#love to see david tennant lose his fucking mind if he is without a human for longer than five minutes

[blueelectricblue]

i love the way doctor who implies that the only thing between a time lord and becoming an insane enraged vindictive god is keeping a little human friend. i get it because i too am less mad if i pet my cat

[agir1ukn0w]

My favorite parts from the SFX Good Omens issue:

“Perhaps surprisingly, our destination is the Garden of Eden...Here in the midst of the spectacular Atlantis Dunes and the worst drought in Cape Town’s history, is a little oasis of green that will be expanded later by the magic of CGI. This is where Adam and Eve eat (possibly) the most important apple in human civilization, and where angel Aziraphale (Michael Sheen) and serpent/demon Crowley (David Tennant) begin an unlikely millennia-spanning friendship as the representatives of their respective factions on Earth.” - Richard Edwards, SFX

“23 September 2010 was a red letter day in the history of Good Omens...After many years of trying to get the book made into a movie - most notably with Terry Gilliam at the helm - it was on this day, in a Cardiff restaurant, that Pratchett and Gaiman agreed that TV might have a better home for their story. ‘The Terry Gilliam one should have happened,’ recalls Gaiman...‘They had a really good script. Johnny Depp was going to play Crowley and Robin Williams was going to play Aziraphale, Madame Tracy and Hastur...[But] this was February 2002 - 9/11 had only just happened. He went around and said that it’s a funny film about the end of the world, and people said, “Go away,” and it died.’” - Richard Edwards, SFX

“Indeed, when streaming giants are throwing seemingly infinite quantities of cash at TV shows, we’re at a point where the only limitations to what goes up on screen is imagination. That’s exciting in many ways, but when you’re adapting a novel as beloved as Good Omens, it brings its own unique set of challenges. Just think about all those fans who feel like they know stuffy bookshop owner Aziraphale and his not-quite-as-cool-as-he-thinks BFF Crowley better than anyone else - and feel any deviation from the pictures in their mind is an aberration.” - Richard Edwards, SFX

“‘Good Omens absolutely belongs to the world,’ admits Gaiman. ‘Terry and I wrote a book that was 100,000 words, and that’s probably not more than 1% of the wordage of the total fan-fiction generated about these characters - even excluding the pornography. And I think that’s great. I love that. I’m pretty proud. When we started shooting, I did a post on Tumblr, and said, “Look, your head canon is your head canon. Nobody’s trying to fuck with that. We’re not coming in and saying ‘Our Crowley and Aziraphale is your Crowley and Aziraphale.’ You can still have a platonic Hamlet in your head after seeing five different Hamlets, with thin Hamlets and fat Hamlets and black Hamlets and white Hamlets and old Hamlets and young Hamlets. Your Hamlet can still be your Hamlet.” And that’s how I feel about Crowley and Aziraphale. We are lucky to have Michael Sheen and David Tennant,’ Gaiman adds, ‘the finest Welsh actor of his generation, and the finest Scottish actor of his generation. Watching them acting is like a fucking masterclass. I write something that I think is pretty good dialogue. I hand it to Michael and David, and it becomes better.’” - Richard Edwards, SFX

“Gaiman explains, ‘When I write a scene, the first thing I’m going to do is go to the book, and go, “Okay, what did we do? What are the great lines I need to keep in here? What’s key? What matters?” That’s occasionally been really weird - there’s at least one place where I found a huge goof in the book that I’m planning to quietly correct on future editions, without ever pointing it out to anybody, including you in this interview! You find that kind of thing when you get that deep into it. So there are a few jokes that I lost, where I went, “This is a thing of its time.” Or there were some lines that I looked at and went, “You wouldn’t let this line go through now. Therefore I feel no compunction in losing it.” And then there are other places where you go, “The book is our bible!”’” - Richard Edwards, SFX

“Neil Gaiman had never been a show runner before Good Omens and he says he’s unlikely to be one again. ‘I’m very much looking forward to retiring from show running,’ he admits. ‘I have promised my wife that I will go back to being the novelist that she married. And I look forward to that.’...‘I’m incredibly proud of what we’ve made,’ Gaiman adds. ‘Some bits are better than I could ever have dreamed. So it’s probably been worth it. On the other hand, I also look back at 20 months of not writing, no family life and all these ridiculously long work days, and I go, “Would I have done this for anything other than a promise to Terry to make it?” I don’t know. I might not have done this. It’s been work, you know? I occasionally remind myself that one reason I love being a writer was that you don’t have to get up too early in the morning!’” - Richard Edwards, SFX

“On paper Crowley’s the bad guy because he’s a demon. Do you see him that way? I don’t really see him as a villain. He would very much identify as a villain because that’s the team that he works for, and that’s what he’s supposed to be doing. And yet he keeps confounding that, because actually I think what’s the great charm of Crowley and Aziraphale is that they are not very binary. And that’s their great tragedy: over the thousands of years they’ve lived on Earth, they’ve sort of slipped from their primary mission. That’s, of course, what makes them such good friends. Although they wouldn’t even admit to being friends, and that’s what makes them the yin and yang for each other. Aziraphale is actually a bit of a bastard, and Crowley is quite kind-hearted at the end of the day. There are bigger villains in the piece than Crowley, and some of them are supposed to be the good guys!” - Richard Edwards Q&A with David Tennant, SFX

“What’s it like playing in a world of very personal beliefs and philosophies while also looking at these characters from a human point of view? Crowley’s very much within the infrastructure of Hell. Part of what I think is glorious about the way Neil sets these characters is, it’s supernatural but at the same time, it’s like an episode of The Office with the politics and the mundanities and the small-mindedness of the characters. From an acting point of view, that’s very easy to key into. Crowley is very much about his corner of existence, and protecting it.” - Richard Edwards Q&A with David Tennant, SFX

“How did you tap into Aziraphale’s personality? I decided that he’s someone who has an appreciation of craft and quality. Because he’s been around for so long, that’s something that he really responds to. Whereas Crowley just manifests his clothes, and is very much of the moment. Aziraphale has worn items of clothing over the centuries that he likes. And then if he’s an angel, and therefore a being of love, how does that affect his relationship with Crowley, someone who supposedly on the opposite team, but who he can’t do anything but love? What are the specifics of that in terms of how he relates to Crowley? You start to develop a very real person with very real qualities.” - Richard Edwards Q&A with Michael Sheen, SFX

“Did you approach playing Aziraphale and Crowley as if they were a kind of odd couple? I can’t imagine Aziraphale without Crowley. More than anything I’ve ever done, I can’t think about this character on his own - he only exists with Crowley. So from the very beginning, when we sat down at the table read, my Aziraphale was totally shaped by what David was doing as Crowley, and vice versa.” - Richard Edwards Q&A with Michael Sheen, SFX

“Does Aziraphale want to be Crowley a little bit? I think there are things about Crowley that he really admires and covets, but I don’t think that he wants to be Crowley. I think he just loves Crowley. He would never admit that, and Crowley would never admit that about Aziraphale. He admires certain qualities about him - he would like to be a bit more rock ’n’ roll, but he knows that it doesn’t really suit him. He also really enjoys being Aziraphale, I think.” - Richard Edwards Q&A with Michael Sheen, SFX