can watch the protagonists defeat that.  I don’t fantasize about breaking free from an office job, or co-workers caught up in office petty politics, stories about finding softness and love amidst an actual war where violence is expected are what appeal to me.  The demons in the TV series are violent, but it’s just because they’re mean people, not because there’s a system put in place that forces them to be....which is honestly kind of part of why I liked the universe of the novel so much, because I liked to see Aziraphale and Crowley fight a system that tries to force them to be violent and fight and stuff?

The depiction of a narrative’s bad guy, even with subtle changes, can have some pretty significant impacts on how the audience feels about the narrative if what they’re looking for in the story is catharsis and wish-fulfillment.  For example, I often see people gripe about their DMs including homophobia and transphobia in their world-building in DnD, as though the ideal setting would be free from those things (and indeed, that’s the ideal setting for someone who wants escapism), but if you want to roleplay a character who struggles and overcomes those social issues, because they affect you in real life and you find it cathartic, constructing a world where those issues are very mild is not going to provide the same outlet that being victorious in a truly grimdark world is going to.  It’s not for everyone, but due to the novel’s vagueness about certain things, it allowed the fandom some level of flexibility in interpreting their version of the supernatural in whatever way they wanted (the only other angel we see “on screen” other than Aziraphale is Metatron, for like 3 pages, so it was really whatever your imagination cooked up to fill in those gaps), whereas the TV show fandom is working with more concrete building blocks.

This leads me to another gripe I have--making God female.  I understand this appealed hugely to a lot of people because they love the progressive implications of God not being male, and how it upsets religious bigots, but I honestly did not think this was super revolutionary or groundbreaking for the reason that Good Omens is a work of satire--it is criticizing God, and honestly?  I don’t think God is super kind and loving in either version of the story, Heaven is harsh and filled with asshole angels, Crowley was thrown out for just asking questions, and God plays games with his/her servants.  Not everyone sees it this way but I honestly feel like God in the GOmens universe is borderline abusive and gas-lighty, as a proxy criticism of the Christian Church, and the church has historically also been extremely misogynistic, so I think that aspect of it kind of falls apart when God is suddenly female.

That line about dinosaur bones being a joke that God played on humans hits differently when child-you went to a school that taught creationism in science class and thought you were going to hell if you didn’t believe what they told you.

But getting back to my main point, the TV show had the narrative updated for the times much more significantly than the radio play that came out in 2015--for that one, it was mostly cosmetic changes, such as tossing in a mention of X-boxes, whereas the TV show updated the basic narrative structure to reflect changing culture.  I think it was an effective change, but one that made the narrative less appealing to me personally.  A lot of people who were in the fandom before the TV show came out, or who just read the novel after watching the show to compare, seem to agree that the worldbuilding and the characterizations have subtle differences between the two incarnations, which to a casual consumer is not really that noticeable, but if you like one or the other because it hits a very specific sweet spot it might make a difference.  For me I liked it mostly because it provided a blank canvas with some very good building blocks for, like, my imagination to run off with, and the TV show closed a lot of those avenues by filling them in with something more concrete.  That’s not necessarily a bad thing and I can see myself experiencing this from the opposite side when I go into fandoms having just consumed the newest incarnation of a thing and quite liked it, only to find the fandom has people who liked it before that adaptation and hate it a lot!  That’s just the nature of the beast and an inevitable side effect of obsessing over something way more than you’re meant to, but it’s also why I’m not really interested in reading or writing fanfiction set in the TV ‘verse.  Anyway Im kind of rambling now but this is just kinda my thoughts and my onion so if anyone has any other thoughts on it feel free to share your onion with me too :)

[an-ineffable-arrangement]

Ok, so I finished watching the second series of 'Staged', and there were these...there were so many parts that just hit so hard. And it made me realize how amazingly lucky we all are to have this. And I've got a lot to say about it, frankly.

There was this scene in 2x06, it hit me so like a gut punch, I had this genuine moment of 'Oh...I really have been too much like that', and it made me actually feel torn between excitement of sharing the show with my friends and just pure dread at them possibly seeing that thing too, watching it and seeing that reflection of me and my state of mind through some of our interactions in 2020. But, even with the dread, it was necessary. It's necessary.

