ines-ineffable - Tumblr blog

ines-ineffable · 1 year ago

Text

Good Omens NYCC panel recap

- Guests: Neil Gaiman, Douglas Mackinnon, Rob Wilkins, Maggie Service, Nina Sosanya and Guelin Sepulveda, it is said that Michael Sheen will join at the end over Zoom.

About Season 1

- What do they miss most when S1 wrapped and before S2:

Douglas: All the cast and all the crew. We were very big and cuddly family.

Neil: Yeah.

Rob: David Tennant and Michael Sheen.

Nina: Missing the mentioned family and being part of the nuns sisterhood.

- At the beginning they shared several bts stories from season 1 and the book:

First day of shooting in the bookshop was cancelled because of the blizzard and the second day they were foreced to shoot interiors because outside there were people with flamethrowers trying to melt what was there. So they build the set of Soho 2 inside.

Rob kept a lot of the vehicles from S1 and S2, all the motorbikes, the cars, and now I have topped it with Crowley’s Bentley.

A lot of nuns including Maggie had warts, but Nina didn’t want one.

Neil about Nina’s audition (read more here).

That both Michael and David both independently suggested that he might like to write a Good Omens stage play so they may swap roles each night.

About Michael originally being Crowley (more here and here).

About Terry and Neil being Aziraphale and Crowley - Neil: In the creation of Crowley Terry took the things that I did that he thought were hilarious, like wearing sunglasses indoors when I didn’t need to. He put a lot of me into Crowley but then we both put a lot of ourselves into both of them. (here, also this).

Michael Sheen is amazing mimic, Neil recalls that during one of the final scenes he had producer headphones on, the guys were acting and sitting on the bench and all of the sudden David Tennant started saying awful things about Michael Sheen, just, you know, there’s Crowley and Aziraphale talking and Crowley is saying all this stuff about how Aziraphale is fat Michael can’t act and all the stuff and I’m like ‘Whaat?! David is the nicest man in the world…’ and then the penny drops and it’s Michael sitting there doing pitch perfect as Crowley.

About Season 2

- What was like for Quelin to join the show:

She was a fan. The very first day was a bit like out of body experience, there was a scene where she interacted with David and Michael. So it was like, ‘Concentrate, Quelin, concentrate! It’s okay, it’s okay!’ And it was just overwhelming in the best of ways, honestly.

She plays angel Muriel. When Neil and John Finnemore talked about season 2, they realized that they didn’t have another nice, well-meaning angels except for Aziraphale in Heaven, all they had were bastards, all awfull, so they thought ‘Let’s have a nice one’ and so they created angel Muriel, curious, gullible, well-meaning and chatty angel that spent 6000 filing in the same office in Heaven hoping that somebody would come in and the day would get more interesting and it doesn’t.

She’s a 37th order scrivener, bottom of the pily, it’s her first time to Earth.

- They felt Terry’s presence also during filming S2.

- Douglas said that they started doing the ADR post production and that the difference between David and Michael is that David looks at the monitor and whatches what he’s done and Michael never watch, so now Michael saw himself for the first time and he was like a fan doing, ‘Oh look we’re back! And there’s Aziraphale!’.

- Neil about Maggie and Nina returning:

It was a thing where one of the things I was very very certain before I started writing season 2 that there were two characters in it and I wanted them to be played by Maggie and Nina, so in order to make it clear to everybody reading the script, that they were going to be played by Maggie and Nina, I called the characters Maggie and Nina. Maggie and Nina liked being Maggie and Nina so the names stayed.

Douglas joked that he thought that a bit lazy not to think up new names and it was hell on set. Later he jokes that since Muriel is an actual angel name, that Neil didn’t make that one either.

Maggie runs a record shop which is beside Aziraphale’s bookshop in Soho, Mr. Fell is her landlord, shop passed through the generations. Her shop looks across shop where Nina works.

Nina works in the independent coffeeshop Give Me Coffe or Give Me Death, she is good with dealing with people in Soho who come in, not afraid of dealing with them. Wears great cardigans. Her character is quite grumpy. There is a scene where at the start her love life is doomed and she is getting passive-agressive texts for Lindsay - Neil says writing the texts was some of the most fun they had - maybe there will be a hope for her love life.

- About more characters:

Neil didn’t want to lose people because they are such a family and wanted Miranda Richardson back but Madame Tracy’s story had really finished and couldn’t think of more for here and her story had ended so beautifully so he wrote a new part for Miranda - she plays Shax, demon that was sent on Earth as the replacement of sacked Crowley.

