Netflix's The Sandman is just one day away from debuting, bringing Neil Gaiman's arguably most famous work to the small screen with a cast stuffed to the brim with familiar TV faces.
With the characters being so well known from various adaptations, not to mention the original comic books from the late 1980s, when Digital Spy spoke to Gaiman and executive producer Allan Heinberg, we asked which actors encompassed the established visions for the characters, and which ones brought new and different ideas.
"What a great question," Gaiman said. "I would point to Tom Sturridge and Mason Alexander Park as people who gave us what we'd hoped for. Everything we dreamed of, they just came, and they gave us our thing.
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"I would point to Boyd Holbrook, The Corinthian, as somebody who gave us something that we were not expecting, which was: we were expecting charm. But what we got was a rather genuine niceness and gentleness, and the idea that: 'Yes, this character is absolutely the patron saint of serial killers. Yes, he's an escaped nightmare, walking the Earth.'
"And by the end, you feel rather sympathetic for him. If you were alive, and you were this thing, and this is what you've been made to be, you'd want him to carry on, too. I mean, that was a surprise. That felt like something that grew in the making."
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Heinberg added: "We genuinely started writing The Corinthian around Boyd, and what Boyd's gifts and talents are. And I would say the same thing with Joanna Constantine. Once we had Jenna [Coleman] in our mind, it just was Jenna. It all came out of Jenna. So we were very fortunate."
Beyond the already mentioned cast members, Netflix's version of The Sandman also includes Game of Thrones' Charles Dance, People Just Do Nothing's Asim Chaudhry, The Good Place's Kirby Howell-Baptiste, Unforgotten's Sanjeev Bhaskar, Wonder Woman's David Thewlis, and national treasure Stephen Fry, just to name a few.
The Sandman begins tomorrow (August 5) on Netflix.
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Joe Anderton is a freelance news writer at Digital Spy, having worked there since 2016. In his time, he's covered a host of live events and interviewed celebrities big and small. A big fan of TV and movies both mainstream and obscure, Joe also enjoys video games and in particular PlayStation. Joe currently does not use Twitter, but he only ever used it to tell people to watch the film Help! I'm a Fish.
TV writer, Digital Spy Janet completed her Masters degree in Magazine Journalism in 2013 and has continued to grow professionally within the industry ever since. For six years she honed her analytical reviewing skills at the Good Housekeeping institute eventually becoming Acting Head of Food testing. She also freelanced in the field of film and TV journalism from 2013-2020, when she interviewed A-List stars such as Samuel L Jackson, Colin Firth and Scarlett Johansson. In 2021 she joined Digital Spy as TV writer where she gets to delve into more of what she loves, watching copious amounts of telly all in the name of work. Since taking on the role she has conducted red carpet interviews with the cast of Bridgerton, covered the BAFTAs and been interviewed by BBC Radio and London Live. In her spare time she also moonlights as a published author, the book Gothic Angel.
