Original-Cin Q&A: The Sandman's Neil Gaiman Asks, 'Who Says the Endless Are a Dysfunctional Family?'
The Sandman. is a much anticipated new series based on the 1989–1996 comic book written by Neil Gaiman and published by DC Comics’ Vertigo line. The series was developed by Gaiman, David S. Goyer, and Allan Heinberg for Netflix.
Like the comic, The Sandman tells the story of Dream a.k.a Morpheus the titular Sandman.
In 1916, Morpheus, the king of dreams and one of the seven Endless, is captured in an occult ritual. After being held captive for 106 years, Morpheus escapes and sets out to restore order to his kingdom of the Dreaming.
The series stars Tom Sturridge in the lead role, with Gwendoline Christie, Vivienne Acheampong, Boyd Holbrook, Charles Dance, Asim Chaudhry, and Sanjeev Bhaskar among others.
Lucifer (Gwendolyn Christie) and the title character Dream (Tom Sturridge)
Our Bonnie Laufer spoke to creator Neil Gaiman and Showrunner Allan Heinberg via ZOOM to find out why, 30 years after writing the comic, now was the perfect time to give fans their long awaited series.
The Sandman starts streaming on Netflix on August 5th
Bonnie also spoke to some of the cast . CLICK HERE to watch Bonnie Laufer’s interview with Tom Sturridge and Vivienne Acheampong. CLICK HERE for Mason Alexander Park & Kirby Powell Baptiste. And CLICK HERE for Boyd Holbrook & Vanessu Samunyai.
CLICK HERE to read our John Kirk’s review of The Sandman.
ORIGINAL CIN: How are things going today?
NEIL GAIMAN: We are actually having a lot of fun because we keep meeting journalists who are Sandman fans, who tell us that they're happy that The Sandman is finally a series. And that's a wonderful thing!
O-C: Neil, let’s just go there. Because 30 years ago you wrote the Sandman stories, but it’s taken a long time to get it to the screen. You finally relented. Why was now the right time?
Neil Gaiman and friend
GAIMAN: The truth is that I've spent 30 years, in fact, 31 years at this point, stopping bad adaptations of The Sandman from happening.
There have been many attempts to make the stories into movies and all of them floundered. They didn’t work because they were attempts to take 3,000 pages of the plot and do them as a movie.
I felt, no matter how good your writers are, you're going to either simply fail or you're going to do a thing that feels a lot like somebody grabbing you (the creator) by the lapels and saying, “Let me just tell you the important things about Sandman.”
O-C: So much would have been lost.
GAIMAN: Exactly! It would have lost the whole meaning behind the stories, and the emotional tie towards the characters if they weren’t fleshed out properly.
So what happened was a few years ago, David Goyer approached Warner Brothers about wanting to do a TV show, and he said it would be perfect for a streaming service.
He loved The Sandman, but he said it could only be made if I were on board. He came to me and I said, “Yes, absolutely!” We found Alan Heinberg, who initially said, no. We went for dinner and I convinced him that I would be on board and would give 100 percent of my time to making it great and discussed our vision of what it should be like.
We quickly discovered that we were talking about making the same series. In fact, there was no disagreement and that was just so exciting.
O-C: No pressure on you Allan.
ALLAN HEINBERG: (Laughs) Oh yeah, for sure! I'm very good at saying no after as much therapy as I've had and learning to look after myself. (Laughs).
But meeting with Neil, I felt immediately at that dinner how much he and I were on the same page about this. We started talking about the challenges of it, and ways to meet those challenges and it was so easy and natural.
Plus I got to spend time with my hero, who turned out to be the most amazing human and partner so I couldn’t have been happier.
O-C: Why do these characters resonate with us? When you look at this group of siblings called, “The Endless” on the surface they are such a dysfunctional family. But yet, they're pretty normal because really, aren’t we all just a little dysfunctional?
GAIMAN: I was going to say, I think most of this resonates with people because there's not one of us that cannot relate to someone in these stories.
When I came to America, to my first-ever Comic Convention in the early ‘90s, people would say to me, “The Endless are such a dysfunctional family.”
To be honest, I'd never heard that expression before, and I said, well, what do you mean? It was explained to me what dysfunctional family meant and I went, “In England that's what we call a family.” (Laughs)
I had failed to meet the functional ones. So as far as I was concerned, I was just creating a family and I think that is one of the basic things that everybody reacts to.
ORIGINAL-CIN: I had a chance to speak with some of the cast and they were delightful. I have to say your casting choices for this series are spot on!
GAIMAN: Thank you, we’d have to agree! You’re seeing the best of the best in this series. We recently got to spend time together at the San Diego Comic Convention. And for a lot of them it was the first time they'd ever met each other! We were all in the same place and instantly we were a family, possibly even a functional one!