Anna Maxwell Martin couldn’t make the filming (was in two shows and a stage play when they needed her), so Beelzebub is played by Shelley Conn. She demanded a lot more flies.

Donna Preston plays Mrs. Sandwich, and We’we never quite sure about Mrs. Sandwich’s profession but she’s definitely in Soho.

-When Neil started writing S2:

In August 2019 he told Amazon and BBC at fancy breakfast, ‘This is the plot.’, and they said, ‘Oh, we like that plot.’

In December he and John Finnemore got together and Neil told him the plot and he said, ‘That is a good plot, but how does it end’ Neil said that he doesn’t have ends until he gets there but John needed one so Neil said, ‘How about this?’ and told him the end and John said, ‘That’s a good end.’ And that is the end we’ve got.

He started writing it in the middle of the pandemic Summer 2020, writing with pencil to his notebook the first scene which is the first scene.

- Neil what will S2 be about:

Six episodes, each about 45 minutes.

There are some love stories in it.

We will learn a lot about Jane Austen we didn’t know before.

There is a lot more Heaven, a lot more Hell.

- What could be more eras for Aziraphale and Crowley

Douglas: 19th century Scotland, Neil: Edinburgh perhaps around 1827?, Douglas: That would be good, can you write that?, Neil: Oddly enough, episode 3 will take us to a little stint of body snatching in the era. For me it would be like 1941 and we’d go back to those Nazis. Douglas: That would be good and what about something biblical as well, could we do something? Neil: Bible’s good. Yeah back to biblical times, that would be really fun, we could do one of those in episode 2. (they are obviously talking about minisodes :))

- There was a clip from the show but only sound for those watching the stream.

Listen here.

Description from twitter ‘Crowley rushes into the bookshop holding plants and it’s so cute’.

This pic should be from it :)

- Season 2 Release Date: Summer 2023

- At the end on the zoom dropped not on Michael but also David and Jon Hamm! :)

Watch here :), their banter was written by Neil, Staged-style.

Michael and David found out that there’s going to be S2 probably at the same time from Neil. There was always sort of hope after the end of S1 that there might be more story to tell. Jon found out about it from Neil during press for S1 as potentiality and then during covid Neil said an idea to Jon that we would start by walking down the street in Soho completely nude and he send me the beggining of the scene where Gabriel does not recogni- and the rest is deliberately cut with ‘Lost connection’, to the nude part Neil said, I knew that if he said yes to that he’d say yes to anything and then he says it is not actually there.

4K notes · View notes

ines-ineffable · 1 year ago

Text

David and Michael in the interview with Ali Plumb for BBC Radio 1, 10th July 2023

I compared it with it's podcast version and there are some bits that are cut out in the video 👀 but I added them into the transcript ❤ 🐍😊 .

AP: If you're thinking I'm the kind of guy that rocks up to a Good Omens interview with...

Michael: With the book.

David: Oh, well done.

Michael: We'd be correct.

AP: Yeah.

[GOS2 Promo]

AP: So after such a successful and well received first series, what gives you guys?

David: Why risk it?

AP: Why risk it.

Michael: What gives you the right?!

AP: What gives you the cojones to do another one?

Michael: I know.

AP: How dare you?

Michael: It's terrible. When I wrote it.... Well, no, I mean, that's the thing, really, I mean, it's Neil and Terry's baby. And we'd always known that they'd gone beyond the world of the first book. In fact, there's stuff that's not in the first book, in the first series. So Gabriel is a character, you know, who's not there. So we'd always known that there was a lot more.

David: The ideas, the threads.

Michael: Exactly. And they even had a name for a sequel. 668: The Neighbour of the Beast. Which is hilarious.

[A cut out part that is not in the video, but you can listen to in the podcast version of it:

AP: Just take, write the joke and then work it out later.

Michael: The best Good Omens joke isn't even in the Good Omens book.

David: Yeah.

Michael: And so we knew there was all that. So I think given that, that gave certainly us the confidence to know that we were in, you know, safe hands.

David: Yeah.

Michael: And I think gave Neil the sense that it was worth exploring, going further, because I think without that, he would never have done it. If he didn't feel that Terry was part of that ride as well, then I don't think he would have gone on it.

]

AP: At the risk of reading from the scripture, this is what's in the hardback copy of Good Omens: 'Why isn't there a sequel? Neil: Well, we know how the sequel goes. We played around with the idea whilst we were on tour. We even discussed a few scenes, but we could never quite work up the enthusiasm. It'd have been fun. We'd split the cash. But we both had other things to do'.

Michael: Yes. It's very much how we felt, isn't it? We'll split the cash.

David: Yeah.

AP: And run.

Michael: You know, and if we got nothing else on.