This show, 'Good Omens', and everything else they've been involved with, has just made me be in complete awe of these two wonderful men. Because they are so goddamn talented, so mind-bogglingly rife with this...*ability* to covey such nuanced emotion that I...I honestly couldn't tell if it was acting or something *real* in those scenes of 'Staged', ripped right from the very souls of them, laid bare in front of us all.

They didn't just give me comfort through this, give me something pretty or interesting to look at, they gave me hope, they gave me strength, they gave me genuine insight into so many things I was afraid to turn and face on my own. They somehow made their way through this invisible barrier placed on us with Covid-19, and also this seemingly endless divide within myself, and made me feel like I wasn't actually alone through so many things. And I will never, ever be able to show my immense gratitude enough for what they've done, not only for me...but for every single person whose heart they've touched this year, and the years past. 

I am so damn thankful that something told me it was time to look, to actually *see* them early last year. Something gave me this gift that just keeps on giving of itself and I am...I am humbled somehow that it seems like someone, or something, cared enough to show *me* a way, this path that was laid out before me set to help me not only ride through this terrible time but to try and push through and thrive. Become better. See that I could still be better, that there was still hope, the foundation was always there I had just lost sight of it and these two...they lit a torch to guide me and show me that it wasn't actually all in ruins. I wish I could give to them something so very meaningful in return. They did do something so damn important, and I truly doubt I'm the only one that feels that way.

Lol they may not really be a demon or an angel in this, but honestly neither Aziraphale or Crowley fit into those boxes either, and that's wonderful. Michael and David truly embody what was so gloriously beautiful about their characters, that dedication to protect and provide and just...Love the world so very much. To give of themselves when they knew we all needed it, to support and care for and yeah even give humor to whoever needed it. It, and they are actually blessings. In some rare lower times a part of my brain tried to ask me 'Could it be that they just needed something to do during this? Was it actually some selfish itch needed scratching on their ends?' But I've learned to push past worries like that, learned to tell those shitty shitty impulsive depressive thoughts to fuck off. I've learned to see the light in things more now, noted how things seem to flow, how sometimes things just click right into place because...well they found their reason. So even if on some level it was part of some self serving act, they are allowed to need too, they gave so much and its only right that we give them something back in return. They deserve to be loved and appreciated and cared for back.

And I am done monologuing now lol, I just was chatting with my own 'Angel' and I felt this urge to tell whoever I could how greatly proud I am of Michael Sheen and David Tennant.

And seriously thank you if you managed to make it through this entire long ass wall of text where I spewed forth and flailed about all my undying love for these two fantastic dorks. 

[invisibleicewands]

Actor and activist Michael Sheen speaks about his career so far and how he has adapted to life during lockdown

Michael Sheen sighs. His fingers stroke his grizzly beard and for a moment, he’s no longer in New York; he’s stepping onto a stage for the first time back in his home town of Port Talbot.

Gone are the days of a telephone interview. The pandemic has seen to that. Zoom is the new way of life. And across the internet, across the Atlantic, Michael’s voice is beaming right into my Cardiff home.

He’s in the US, filming for the acclaimed drama series Prodigal Son. It goes without saying that he has come a long way since his early days in South Wales. But he traces the success of his career back to his days of youth in Port Talbot.

“As I’ve got older, I’ve realised more and more about what went into allowing me to have the path that I’ve had in life. I’m very aware that I had a supportive family, a family who would be involved with performing in one way or another.

“They also pointed me in the right direction, not necessarily professionally but my parents and aunts and uncles and grandparents were all involved with the amateur dramatics society. Coming from an area that had a tradition for actors in the form of Burton and Hopkins, there was a lot of respect for it.”

Michael has followed in the footsteps of the giants of stage and screen; but in doing so, he has forged his own path, straight out of the industrial South Wales town that he still calls home.

“If anyone was to take a look, they wouldn’t think that Port Talbot would have that kind of output. I was very involved with West Glamorgan Youth Arts groups that were borne out of the local education system. Godfrey Evans was the man responsible for founding the West Glamorgan Youth Theatre Company. He changed the lives of generations of young people from the same sort of South Wales area — myself, Russell T Davies and Catherine Zeta Jones, who I’m currently working with on Prodigal Son.”

Michael was to then train with the National Youth Theatre of Wales in the Welsh capital.