David: Well, yeah.

Ap: And you kind of enjoy each other's company?

Michael: I mean, enjoy is a strong word.

David: We're very good at faking it.

AP: Actors. I love it.

David: Yeah, exactly, exactly.

Michael: Yeah, exactly.

AP: When, outside of a show's context or the film's context, have you felt physically, visually the silliest? Because I think in this show there have to be moments. Green screen, full orange wig hair, that you go, no one take a photo of me right now.

David: The opening scene of Season Two is set in space and we're dressed as sort of old fashioned-

Michael: That makes it sound like sort of an episode of Blakes 7 or something, it's not Sci-Fi space, is it?

David: There's nothing wrong with that.

Michael: No, there's nothing... I mean I love it.

David: Jesus,

AP: Are you stepping up saying Sci-Fi's rubbish at this-

Michael: No, no, no! Of course not! No. But what I'm saying is-

David: I don't know who this is

Michael: David is making it sound like it's like Aziraphale and Crowley are in a rocket ship.

David: It is set in space!

Michael: Well, yeah.

David: First series set in space! You can't... it's just factual.

Michael: But not like space 1999.

David: Just space.

AP: It's pure, undiluted space.

David: It's set in space. In fact, it is undiluted space. And for that, we were dressed as a traditional angel in a sort of nighties...

Michael: Yes, we weren't in silver spandex.

David: We were in nighties.

Michael: We were.

David: And we were strapped to make this floating in space - and they didn't have this on Blakes 7 - we were strapped onto these gurneys and moved up and down.

[hehe bonus pic :)]

Michael: I had a jetpack.

[again, cut out in the video but present in the podcast version

David: I mean, it looks beautiful. The finished, the finished piece.

Michael: It was very odd, wasn't it? Yes. We were both sort of just like.

David: Yes.

Michael: Hovering around each other.

David: And it was, it was ignoble. Some of the being strapped in and out.

Michael: It was. Yeah.

]

AP: At least it's not Jon Hamming into a room... full Hamm.

[GOS2 Promo]

[again, cut out in the video but present in the podcast version

David: The naked Hamm? The naked Hamm was... yeah. He seemed pretty...

Michael: He seemed very relaxed.

AP: He insisted on spending more scenes in that costume.

]

Michael: That was never in the script.

David: No, he just turned up on set.

Michael: That's how he showed up.

David: I had an idea, guys!

Michael: Yes. No, there's lots to look forward to.

AP bursts out laughing: Sorry.

Michael: And lots to look back on.

AP: This second series, having a little bit more wiggle room in terms of where you might be able to take the characters, I think it's fair enough to say. Do you feel more active input.

[again, cut out in the video but present in the podcast version

AP: Into where they might go? Because to me, they strike as having a very strong Woody and Buzz factor of...

David: Right.

AP: Bear with me here. You're both not very good at your jobs.

David: How dare you?

AP: It's true. One's no angel. One's far from evil.

David: That's true.

AP: And you kind of are fudging it constantly.

]

AP: Do you feel you have more room to kind of fudge here and fudge there and really muck about with the characters now?

Michael: I mean, I every day when we start, I like to first of all say, Neil, I've got no interest in hearing what you're going to say. This is what I think should happen.

David: Yeah.

Michael: I mean, the thing is, when you've got Neil Gaiman writing it-

David: Yeah.

Michael: -you should have just go, off you go, mate.

David: The last thing you want to do is start putting in your ideas. You don't want to limit anything that's going to come out.

Michael: It's like brain. It's like when Ringo says, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

AP: Yesterday, I have notes.

Michael: Listen, listen to what I've come up with.

AP: There's too much guitar in this.

David: Yeah.

AP: More drums.

David: Yeah.

Michael: Yeah. I think one of the things about Neil that is so wonderful is that he is so open and generous with ideas,

David: Yes.

Michael: and he's so not precious about what he's written. He is very respectful of what he and Terry created and is probably a bigger fan than any other fan, but he's not precious about it and he's very open to collaboration. In fact, he's probably the most collaborative

David: Yes.

Michael: I'd ever come across in my life.

David: Yes, absolutely.

Michael: So he loves watching what other people bring to the table, not just actors, but, you know, designers, everyone. And then I think he takes from that and is influenced by that. So it's very collaborative in that sense.

David: Yes. But if we influenced where the characters went in season two, it was sort of circumstantially.

AP: Right.

Michael: Yeah.

David: It was sort of by the act of what happened during season one and getting to know Neil and getting to know each other. But the great joy for us is turning up to these wonderful scripts and going, oh, I get to take this character here now. What a lark.

[again, cut out in the video but present in the podcast version

Michael: I mean, I wrote some very stern emails to him.

David: Yeah.

Michael: Which I was glad to see that he totally ignored.

AP: Screen time for me.

Michael: Yes, exactly.

AP: I like to think the 'I was right, or rather, you were right and I was wrong' dance was organic in the moment, not in the script. And could you give us a quick how might I recreate that beautiful...

David: Absolutely not. No. I worked with the choreographer for some days.

Michael: It's true.

David: Yeah.

Michael: It's true. And am I right in saying that... I wonder if this exists? But when we were filming it, didn't I, on the last take, I made you do it once with you thinking that you were doing it for real, but actually it wasn't for real. It was just so I could do.

David: It was so you could have-

Michael: So I could Strictly Come Dancing [british dance contest]-

David: Exactly that. Does it exist? I think it does exist.

Michael: It must have actually built... I had cards made with scores on them and David, God bless him, came in and did the whole thing again, thinking that he was doing it for the filming. And in fact, it was literally just so at the end I could go, 'SEVEEEEEEN'! [It was filmed, hehe, see here :)]

David: Yeah. But I don't want Amazon to think we're wasting your production...

AP: Money and time. No.

David: And it will show up on a blooper reel somewhere.

Michael: There was no film. There was no film.

AP: It was definitely not a waste of time. No, absolutely not.

]

AP: What would you say the fans have responded most to from the first series when you meet them at comic cons or on social media or what have you? Are there moments from the first series where they love talking about that scene?

Michael: Well, I think people really enjoy the going through history stuff, don't they? I mean, we thoroughly.

David: We certainly do. There's just something about the characters and their relationship, though, that seems to have just caught fire. I mean the amount of...

AP :I won’t read some ot the stories I’ve glanced upon.

David: Right.

AP: Yes. Fanfiction is quite….

David: Oh, I see. Oh that is not for us to read.

Michael: Oh I read it all.

AP: Oh you should. You write most of it, right?

Michael: I write most of it.

David: But it's lovely to see. And I have seen more than I can count. Aziraphale and Crowleys showing up. People dressed and always in twos, always in pairs.

Michael: Yes.

David: You know, and that's lovely. And that seems to absolutely encapsulate what the whole show is about, I think.

AP: Tattoos, fan art.

David: Definitely, yes. Seen a couple of tattoos.

Michael: Yeah.

AP: Yeah. Do you get fans in the street quoting lines or just pointing and staring? Because you two together can't really walk down the street.

David: Michael doesn't walk anywhere.

Michael: Those days are long gone.

AP: Jackpack.

David: Yeah.

Micheal: Yeah.

AP: Yeah, that's fair.

Michael: Well, I get a lot of ‘To the world’.

David: Oh, yes. Nice.

Michael: People like to… yeah.

David: Yeah.

Michael: And 'You go too fast, Crowley.’

David: Ooh.

Michael: There’s a lot of that. That gets jumped around.

AP: What about... and this is a kind of BAFTA winning question, so just send it my way.

David: Wow.

AP: Would you say these characters are in your top three most fun characters you've ever played? Because they strike me as being... I'd probably play these characters forever if I could.

Michael and David: Yeah.

Michael: This is like on what's that show when people have to say whether they want to date each other again? You go first. Top three?

David: I mean...

AP: Number two...one?

David: It'd be a weird scenario to say it wasn't.

AP: Yeah, I agree.

David: In this situation.

AP: Yeah.

David: To start something: well, I mean, it's sort in the little twenties. But... No, we did have an irresponsible amount of fun.

Michael: Yes. Not really like working.

AP: No.

Michael: I mean, I very much hope that we eventually get to, in one way or another, in one form or another,

David: Yeah.

Michael: get to play them just very, very old. And it may well be... I mean, we joke about doing a theatrical tour.

AP: And swapping.

David: I'm not joking. I'm not joking about that.

Michael: No.

David: It's a lovely little retirement plan.

Michael: I know.

AP: I'm dead keen on Good Omens 666. I think...

Michael: Oh!

AP: It's just there.

Michael: Yes.

David: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

AP: Think about it. Post apocalyptic...

Michael: Part, like Good Omens 1, 2, 3, all the way up to 666. I mean, that's a long running series. That's longer than Frasier.

AP: Big words. If a bad joke's worth telling. 666.

Michael: Telling over and over again.

AP: Over and over and over.

David: Yeah.

AP: Guys, I'm going to ask you one last favour as I wrap things up, which is I have at the front of this book, one Mr. Neil Gaiman.

[shows a copy of Good Omens signed by Neil Gaiman].