“We never moved around much when I was young so moving to Cardiff during the Summer holidays to do the National Youth courses — that was like going on holiday. Even going to Neath back then seemed exotic so to go all the way to Cardiff seemed like going to Mars. I remember we stayed in the university’s Senghenedd Court halls of residence. We’d rehearse in various places around Cardiff and it honestly felt like a mixture of being on holiday and going to space. It was so exciting. That was my introduction to Cardiff.”

The National Youth Theatre of Wales was to give Michael the grounding that has underpinned his career since.

“It was a brilliant youth theatre. It taught me great work ethics; it was very disciplined. Once I went to London, I realised that I’d taken it for granted about what was available in my area. I’m not too sure about how it compared to others in different parts of the country, but I started to see how my life could have gone a very different way. I owe a lot to the hard work of others. I’m amazed that I ever made it.”

Like Hopkins and Burton before him, Michael moved to London in 1988 to train as an actor. He attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), where he picked up his first professional role and graduated in 1991. Throughout the 90s, Michael’s stage work brought accolade after accolade, and he made his first TV appearance in 1993.

“Stage work is where I started but theatre work has a tendency to take over your psyche. You wake up in the morning and all you can think is that you’re performing that night. You can’t concentrate on anything else. That may be the way for other actors too, I don’t know, but that’s how it is for me. And it’s strange because the performance only takes up a few hours of the day but it takes over an actor’s life. I do a lot more work now in front of the cameras these days and despite it sounding grim, I’d say that I feel more at home on the stage.”

Michael’s breakthrough screen role was as former Prime Minister Tony Blair in the 2003 film, The Deal. It was to mark his first collaboration with screenwriter Peter Morgan. They were to team up again for the 2006 movie The Queen, Michael once again reprising his role as Tony Blair. He was nominated for a BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role. In that same year, he also appeared as English actor Kenneth Williams in BBC Four’s Fantabulosa!

For the following year, Michael starred as the television broadcaster David Frost in Frost/Nixon in the West End, before it was adapted into a movie in 2008, in which he again played Frost.

“I’m very lucky to be in a position where I’m able to express who I am as a person. People always come up to me and say ‘Oh, you’ve probably heard this before but I love your work’. But I’ve been on the other side of that — I’ve done it myself, so I know how important it is for them to do that. What really puts a smile on my face is if someone says that they’ve been deeply touched by something that I’ve done.”

Michael has gone on to become a household name, both here in the UK, as well as in the US. But what would he be doing if he wasn’t acting?

“I was only talking about this the other day actually. If I wasn’t doing all the acting stuff, I’d like to run a book shop. But I wouldn’t want anyone to take the books. I’d want people to come in and talk about the books. They’d have to come in and we’d drink tea and talk about them. But I wouldn’t want them walking out with the books.” Michael pauses. “Maybe it’d have to be a library instead.”

Meeting people is one thing that many across the world have had to think twice about doing since the outbreak of COVID19. In June 2020, Michael starred alongside his friend David Tennant in a six-part television lockdown comedy called Staged, which was made using video-conferencing software. A second eight-episode season aired in January 2021.

“The pandemic has made me realise how vulnerable we all are. I’m working in New York at the moment and it really saddens me to see how many businesses are closed down — and for good. It’s startling to see how our economies have been brought to a halt. It’s frightening how many conspiracy theories have sprung up but overwhelmingly, it’s heartening to see how people have worked together.”

The actor has taken a keen interest in the fate of small local businesses, especially those faced with the challenges presented by the pandemic. He’s also keen to see Wales get a better quality media, suited to the country’s needs.

“Most of our news comes from outside of Wales and that has sent conflicting messages to the people of Wales during the pandemic.”

Despite his international fame and success, Michael hasn’t forgotten his roots or those who are in a place that he was once in.

“I’m lucky in that I can use the reach that I have to help change aspects of society for the better. I don’t do charity work in the traditional sense but I do see my life as two distinct parts and the acting side of it allows me to support causes that I care about.” He is currently the honourary President of Wales Council for Voluntary Action and in 2017, he founded the End High Cost Credit Alliance, which works to promote more affordable ways to borrow money.

As we wrap up the interview, Michael has spoken for more than half an hour. It’s still early morning in New York, his coffee has long since gone cold and he has another day of filming ahead of him.

“It’s a little unnerving being here with the pandemic still going on, but we’ll get through it somehow,” he says.

It seems it’s all in a day’s work for Michael Sheen.