AP: He signed it and he said as he often does: Ali, have a good doomsday. Would you care to deface?

Michael: I heard the other day that someone went to interview George Harrison and the person who interviewed him said, would you mind signing this record? Whatever it know, the white album, whatever. And he went, do you want them all? And they used to all write each other's name, all sign each other's names.

David: Wow.

Michael: Because they had to do it so much.

David: Do you want to do mine?

Michael: Just get Neil to do that.

AP: Could you please sign as your man? I'll be very lucky.

Michael: On a different page.

AP: You pick your own page, deface as you will.

Michael: Yeah. Look at that. I do a little halo.

David: Oh, that's given me an idea.

Michael: Oh look at that, yeah.

AP: And then while I'm here, I'm going to do the super unprofessional thing of asking for a photograph, if that's allowed.

David: Yeah.

Michael: Oh, look at that.

David: That's perfect.

Michael: That's nice, isn't it?

AP: Beautiful. Would you mind helping me out?

David: Do you see what we've done there, Ali?

AP: Oh, thank you!

Michael: And yours is D for...

AP: I'm going to kneel behind you.

David: Sure.

Michael: I thought I should turn my M into wings.

David: Oooh.

Michael: This is, this is...

AP: Guys, as you may have worked out, big fan.

David: Cheers, Ali.

629 notes · View notes

ines-ineffable · 1 year ago

Text

David and Michael in the interview with Ali Plumb for BBC Radio 1, 10th July 2023

I compared it with it's podcast version and there are some bits that are cut out in the video 👀 but I added them into the transcript ❤ 🐍😊 .

AP: If you're thinking I'm the kind of guy that rocks up to a Good Omens interview with...

Michael: With the book.

David: Oh, well done.

Michael: We'd be correct.

AP: Yeah.

[GOS2 Promo]

AP: So after such a successful and well received first series, what gives you guys?

David: Why risk it?

AP: Why risk it.

Michael: What gives you the right?!

AP: What gives you the cojones to do another one?

Michael: I know.

AP: How dare you?

David: The ideas, the threads.

Michael: Exactly. And they even had a name for a sequel. 668: The Neighbour of the Beast. Which is hilarious.

[A cut out part that is not in the video, but you can listen to in the podcast version of it:

AP: Just take, write the joke and then work it out later.

Michael: The best Good Omens joke isn't even in the Good Omens book.

David: Yeah.

Michael: And so we knew there was all that. So I think given that, that gave certainly us the confidence to know that we were in, you know, safe hands.

David: Yeah.

]

Michael: Yes. It's very much how we felt, isn't it? We'll split the cash.

David: Yeah.

AP: And run.

Michael: You know, and if we got nothing else on.

David: Well, yeah.

Ap: And you kind of enjoy each other's company?

Michael: I mean, enjoy is a strong word.

David: We're very good at faking it.

AP: Actors. I love it.

David: Yeah, exactly, exactly.

Michael: Yeah, exactly.

David: The opening scene of Season Two is set in space and we're dressed as sort of old fashioned-

Michael: That makes it sound like sort of an episode of Blakes 7 or something, it's not Sci-Fi space, is it?

David: There's nothing wrong with that.

Michael: No, there's nothing... I mean I love it.

David: Jesus,

AP: Are you stepping up saying Sci-Fi's rubbish at this-

Michael: No, no, no! Of course not! No. But what I'm saying is-

David: I don't know who this is

Michael: David is making it sound like it's like Aziraphale and Crowley are in a rocket ship.

David: It is set in space!

Michael: Well, yeah.

David: First series set in space! You can't... it's just factual.

Michael: But not like space 1999.

David: Just space.

AP: It's pure, undiluted space.

David: It's set in space. In fact, it is undiluted space. And for that, we were dressed as a traditional angel in a sort of nighties...

Michael: Yes, we weren't in silver spandex.

David: We were in nighties.

Michael: We were.

David: And we were strapped to make this floating in space - and they didn't have this on Blakes 7 - we were strapped onto these gurneys and moved up and down.

[hehe bonus pic :)]

Michael: I had a jetpack.

[again, cut out in the video but present in the podcast version

David: I mean, it looks beautiful. The finished, the finished piece.

Michael: It was very odd, wasn't it? Yes. We were both sort of just like.

David: Yes.

Michael: Hovering around each other.

David: And it was, it was ignoble. Some of the being strapped in and out.

Michael: It was. Yeah.

]

AP: At least it's not Jon Hamming into a room... full Hamm.

[GOS2 Promo]

[again, cut out in the video but present in the podcast version

David: The naked Hamm? The naked Hamm was... yeah. He seemed pretty...

Michael: He seemed very relaxed.

AP: He insisted on spending more scenes in that costume.

]

Michael: That was never in the script.

David: No, he just turned up on set.

Michael: That's how he showed up.

David: I had an idea, guys!

Michael: Yes. No, there's lots to look forward to.

AP bursts out laughing: Sorry.

Michael: And lots to look back on.

AP: This second series, having a little bit more wiggle room in terms of where you might be able to take the characters, I think it's fair enough to say. Do you feel more active input.

[again, cut out in the video but present in the podcast version

AP: Into where they might go? Because to me, they strike as having a very strong Woody and Buzz factor of...

David: Right.

AP: Bear with me here. You're both not very good at your jobs.

David: How dare you?

AP: It's true. One's no angel. One's far from evil.

David: That's true.

AP: And you kind of are fudging it constantly.

]

AP: Do you feel you have more room to kind of fudge here and fudge there and really muck about with the characters now?

Michael: I mean, I every day when we start, I like to first of all say, Neil, I've got no interest in hearing what you're going to say. This is what I think should happen.

David: Yeah.

Michael: I mean, the thing is, when you've got Neil Gaiman writing it-

David: Yeah.

Michael: -you should have just go, off you go, mate.

David: The last thing you want to do is start putting in your ideas. You don't want to limit anything that's going to come out.

Michael: It's like brain. It's like when Ringo says, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

AP: Yesterday, I have notes.

Michael: Listen, listen to what I've come up with.

AP: There's too much guitar in this.

David: Yeah.

AP: More drums.

David: Yeah.

Michael: Yeah. I think one of the things about Neil that is so wonderful is that he is so open and generous with ideas,

David: Yes.

Michael: I'd ever come across in my life.

David: Yes, absolutely.

David: Yes. But if we influenced where the characters went in season two, it was sort of circumstantially.

AP: Right.

Michael: Yeah.

[again, cut out in the video but present in the podcast version

Michael: I mean, I wrote some very stern emails to him.

David: Yeah.

Michael: Which I was glad to see that he totally ignored.

AP: Screen time for me.

Michael: Yes, exactly.

David: Absolutely not. No. I worked with the choreographer for some days.

Michael: It's true.

David: Yeah.

David: It was so you could have-

Michael: So I could Strictly Come Dancing [british dance contest]-

David: Exactly that. Does it exist? I think it does exist.

David: Yeah. But I don't want Amazon to think we're wasting your production...

AP: Money and time. No.

David: And it will show up on a blooper reel somewhere.

Michael: There was no film. There was no film.

AP: It was definitely not a waste of time. No, absolutely not.

]

Michael: Well, I think people really enjoy the going through history stuff, don't they? I mean, we thoroughly.

David: We certainly do. There's just something about the characters and their relationship, though, that seems to have just caught fire. I mean the amount of...

AP :I won’t read some ot the stories I’ve glanced upon.

David: Right.

AP: Yes. Fanfiction is quite….

David: Oh, I see. Oh that is not for us to read.

Michael: Oh I read it all.

AP: Oh you should. You write most of it, right?

Michael: I write most of it.

David: But it's lovely to see. And I have seen more than I can count. Aziraphale and Crowleys showing up. People dressed and always in twos, always in pairs.

Michael: Yes.

David: You know, and that's lovely. And that seems to absolutely encapsulate what the whole show is about, I think.

AP: Tattoos, fan art.

David: Definitely, yes. Seen a couple of tattoos.

Michael: Yeah.

AP: Yeah. Do you get fans in the street quoting lines or just pointing and staring? Because you two together can't really walk down the street.

David: Michael doesn't walk anywhere.

Michael: Those days are long gone.

AP: Jackpack.

David: Yeah.

Micheal: Yeah.

AP: Yeah, that's fair.

Michael: Well, I get a lot of ‘To the world’.

David: Oh, yes. Nice.

Michael: People like to… yeah.

David: Yeah.

Michael: And 'You go too fast, Crowley.’

David: Ooh.

Michael: There’s a lot of that. That gets jumped around.

AP: What about... and this is a kind of BAFTA winning question, so just send it my way.

David: Wow.

AP: Would you say these characters are in your top three most fun characters you've ever played? Because they strike me as being... I'd probably play these characters forever if I could.

Michael and David: Yeah.

Michael: This is like on what's that show when people have to say whether they want to date each other again? You go first. Top three?

David: I mean...

AP: Number two...one?

David: It'd be a weird scenario to say it wasn't.

AP: Yeah, I agree.

David: In this situation.

AP: Yeah.

David: To start something: well, I mean, it's sort in the little twenties. But... No, we did have an irresponsible amount of fun.

Michael: Yes. Not really like working.

AP: No.

Michael: I mean, I very much hope that we eventually get to, in one way or another, in one form or another,

David: Yeah.

Michael: get to play them just very, very old. And it may well be... I mean, we joke about doing a theatrical tour.

AP: And swapping.

David: I'm not joking. I'm not joking about that.

Michael: No.

David: It's a lovely little retirement plan.

Michael: I know.

AP: I'm dead keen on Good Omens 666. I think...

Michael: Oh!

AP: It's just there.

Michael: Yes.

David: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

AP: Think about it. Post apocalyptic...

Michael: Part, like Good Omens 1, 2, 3, all the way up to 666. I mean, that's a long running series. That's longer than Frasier.

AP: Big words. If a bad joke's worth telling. 666.

Michael: Telling over and over again.

AP: Over and over and over.

David: Yeah.

AP: Guys, I'm going to ask you one last favour as I wrap things up, which is I have at the front of this book, one Mr. Neil Gaiman.

[shows a copy of Good Omens signed by Neil Gaiman].

AP: He signed it and he said as he often does: Ali, have a good doomsday. Would you care to deface?

David: Wow.

Michael: Because they had to do it so much.

David: Do you want to do mine?

Michael: Just get Neil to do that.

AP: Could you please sign as your man? I'll be very lucky.

Michael: On a different page.

AP: You pick your own page, deface as you will.

Michael: Yeah. Look at that. I do a little halo.

David: Oh, that's given me an idea.

Michael: Oh look at that, yeah.

AP: And then while I'm here, I'm going to do the super unprofessional thing of asking for a photograph, if that's allowed.

David: Yeah.

Michael: Oh, look at that.

David: That's perfect.

Michael: That's nice, isn't it?

AP: Beautiful. Would you mind helping me out?

David: Do you see what we've done there, Ali?

AP: Oh, thank you!

Michael: And yours is D for...

AP: I'm going to kneel behind you.

David: Sure.

Michael: I thought I should turn my M into wings.

David: Oooh.

Michael: This is, this is...

AP: Guys, as you may have worked out, big fan.

David: Cheers, Ali.

629 notes · View notes

ines-ineffable · 1 year ago

Text

4K notes · View notes

ines-ineffable · 1 year ago

Text

SFX Magazine Issue 372 - Designing Good Omens ❤ 😊

PRODUCTION DESIGNER MICHAEL RALPH REVEALS HOW THE SHOW’S CENTREPIECE SET, WHICKBER STREET, WAS GIVEN A DEVILISHLY CLEVER UPGRADE FOR THE SECOND SEASON

WORDS: DAVE GOLDER

Invisible Columns And Thin Walls “The new studio is Pyramid Studios in Bathgate – it used to be a furniture warehouse. And unfortunately – or fortunately, because I accept these things as not challenges but gifts – right down the middle of that studio are a series of upright columns. But you’ll never spot them on screen. I had to build them in and integrate them into the walls and still get the streets between them. And it worked.

“There’s all sorts of cheeky design values to those sets. Normally a set like this is double-skin. In other words, you do an interior wall and an exterior wall, with an airspace in between. But really, the only time a viewer notices that there’s that width is at the doors and the windows. So I cheated all that. I ended up with single walls everywhere. So the exterior wall is the interior wall, just painted. All I did was make the sash windows and entrances wider to give it some depth as you walked in.”

GOOD OMENS HAD A CHANGE of location for its second season, but hopefully you didn’t notice. Because Whickber Street in Soho upped sticks from an airfield in Hertfordshire to a furniture warehouse in Bathgate, Edinburgh. It’s the kind of nonsensical geographical shenanigans that could only make sense in the crazy world of film and TV, and production designer Michael Ralph was the man in charge of rebuilding and expanding the show’s vast central set. “I wish we could have built more in season one than we did,” says Ralph, whose previous work has included Primeval and Dickensian. “We built the ground floor of everything and the facades of all the shops. But we didn’t build anything higher than that, because we were out on an airfield in a very, very difficult terrain and weather conditions, so we really couldn’t go much higher. Visual effects created the upper levels.”

But with season two the set has gone to a whole other level… literally. “What happened was that the rest of the street became integrated into the series’s storyline,” explains Ralph. “So we needed a record shop, we needed a coffee shop that actually had an inside, we needed a magic shop, we needed the pub. To introduce those meant we had to change the street with a layout that works from a storylines point of view. In other words, things like someone standing at the counter in the record shop had to be able to eyeball somebody standing at the counter in the coffee shop. They had to be able to eyeball Aziraphale sitting in his office in the window of the bookshop. But the rest of it was a pleasure to do inside, because we could expand it and I could go up two storeys.”

For most of the set, which is around 80 metres long and 60 metres wide, the two storeys only applied to the shop frontages, but in the case of Aziraphale’s bookshop, it allowed Ralph to build the mezzanine level for real this time. According to Ralph it became one of the cast and crews’ favourite places to hang out during down time.

But while AZ Fell & Co has grown in height, it actually has a slightly smaller footprint because of the logistics of adapting it to the new studio.

“Everybody swore to me that no one would notice,” says Ralph wryly. “I walked onto it and instinctively knew there was a difference immediately, and they hated me for that. I have this innate sense about spatial awareness and an eye like a spirit level.

“It’s not a lot, though – I think we’ve lost maybe two and a half feet on the front wall internally. I think that there’s a couple of other smaller areas, but only I’d notice. So I can be really annoying to my guys, but only on those levels. Not on any other. They actually quite like me…”

Populating The Bookshop “The props in the new bookshop set were a flawless reproduction from the set decorator Bronwyn Franklin [who is also Ralph’s wife]. It was really the worst-case scenario after season one. She works off the concept art that I produce, but what she does is she adds so much more to the character of the set. She doesn’t buy anything she doesn’t love, or doesn’t fit the character.

“But the things she put a lot of work into finding for season one, they were pretty much one-offs. When we burnt the set down in the sixth episode, we lost a lot of props, many of which had been spotted and appreciated by the fans. So Bronwyn had to discover a new set decorating technique: forensic buying.

“She found it all – duplicates and replicas. It took ages. In that respect, the Covid delay was very helpful for Bron. There’s 7,000 books in there and there’s not one fake book. That’s mainly because… it’s a weird thing to say, but we wanted it to smell and feel like a bookshop to everybody that was in it, all the time.

“It affects everybody subliminally; it affects everybody’s performance – actors and crew – it raises the bar 15 to 20%. And the detail, you know… We love a lot of detail.”

(look at the description under this, they called him 'Azi' hehehehe :D <3)

Aziraphale’s Inspirational Correspondence “There’s not one single scrap of paper on Aziraphale’s desk that isn’t written specifically for Aziraphale. Every single piece is not just fodder that’s been shoved there, it has a purpose; it’s a letter of thanks, or an enquiry about a book or something.

“Michael Sheen is so submerged in his character he would get lost sitting at his own desk, reading his own correspondence between takes. I believe wholeheartedly that if you put that much care into every single piece of detail, on that desk and in that room, that everybody feels it, including the crew, and then they give that set the same respect it deserves.

“They also lift their game because they believe that they’re doing something of so much care and value. Really, it’s a domino effect of passion and care for what you’re producing.”

Alternative Music “My daughter Mickey is lead graphic designer [two of Ralph’s sons worked on the series too, one as a concept artist, the other in props]. They’re the ones that produced all of that handwritten work on the desk. She’s the one that took on the record shop and made up 80 band names so that we didn’t have to get copyright clearance from real bands. Then she produced records and sleeves that spanned 50, 60 years of their recordings, and all of the graphics on the walls.

“I remember Michael and Neil [Gaiman] getting lost following one band’s history on the wall, looking at their posters and albums desperately trying to find out whether they survived that emo period.”

It’s A Kind Of Magic One of the new shops in Whickber Street for season two was Will Goldstone’s Magic Shop, which is full of as many Easter eggs as off-the-shelf conjuring tricks, including a Matt Smith Doctor Who-style fez and a toy orang-utan that’s a nod to Discworld’s The Librarian. Ralph says that while the series is full of references to Gaiman, Pratchett and Doctor Who, Michael Sheen never complained about a lack of Masters Of Sex in-jokes. “He’d be the last person to make that sort of comment!”

Ralph also reveals that the magic shop counter was another one of his wife’s purchases, bought at a Glasgow reclamation yard.

The Anansi Boys Connection Ralph reveals that Good Omens season two used the state-of-the-art special effects tech Volume (famous for its use in The Mandalorian to create virtual backdrops) for just one sequence, but he will be using it extensively elsewhere on another Gaiman TV series being made for Prime Video.

“We used Volume on the opening sequence to create the creation of the universe. I was designing Anansi Boys in duality with this project, which seems an outrageously suicidal thing to do. But it was fantastic and Anansi Boys was all on Volume. So I designed for Volume on one show and not Volume on the other. The complexities and the psychology of both is different.”

4K notes · View notes